Spain’s national postal service has come under fire for what many are calling racism after it issued a new stamp collection intended to highlight racial discrimination on Wednesday.
The new collection includes four stamps that reflect different shades of skin colors.
It features a peach shade worth €1.60 ($1.90), a medium-brown at €1.50 ($1.78), while a darker brown one is €0.80 ($0.95) and a jet black stamp is €0.70 ($0.83).
“At Correos we believe that the value of a person shouldn’t have color, and that’s why we’ve launched #EqualityStamps,” the post office said on Twitter. “We’re reflecting an unjust and painful reality that shouldn’t exist.”
The stamps were launched to coincide with European Diversity Month and the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd -- a Black man killed by a white police officer in the US last year that sparked worldwide protests, according to the post office’s website,
But the campaign has received a flurry of criticism on social networks, as users underscored the price differences between the stamps.
“How much is this group of people worth, according to Correos?,” asked Twitter user Undosytess, who posted a picture of a group of young women with varying black and brown skin tones.
“Since this racist reality shouldn’t exist, we’re going to make it even more real with stamps,” said Albercocs.
“This is exactly what happens when you want to launch a publicity campaign in solidarity, but everyone who is organizing it is white,” said another user.
“Their anti-racist campaign consists in giving less value to blackness? If it's anti-racist shouldn’t all the colors be worth the same?” asked Seba_NqN.
Correos has yet to reply to the 2,300 comments left under its Twitter post. Many recognized the good intentions of the postal service but thought the execution was off the mark.
But it did have just a few supporters, like Fernando de Cordoba, who said he liked the campaign,
“I think it’s daring and will provoke outrage. And that’s what they want. They want people to get mad about the inequalities of the stamps because it reflects and a real-world reality that’s sometimes not so obvious,” he said./aa
