Brett Hetherington's Blog: "First thought:" My Substack page, page 10

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Their goal is: "to bring together the expat community in Barcelona."

“There is only one race: the human race.” -- Rita Levi Montalcini

     

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Marking her 100th birthday, my 2009 translation of a manifesto by eleven Italian anti-racist scientists that begins with the words:
“There is only one race: the human race.”

These were the words of scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (also attributed to Gandhi and Satyendranath).

My English translation (from a Spanish version) can be read below:

I.  Human races do not exist. The existence of human races is an abstraction that has come about from a false interpretation of the small physical differences that we feel we perceive. It comes from mistaken “psychological” associations: differences interpreted from a basis of secular prejudice. These abstract subdivisions are founded on an idea that humans are made up of groups that are, biologically and hereditarily, greatly varied.

This is pure invention that has always used arbitrary classification between men and women as better and worse and in this way discriminates against those at the extreme (always the weakest) after having blamed them for being the key to all evil in every moment of crisis.

  

II.  Humanity is not made up of large and small breeds. It is above all a network of connected persons. Certainly, human beings come together in groups of individuals, communities, ethnic groups, nations and civilizations. But this does not happen because we have the same genes but because we share life stories, ideas and religions, customs and behaviour, lifestyles and cultures.

These groupings are never established from the same DNA; in fact they are subject to profound historical changes. They are formed, changed, mixed, fragmented and dissolved with a speed that is incompatible with the lengths of times required by the processes of genetic selection.

 

III.  The concept of race has no biological meaning for the human species. Analysis of DNA has shown that genetic variation in our species – less than that of our ‘cousins’ the chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans – is represented above all by differences between people from the same population, whereas they are less than the differences between populations and different continents.

The genes of two individuals of the same population are, on average, slightly more similar than those of people who live in different continents. Precisely because of these small differences between populations even racist scientists never defined how many races make up the human species. They made estimates ranging between two and two hundred races.

 

IV.  There is a fake and deadly myth that has already been forged: the identification of the “Aryan race” with the image of a warlike people, the winners, ‘pure’ and ‘noble.’ Along with this, there is the theory that much of Europe, India and central Asia is the homeland of the basis of Ind-European languages.

History makes it apparent that it is extremely difficult to identify Aryans as a people in addition to the notion of an Indo-European language that stems from conventional classification. But on the other hand, modern archaeological data indicates that Europe was inhabited in the Palaeolithic era by a population of African origin and in Neolithic times other immigrants came over from the Middle East.

The foundation of present-day Italians is from the same southern African immigrants who today constitute the enduring fabric of life in Europe. Despite the dramatic originality of fascist racism the Italians allied themselves with the Nazi’s due to their identification with “Aryans.”

 

 V.  It is a legend that sixty million of today’s Italians are descended from families that lived in Italy a millennium ago. These same Romans built their empire by welcoming people from diverse backgrounds, giving them the status of Roman cives.

The phenomena of social and cultural mixing, which marked the history of the entire peninsula - also including Greeks, Jews, Africans, Hispanics and those seen as "barbarians" - produced the hybrid we call Italian culture. Even though they were dispersed throughout the world and living in small Italian states, Italians continued to be identified with this culture that was global, varied, humanistic and scientific.

 

VI.  There is no Italian race; there is only one Italian people. Italy was only unified as a nation in 1860. Many millions of Italian emigrants in the past often concentrated in foreigner areas. They were considered as, and are, Italian. One of our greatest assets is being mixed with so many people and our exchanges that "cross" physically and culturally.

"Purity of blood" and the "nobility" of the "Nation" have been ascribed to a country that has never existed. It has meant reducing the homogeneity of an alleged biological element in addition to the current populace of Italy’s thousand years of heritage and spreading of cultures.

 

VII.  Racism is at the same time both homicidal and suicidal. Empires became empires due to the coexistence of diverse peoples and cultures, and collapsed when fragmented. That has happened and is still happening in nations with civil wars. To cope with this crisis, they used minorities as scapegoats.

Racism is suicidal not only because it hits those belonging to different peoples but because it also strikes the same people who practice it. The trend of indiscriminate hatred that fuels racism is spreading infectious ideas about any “foreignness” or strange “otherness.” This comes from an increasingly narrow definition of "normalcy".

There are those that do not match up to standard human types. They are "out of line", the "mad", the "weak spirited," gays and lesbians, poets, artists, and alternative writers. All of them are attacked, though it is they who are actually allowed to live and incessantly transform mankind. Every living system is capable of continuing only if it is capable of change, and we, human beings, change with fewer genes and always more with the inventions of our generously disordered brains.

