I got an email from the people I mentioned in my last blog. When they said “foreigners” they meant people from the Peninsular, not the English, Germans, Venezuelans etc. I can stay.
Then there’s a lot of stuff about why they feel they’re a separate country, and a colony. Spain (in other words some Spaniards) treated the Canaries badly in the past and therefore it’s perfectly logical to hate all Spaniards today.
I wrote back and said:
SOME mainlanders have been very racist against Canary Islanders. You hate them ALL.
SOME British behaved very badly towards the Irish. I didn’t. My ancestors didn’t either, because they were too poor to oppress anybody. The IRA would have liked to kill me anyway, just for being British.
You probably know that in July 2005, Islamist extremists exploded four bombs in central London. They killed 52 people and injured 700, because they blamed ALL the British for the war in Iraq, even though half of us were against it (and presumably half the dead people too.)
There were about 20 people involved in the attack, which leaves approximately 1,000,000 British Muslims who had nothing to do with it. But some British blame all Muslims anyway. (This is what bin Laden wants, to make everybody hate each other.)
For some reason human beings love to blame whole groups for the actions of a few. It’s common, but it’s not fair, or helpful, or pretty.
Most mainlanders have done nothing to you, but you hate them because of their race.
That is racism.
Fortunately I still haven’t personally met any of these racists, although I know a lot of Canarian nationalists. You can be pro-Canarian without being a racist. After one ETA murder, I remember protesters chanting, “Basque Country, yes. ETA no.”
And now for something completely different. The planet Mercury has shrunk, and is now a mile smaller. Maybe I should ask it for dieting tips.
