{"id":36364,"date":"2014-04-28T05:53:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T05:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=36364"},"modified":"2014-04-28T05:53:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T05:53:31","slug":"for-dark-skinned-mexicans-taint-of-discrimination-lingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=36364","title":{"rendered":"For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers"},"content":{"rendered":"

For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

McClatchy DC: Watching Washington and the World<\/a>
\n2013-08-22<\/p>\n

Tim Johnson<\/strong><\/a>, McClatchy Foreign Staff<\/p>\n

MEXICO CITY \u2014 Flip through the print publications exalting the activities of Mexico\u2019s high society and there\u2019s one thing you rarely find: dark-skinned people.<\/p>\n

No matter that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans consider themselves moreno, the Spanish word for dark.<\/p>\n

Mexico has strong laws barring discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but the practices of public relations firms and news media lag behind, promoting the perception that light skin is desirable and dark skin unappealing.<\/p>\n

The issue came to the fore this month when a casting call for a television spot for Mexico\u2019s largest airline stated flatly that it wanted \u201cno one dark,\u201d sparking outrage on social media and, ultimately, embarrassed apologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never seen anything that aggressive and that clear, all in capital letters: \u2018NO ONE DARK,\u2019\u201d said Tamara de Anda, a magazine editor. \u201cI decided to go with it.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…But the distance between legalities and practice is substantial, said Mario Arriagada Cuadriello, a doctoral candidate in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He is an editor at Nexos<\/em>, a leading cultural and political magazine.<\/p>\n

When Arriagada published an article in this month\u2019s issue about widespread discrimination in Mexico, he received a flurry of responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople wrote to say that if you are light-skinned, you get better treatment in restaurants,\u201d he said. One person told him that in an exclusive area of the capital, residents ask that their dark-skinned domestic servants not walk in the common gardens \u201cbecause it is anti-aesthetic and makes the areas ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Mexico\u2019s most prominent intellectuals from the early 20th century, Jose Vasconcelos<\/a>, held up the mestizo, or person of mixed Indian and European blood, as part of a superior \u201ccosmic race<\/a>\u201d with greater spiritual values…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers McClatchy DC: Watching Washington and the World 2013-08-22 Tim Johnson, McClatchy Foreign Staff MEXICO CITY \u2014 Flip through the print publications exalting the activities of Mexico\u2019s high society and there\u2019s one thing you rarely find: dark-skinned people. No matter that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans consider themselves moreno, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,8413,8,103,394],"tags":[4633,2343,17280,17279,17278,4916],"class_list":["post-36364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-mexico","category-socialscience","tag-afro-mexicans","tag-afromexicans","tag-mario-arriagada-cuadriello","tag-mcclatchy-dc","tag-mcclatchy-dc-watching-washington-and-the-world","tag-tim-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}