 

VIII.  Racism discriminates, denies relationships, and it introduces fear into various thoughts and behaviours. To defenders of the Italian race, Africa appears as a terrifying threat. The Mediterranean Sea simultaneously separates and unites. From this, the racists claim that there is no "common Mediterranean race."

To reject Africa even further, racist scientists put up a barrier against "Semitic" and "camitas". Science indicated that there is a clear distinction between the genetics of Mediterranean Europe (occidentals) and on the other side, Oriental and African. From the paleontological and genetic point of view the theory that earth’s people originate from Africa is absolutely proven: we are all together in a single race.

 

IX.  Italian Jews are both Jews and Italians. Like all migrant peoples (nobody migrates from free choice, but many do so from necessity) Jews have been spread across the World and have been part of diverse cultures. At the same time they have still retained their people’s identity and religion.

So as in the cases of the Armenians, or the same Italian immigrants: the same thing is happening with migrants from now: African, Filipino, Chinese, Arabs from various countries, peoples belonging to Eastern Europe or South America, and so on. All these people had the painful need to emigrate, but also the luck in the best cases, of enriching themselves by combining their culture with those who gave them hospitality. All were equally enhanced, and where possible, neither one nor the other cancelled out each other.

 

X.  The ideology of the racist bigot is based on fear of "disruption" of their own race. This is totally blind to the fact that many societies recognize that getting married outside their community, even with their own enemies, is fine because they know that partnerships are more valuable than barriers. In addition, human physical characteristics are altered a great deal by the particular living conditions, just as the psychological characteristics of peoples and individuals are not written in their genes.

Cultural mixing is the foundation and basis of hope for progress stemming from the European Union constitution. A racist Italy fragmented into "ethnic" separation, as has happened in the former Yugoslavia, would be devastating now and in the future.

The consequences of racism are the loss of culture and self-expression, homicide and suicide, fragmentation and implosion. These end results are uncontrollable because they are caused by an indiscriminate revulsion towards those who are considered the "other" and not "us".

 

Signatories:

Enrico Allevi, Professor of Ethics, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome
Guido Barbujani, Professor of Genetics of Populations, University Ferrara
Marcello Buiatti, Professor of Genetics, University of Florence
Lauradalle Ragione, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Perugia
Elena Gagliasso, Professor of Philosophy and Science of Living, University La Sapienza, Rome
Massimo Livi Bacci, Professor of Demography, University of Florence
Alberto Piazza, Professor of Human Genetics, University of Torino
Augustine Pirella, Psychiatrist, Co-founder of Democratic Psychiatry, Torino
Francesco Remotti, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, University of Torino
Philip Temple, Professor of Physiology, University of Torino
Flavia Zucco, Director of Research, Association President of Women in Science, Institute of Molecular Medicine, CNR, Rome

 

Original version of the Manifesto in Italian.

My book signing/sales location on St Jordi's Day (April 23)

I'm happy to say I'll be doing a signing and sales session of Slow Travels in Unsung Spain with Barcelona's Come In bookshop's stand on the international day of books and Catalonia's St Jordi's Day, Saturday, April 23.

Time: 5pm-6pm

Place: Paseig de Gracia between C/-Provença and C/- Mallorca

Maybe I'll see you there!

"Overheard" -- My latest column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

(Pic: J. Losada)
Barcelona is a city where plenty takes place outside the home or workplace in full view of the public. 

The other day, on the edge of a hospital car park, I witnessed the awful sight of a naked young man, screaming and kicking as he was strapped onto a gurney stretcher by police and ambulance crew.

They are far less alarming but here are just a few of the conversations in various parts of Barcelona that you could have heard if you’d been with me at other times…

“And well,” the Frenchman said, “in our century how can you win? You and me, we are living in a country, it is called the Spain and about Spanish people there is one enormous problem. My ex-wife is Spanish. I understand this problem very, very well.”

His nose wrinkled in his conquered face as he went on.

“For they, the Spaniards, everything only is black or white. All things must be located on the extreme. Their opinions, their politics, their relations; nothing can exist in a middle. When I speak Spanish, I am like them and I use their extreme words all the days: nunca, siempre, todo, ninguna: never, always, all, no one. I’m sure you know when they want to say ‘everybody’ they say ’todo el mundo’, meaning, all the world. When all the people of the town come together in the square, that is all the world!”

He shook with laughter.

“Yeah, that’s a strange one I agree, though I tend to speak better ’pain-ish’ than Spanish,” the Englishwoman said.

