Under the shadow of racism, Spain ignores the black population – 05/27/2023 – Sport

The fight against racism and the creation of public policies for the black population in Spain are hampered by the absence of statistical data on the profile of Afro-descendants in the country, point out black activists and scholars on the subject. Unlike what happens in Brazil, the Spanish government does not include questions about self-declaration of race/ethnicity in its census.

A study coordinated in 2020 by anthropologist Fernando Barbosa Rodrigues, from the Complutense University of Madrid, estimated that there are 700,600 people of African descent in Spain, around 1.5% of the country’s population. But it is a survey of relative scientific value, and without the approval of the INE (National Institute of Statistics, the Spanish IBGE) so that it can back up public policies, laws and the specific needs of these communities.

Almost all European countries have the same gap (UK, Ireland and Finland are exceptions). Data protection of individuals is claimed, and there are no laws that require the collection of these statistics. The origin of the problem relates mainly to the traumas of the Holocaust and the persecution or discrimination, in Europe, of Jews, Muslims and minorities that have inhabited the continent for centuries, such as the gypsies –communities opposed to collecting and detailing ethnic-racial statistics. In contrast, the European community of African descent defends the collection and use of this data.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it”, summed up lawyer Daris Lewis, from the Equinet network (European Network of Equality Bodies), based in Brussels, which works with European institutions and governments to promote egalitarian policies. According to him, the consequence of this statistical blackout is the lack of official information about the situation and experiences of discrimination and racism suffered by people of African descent and ethnic minorities.

“The most efficient and cost-effective way to assess the impact and implementation of anti-discrimination legislation and policies would be to collect and analyze direct data on racial and ethnic origin in national censuses and surveys. discrimination based on racial and ethnic origin,” Lewis told Sheet.

The lawyer pointed out the complexity of the issue, recalling cases in which governments forcibly took fingerprints from gypsies. He recalled that after the September 11, 2001 attacks, discrimination and police harassment against Muslims increased, leading these communities to fear providing their data to the authorities.

Most European countries, explains Lewis, collect population statistics based on language, place of birth (of the respondent’s parents) and immigration history.

“These data are considered objective and function as ethnic-racial markers, that is, as indirect indicators of racial and ethnic origin. The common characteristic is that, as a rule, these categories were adopted without consultation with the community”, said Lewis.

“The problem with collecting this type of data (migratory origin, language, etc.) is that today there are many people of color or ethnicity who may be part of a third generation, whose experiences of discrimination are totally excluded from these statistics.”

Author of studies on the subject, Hungarian lawyer and researcher Lilla Farkas observes that Europeans collect data on racial discrimination “generally based on the perceptions of perpetrators, while, except mainly for blacks, racialized groups do not wish to identify themselves according to a color palette like in Brazil”.

“Jews and Roma often resist data collection, which is available to the latter in Eastern Europe. Muslims are an ethno-religious group, which complicates categorization. In other words, Europe is different from Brazil, as is of the United States, both in ethnic composition and in attitudes towards minorities,” said Farkas, a professor at the Elte Takte University in Budapest and a researcher at the Belgian NGO Migration Policy Group.