ultimately what pisses me off the most (aside from the manufacturing of consent for something terrible to happen to us in the future, and the pillaging of our resources which is already happening) is how this just keeps burring the ACTUAL problems with racism Argentina has, which derive from our specific history and cultural context. because these people refuse to engage with anything they can't perfectly map onto their experiences.
it keeps erasing the actual work being done by descendants of afroargentines fighting for their contributions and place in history to be recognized. nonblacks often refuse to acknowledge the gravity of slurs even if by all other metrics they're friendly and welcoming. it keeps erasing the total cultural genocide of some native people who were then absorbed into the wider population and now cannot ever connect with their roots again, to the point so many don't want to even try. it keeps erasing how people with native and mixed features are the ones bearing the brunt of racism nowadays.
we refused slave trade ships. natives did most of the labor.
nowadays you cannot meaningfully separate the way northern natives adapted catholicism to their culture after the Jesuits forced them to.
we have a whole day and song celebrating soldier Cabral in the battle of San Lorenzo for our independence, but it wasn't until my last couple years of high school that it became widely accepted he was mixed black.
after independence (1816) we never had slavery or segregation. obviously they still struggled and many died to plagues and wars that affected impoverished populations but there is a clear difference.
there were multiple campaign with the stated purpose of wiping out the southern native population and then their lands were basically gifted to Europeans, who were expected to work those lands themselves. the elites hated that nearly all European immigrants were poor Spanish and Italian. the black population wasn't massacred, whitening happened by interracial marriage and immigration, and a concerted effort to forget it was ever there.
the president who fomented free education in the mid 1800s hated natives unless they agreed to assimilate into "civilization", believed in racial hierarchy, advocated westernization, and he still thought everyone should have access to equal education regardless of gender or race.
nowadays we have free college and anyone in the world can sign up. we have free healthcare and anyone can come to get treated. after around 3 years of living here anyone can be a citizen.
the majority of German population came here in between wars, much of it was Jewish. I live in a zone with a massive Armenian refugee community. we've historically recognized the rights of Palestines since the 70s, yet our current president is a converted Jewish Zionist.
the political right has been historically both anti-nationalist and white nationalist, and will bend over backwards to please the first world.
the USA-backed dictatorship targeted leftist, specially queer, brown and Jewish ones.
if you cared to ask the average argentine, they'll probably admit there was some mulato somewhere in their ascendence but they don't know/care much about it. you'll often see people who are clearly Not White but will probably call themselves white because of internalized racism, erasure, and society considering them "white enough".
these are all true things that can coexist and be true at once.
every first world country can have its dirty laundry but as soon as the third world does, we're the literal devil. y'all cannot be this dense.
do you honestly think we're "worse than France" because nobody in our national team looks obviously black? go look at the lineup and tell me those men are 100% white. look me in the eyes and tell me Maradona was white and wonder how he got here.
congratulations you fell for the propaganda. making up bullshit and plugging your ears when called out isn't helping anyone. you don't care about the plight of poc in Argentina, you just wanna feel morally superior for internet points.
