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Spain's postal service Correos dropped a new campaign with a stamp collection called Equality Stamps to highlight racial inequity, but people are calling them tone deaf. The collection features four stamps of different skin tones to reflect the "unfair reality that should never exist."
The issue people have is the lighter skin tones cost more than double the price of darker skin tones.
The aim was to have more people buy stamps of darker shades and less of white ones:
"Therefore, when making a shipment, it will be necessary to use more black stamps than white ones."
But it makes it seem like darker skin tones are worth less than lighter skin tones, sending the opposite message than intended.
Their campaign video says:
"In this way, we convert each letter and each shipment into a reflection of the inequity that racism creates."
Correos was in collaboration with SOS Racismo, a federation of Spanish anti-racism nongovernmental organizations, and with Spanish activist and rapper El Chojín, who's featured in the campaign's video.
The intent of dropping the stamps and campaign now was to coincide with the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and European Diversity Month.
During June of 2020, Spain had one of it's largest rallies for Black Lives Matter in response to George Floyd's killing:
"Thousands marched in Madrid in June, making their way to the capital's Puerta del Sol square, a popular spot for LGBT rights rallies and environmental protests."
Up until now, Correo dabbled in other campaigns such as LGBTQ+ Pride and environmental justice but came out relatively unscathed given the fact Spain is still largely a Catholic country.
Not this time.
Plenty of that criticism came from Twitter.
There\u2019s a lot of deserved criticism here for them making the lighter skin tones more valuable, but not nearly enough criticism for the thought that postage stamps were the right way to combat racism.— Steve Holzapfel (@Steve Holzapfel) 1622145161
They wanna do everything except dismantle racism white supremacy. And making the white stamp the most valuable is a contradiction to their so called effort of fighting racism.— Barbraa (@Barbraa) 1622144153
the first part seemed to be their goal at least, but someone early on should have pointed out that everyone's takeaway is they they're valuing the darker skin tones less and that simple observation will overshadow whatever convoluted rationale they have— Matunos \ud83d\udc89\ud83d\udc89 (@Matunos \ud83d\udc89\ud83d\udc89) 1622145101
While I agree that the black one will most probably be most used, but would it not have been prudent to have them all of the same denomination? All controversies would have been avoided and objective achieved.— Mustafa Hasan (@Mustafa Hasan) 1622148068
Blame on PM Pedro Sanchez, and his friend in charge of the Spanish Postal Service.\nFunny to read comments here on trying to defend something stupid like this.— Chaskanaui (@Chaskanaui) 1622146780
I mean, obvious and total fail, but their idea was that folks would prefer to use the less expensive stamps, because less expensive and a fungible good anyway. They somehow forgot? that folks attribute value to price and it send 100% the wrong message there.— Steffen Christensen (@Steffen Christensen) 1622195990
I can't think of any other product except for foundation where different shades are compatible with different races. anyway I don't even understand how stamps or any other product are supposed to help with the fight against racism.— Ay\u015fe\u00dcnsal (@Ay\u015fe\u00dcnsal) 1622206883
SOS Racismo did make a statement about the racist and xenophobic reactions to the recent rise in migrants fleeing Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
"We have seen it these days in Ceuta, we see it every day in the Mediterranean, in the growing xenophobic and racist discourses that are taking hold in Europe."
The Correos postal service has yet to comment about the backlash from the Equality Stamps.