(CNN Español) — Julio Vallejo, a Mexican born in Morelia, Michoacán, says that he has always felt rejected for his skin color. So much so that, although he was born, raised and studied in Mexico, he felt that his job opportunities and his life project in his native country would not be the same as those of others due to his skin color.
“A year after working there I saw, I felt my glass ceiling very quickly because of the color of my skin, the way they treated me, the way my colleagues were, the way I saw that they were in more positions taller than me, ”says Vallejo, who recognizes himself as dark.
According to him, he saw his “dreams of doing things stagnant. So very, very quickly I saw and felt that glass ceiling and decided to come to U.S“.
From this personal experience the Pigmentocracia Foundation, a project he has worked on for 10 years, when he came to the US, with which he seeks to work for the correct ethnic-racial representation in the media. And also make the conversation about racism in Mexico visible.
Pigmentocracy
The term pigmentocracy was coined in the mid-20th century by the Chilean researcher Alejandro Lipschutz, and refers to “how skin color played a very important role in determining how these power relations took place” between people, Vallejo explains. In other words, how skin tone can affect a person’s professional, professional, and even emotional success.
In Mexico, this phenomenon is reflected in the National Survey on Discrimination 2017 made by the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination (Conapred) and the Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (Inegi) and other state agencies.
According to this, in Mexico, “skin color is related to schooling”, because “as the skin tone becomes clearer, (the level of) schooling increases”, says the survey.
The survey used a color scale of 11 different skin tones, in which each respondent made a recognition of their skin tone. A higher percentage of those with lighter skin tones (30.4%) had higher education, compared to those who identified with “intermediate tones” (22.7%) and “darker tones” of skin (16%).
In the lighter skin tones, there was a higher percentage of people hired in administrative and sales jobs, professionals and technicians and managerial positions (48.7%), than those who belonged to intermediate tones (37.3%) and darker shades of skin (26%), according to the survey.
There was a higher percentage in the work of personal services, support activities and agriculture of people with darker skin (44%), than those with intermediate complexion (35%) and lighter skin tones (28.4%), according to the survey.
The highest economic income was concentrated in those who had a lighter skin color, according to the report Life and Skin Color of El Colegio de México, that analyzes the four main surveys that exist in Mexico to understand the role that skin color plays in the lives of Mexicans.
“As with the socioeconomic level and the wealth index, the presence of Mexicans with fair complexions is higher in the highest income quintiles,” says Colmex.
Emiko Saldívar, professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and co-founder of the Collective to Eliminate Racism in Mexico (Copera), whose objective is to make racism in Mexico visible, says that “skin color is relative and contextual.”
“In other words, a person can be a brunette in one place, a light brunette in another; the ‘güerita’ (white) in another place, ‘the black’ in another. And let’s say those variations depend on certain contexts, ”says Saldívar.
Racism or classism? An emotional issue
In Mexico for a long time the subject of racism has been taboo due to “the promise of miscegenation” that comes from the time of colonization, researcher Mónica Moreno, a doctor in Sociology, a professor at the University of Cambridge and co-founder of Copera.
“For a long time, the issue of racism was taboo and the reason is not because we were very shy and we did not want [hablar de esto]but the project in Mexico, the promise of crossbreeding, the promise to improve the race, was a very important promise of mobility, of aspiration, “says Moreno, a black Mexican.
“That promise is that the races do not matter, that your origin does not matter, that if you hurry, that if you marry well, that if you stop speaking your language, basically, that if you assimilate yourself to this promise of a mestizo nation, your possibilities they are very big and that project worked for a long time ”.
For Vallejo, in Mexico there was no talk of racism for a long time, for an emotional matter because although for many what is in Mexico is about classism, the reality is that it is racism, because, he says, class can be changed, but not the race.
“Classism is easier to digest,” he says. “We say well, it is classism, because if you work, you can go wherever you want. On the other hand, with racism you cannot change the color of your skin and your features cannot change it. You cannot change your height… then there is a real block ”.
Mexico, a “assimilation” racism
In the United States, the conversation about racism has recently gained relevance due to the death of George Floyd and other black people at the hands of white police, which many claim as racism and police brutality. That conversation crossed borders and made Mexico activate these conversations both on the streets and in the media.
According to Moreno, in Mexico there is “assimilation racism”, which is different from the US, which is segregation, she says.
“American racism is a racism of separation, of segregation. Still in the 1970s there were states that criminalized marriage between ethnic, racial groups. So that’s the kind of racism we all imagine. A racism that speaks of white purity, of white superiority ”, says Moreno.
On the other hand, “Mexican racism is racism of assimilation, where the condition of being able to exist in this society is that you lose all your characteristics, that they assimilate you to the majority, in this case mestizo, right?”, He adds.
CNN columnist Rubén Navarrete, who is of Mexican descent, said in an article for CNN the racial divisions of that country: “… this is, and always has been, a country of deep divisions. In the 100 years since the Mexican Revolution, one part of Mexico has often been at war with another: urban versus rural, rich versus poor and, yes, dark-skinned versus light-skinned. ”
Navarrete pointed out the progress in infrastructure of the country of 120 million people, the skyscrapers, the multimillion-dollar income from gas and oil, as well as the large amount of money that enters the country from remittances from Mexicans abroad, but noted: “¿ What use is all that when only a small number of the population can reach their full potential? Prejudice kills progress. “
Racism in the media
With the anti-racist movement in the United States, the conversation about racism in Mexico has taken a new momentum, Moreno and Vallejo agree.
And in this context, the organization RacismoMX, which seeks to make racism visible and open the conversation on this topic in Mexico, organized a forum called “Racism is not a joke” to discuss the role of the media in how they portray Mexican society.
“In the case of Mexico, the media in the last 30 or 40 years have become one of the main players in racism,” said Federico Navarrete, a doctor in Mesoamerican Studies from the UNAM Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, who participated in the forum.
“If we see the Mexican screens there are almost certain people with a certain genotype rather white type European and people with brown skin do not appear, other than in government announcements as recipients of social aid or in certain highly denigrating comic roles, “says Navarrete.
“Historically, there have been no announcers, there have been no stars, until Yalitza (Aparicio, protagonist of ‘Roma’, by Cuarón)”, who, according to him, was subjected to “shameful racism”.
Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, who has been a standard-bearer against racism, has asked to move from “the easy comedy, where one group is denigrated and racialized to make others laugh.”
“Comedy is not like that, comedy should not be like that. We are already in 2020 and we have to go a step further because that is what we get paid … and shake our heads a bit to start telling other jokes and speak from another side, “he said in the organization RacismoMX.
Vallejo, from Pigmentocracia, points out that racism is also seen in daily comments that they are “apparently harmless”, but that “they are the cornerstone of a person’s self-esteem.”
“Racism is when they told me not to go out in the sun because you are going to get blacker, or is it ‘Marry a güerito’ (a white person) to improve the race, or it is’ that dress does not fit you because you are very tight ‘, etc”.
“And self-esteem plays a very important role in how far a person who wants to do in life will go,” he said.
So it is important to change the discourse, as Huerta says, and for people to realize that “they are living in a racist system and that these prejudices – that white is good and brown is bad – are there embedded in our subconscious “
“You have to put them aside,” says Vallejo, while pointing out that in Mexico there is much to do.
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