Comment: A poll by Unicef Argentina (in Spanish) of 13-18-year-old adolescents revealed that discrimination is a problem at Argentinean schools. According to the poll, four out of ten adolescents were discriminated at some point and seven out of ten directly.
Skin color and obesity were cited as the main reasons for being discriminated. That was followed by nationality. Sixty-five percent of the adolescents polled said Bolivians were the most discriminated national group in Argentina.
Even if Argentina was populated in the nineteenth and early twentieth century by European immigrants, discrimination against non-Europeans was the rule. Apart from their belongings and hopes, immigrants brought their prejudices as well. It took, however, a ruthless military dictatorship that ruled the country in 1976-83, and the rise of democracy to awaken the people slowly to this social ill.
Some of the most discriminated persons in Argentina are the poor, Amerindian groups as well as Bolivians.
In the 2011 population census, Bolivians were the second biggest group (233,464) living in Argentina after Paraguayans (325,046). A total of 1.531 million people born in foreign countries were registered in the 2001 population census out of a total population of 36.260 million.
While 4.2 million European immigrants moved to then sparsely populated Argentina during 1881-1914, higher birth rates among mestizo groups compared with Argentineans of European backgrounds has allowed the former group to grow in size.
While discrimination and racism are serious problems in Argentina, it is a positive matter that the government has taken steps to make the country more inclusive irrespective of one’s background. Argentina became the first Latin American country in 2010 to approve same-sex marriages.
Here is a link to the government’s National Plan Against Discrimination.
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Cynthia Palacios
Siete de cada diez adolescentes argentinos fueron testigos de alguna forma de discriminación, y cuatro de cada diez la sufrieron en carne propia. El escenario: la escuela, en primer lugar, en forma abrumadora, y en segundo lugar, la calle. Así lo revela una encuesta realizada entre 900 chicos de siete provincias, divulgada ayer por Unicef Argentina.
From my experience here in Finland, I can clearly say that the other races are more discriminatory towards black people , than the Finns. I know that it sounds strange saying this, but at least that is what I have deduced from my daily interactions here.Asians, particularly Indians,are very overtly racist towards black people here.
The whole situation is so very funny to me.It is downright comical! Instead of all of us (the “others”) rallying together to get rid of the racism here in Finland, we discriminate against each other.Make no mistake about it;we ALL feel the racism directed towards us by the Finns.So whether you are Black, Indian,Iranian, Chinese, Nepalese, you will face the wrath of the Finns(at least the racist ones).
There is so much division in the immigrant community here. Asians (Indians) for some reason feel that they are way better than Black people .Then you also have the Thais and Vietnamese who purposely keep away from interaction with Blacks here. It is not just a simple matter of these groups preferring to keep within their own communities. If that were the case , why are they all scrambling to befriend and be accepted by the Finns?
I am all for world peace , and for the obscurity of racial lines.I value each race as equal. Sadly, this is not the case with the other races( ethnicities,nationalities) here in Finland. We can never expect to get any respect from the Finns, unless we first of all learn to respect and value each other, and treat each other as equals.Until then,expecting the Finns to treat us as equals is just an elusive dream.
As a side note, I do have a wide range of acquaintances here, but I have found out that befriending some of the “others” is way harder than befriending Finns.
–There is so much division in the immigrant community here. Asians (Indians) for some reason feel that they are way better than Black people .
Hi I-am-here and I could not agree with you more. If you look at some of the bloggers it suggests that the immigrants are more conservative than the natives. Why does this happen? Because immigrants carry their prejudices from their country to their new homeland. In an ideal world, immigrants should have empathy for each other. However, in the real world, this is not always the case because they too are competing for resources like work.