How to combat prejudice

By Carlos Alberto Montaner

CNN in Spanish has declared war on prejudice. The initiative was from the president, Cynthia Hudson. The first shot was made by Camilo Egaña in his talk show. Cynthia is a Cuban with an appearance and name of Gringo, or an American of Father Gringo and Cuban mother, born in the United States, convinced that stereotypes and prejudices do a lot of harm to people of flesh and blood.
He’s right. I suspect-he didn’t tell me-that Cynthia is tired of being told, to flatter her, that “it doesn’t look Cuban” or, on the other end, “That doesn’t look American.” None of that, I suppose, pleased her. He wants to be valued for his work and not for the circumstances of his origin. But it cannot be rid of ambiguity. We are obliged to think about categories and that fatality requires characterizing people.
The Mexicans, the Argentinians, the Spaniards “are like this”. There are categories for everything. Catholics, Jews, Islamics “are like that.” Capitalists and communists “are like that.” The dwarves are bad, said a Neapolitan song, because they have the heart very close to the C… Blondes are idiots, the “easy” Nordics, the treacherous Indians. And that way absurd to infinity.
The overwhelming presence of prejudice, however, cannot amilanarnos. Fighting for a better world means battling stereotypes, and the most effective way to do this is to ban negative characterizations in mass media. It’s not hypocrisy. It’s respect for the other.
What intellectuals call “politically correct language” contemptuously is necessary. Minority groups should be called as they do not feel attacked. If gays do not want to be called queers, there is no reason to call them in a different way than they claim. If blacks prefer to be graded as “African-Americans,” and they resent being told “Negroes,” because the word has acquired a negative semantic charge, it makes no sense to contradict their preferences.
The image can also be an extraordinary weapon to explain without words the importance of combating prejudice. The cartoonist Cuban Edel Rodríguez has done more against the prejudices than a hundred publishers for his famous cover of Der Spiegel in which he sees Donald Trump with a knife in his hand after cutting the head of the Statue of Liberty.
When Erik Ravelo, head of publicity for Benetton in Italy, a Italocubano, saw the photo of Honecker and Breznev giving a passionate kiss on the lips, as is the Russian custom, he imagined a series of dissimilar couples that served to denounce different forms of Foolish prejudices, though they were built by means of “photoshop“: Benedict VI kissing the imam of Cairo or Raúl Castro doing the same with Obama. But perhaps the best of the graphic allegations is against the Italian Matteo Salvini, the quasi-fascist leader of the highly xenophobic Northern League.
The image chosen by Ravelo was the tragic corpse of Alan Kurdi, a boy of just three years old, Syrian-Kurdish, who appeared intact on the coast of Turkey in 2015, after drowning when the family tried to escape the hell of the Civil War, allegedly headed to Greece or Italy. The corpse is no longer facedown on the sand. Due to the “Photoshop”, it is held by Matteo Salvini, Upcard, but the Italian politician has taken the precaution of covering his hands with latexgloves, as not to contaminate with the harmful glow of the foreigner.
Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Eight years before, in 1925, it had published in my fight all possible imbecilities on the Jews. It was clear that I would try to exterminate them if I ever came to power. He believed that the Jews were responsible for the ills afflicting Germany and Europe. Very few people came to the pass. Not fighting prejudices cost humanity 40 million of dead. It’s an incessant battle, but it’s our life.

Posted in Montaner’s Blog-Saturday 13 April 2019-

*Las opiniones aquí publicadas son responsabilidad absoluta de su autor*

*@CarlosAMontaner. El último libro de CAM es una revisión de Las raíces torcidas de América Latina, publicada por Planeta, y accesible en papel o digital en Amazon.