“But with the French, how different we are,” the Frenchman countered.

He straightened his posture and an index finger pricked the air.

“Yes, this is the truth: we are so happy with the ambiguous, we are in the deep love with the grey areas. We enjoy many exceptions because we are exceptional.” He chuckled again. “Nobody can fix us to a position because we change it in an instant. We evade you all.”

Overheard in a cafe on Avinguda Diagonal, the North American group leader, in clandestine conversation:

“You said we were gonna do this thing. Why you wanna back out now? We came here together and we gotta be strong. This is no time to be chicken shits.”

An English businesswoman talking to another woman standing smoking on Carrer Enric Granados (again, overheard:)

“I went to that plumbing company office again and had another big fight with the staff. I was told to wait but after 10 minutes they hadn’t given me the libro de reclamaciones [complaints book], as I requested. I told them I was in a hurry but they argued with me instead. I asked to see the manager, they wouldn’t do that either. I asked for the name of the manager, they wouldn’t tell me. I said that I would give them five more minutes only.” She looked across the traffic.

“They started to threaten me with getting the Mossos [Catalan police] to come. I said fine with me – they were breaking the law, not me. A staff member accused me of ‘falta de respeto’ [a lack of respect] because I didn’t use enough polite language with them. They threatened to call the Mossos again. I smiled at her and she took a photocopy of my factura [utility bill]. I decided to get out of there. My lawyer’s going to hear about this.”

Free entertainment is everywhere in the city if we just prick our ears often enough. For some time, maybe free entertainment is all that many of us are going to be able to afford.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2022.]

   

"Let's Cook:" A recommendation

 

Here's a rare thing: me endorsing something. And I only do it when I believe something is really worth supporting.

Let's Cook do a damn good job at making your lunch or dinner easier without sacrificing any quality.

[Disclaimer:] The food I selected from their wide menu and was sent as a trial I did not pay for. I agreed to review their service only if it it satisfied me and my wife.

And it did!

We both chose the organic tofu burger "kit" with guacamole and the freshness of the ingredients was excellent. The size of the portions was more than generous and the delivery was also convenient. They have weekly menus which change, reflecting seasonal produce.

So, for you my readers there is a special offer: Sign up with a 10€ discount. LETSCOOK1265 . I'm confident you'll enjoy Let's Cook as much as I did.

I still love books

 

On the other side of the planet, visting Australia a few years ago. 

This photo was taken in suburban Canberra, outside a house two doors away from where I grew up. 

I was holding a free/exchange copy of "God is an Englishman" by Donald Horne. 

A great read too.

Business Over Tapas

Highly recommended by me. 

Brilliant, concise current affairs summaries: done every week. I couldn't do without it.

Read for free only this week here.

"My Catalonia" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

 

[Photo: C.Morell]
  

When I think of Catalonia what immediately comes to mind is the word ‘home’. I see the wide view across rows of vineyards, the mountains of the Penedès in the distance, the tops of Montserrat further away, only able to be seen in winter when the leaves on the bare trees allow it. That, from our back terrace.

I have to think about our house too. A narrow but tall and modern ‘adossat’ terrace that has been ours to enjoy (and pay off back to the bank) for the last eleven years. The nighttime light from the old church tower across the street still angles in across our lowly bed. Its bells still ring every fifteen minutes to remind me I rise and sleep in Europe, not Australia, England or Japan.

I am also compelled to recall the splendours of the food here. Discovering the joy in simple ‘pa amb tomàquet’ and the savoury wonder of salt cod, ‘suquet’ seafood stew or the earthy richness of ‘calçot’ green onions cooked on a wood fire.

In Catalonia too, I found the pleasure of chewing the sweet, scant flesh on rabbit bones and diving into a bowl of snails ‘a la llauna’ hot from a tin tray, freshly out of the oven. We still drink the co-op white wine from Covides (an unfortunate name in these times.) Good, cheap stuff pressed from Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada grapes.

Of course, Catalonia is so much more than just that. It’s where we’ve worked. I’ve written, taught and travelled thousands of kilometres to do these things. It’s an hour-long seat on RENFE trains, it’s driving the hills up and down the single-lane N340 running past Vallirana.

Equally, this place has sustained us and drained us; given so much but also taken so much energy and expense. It’s where our son went to school and learnt to use two languages. Catalan is his second language and as he makes his way as an independent young adult he still uses it every day in his work and study, I’m immensely happy to say.

Catalonia gave him superb teachers all through primary and secondary school. Every one of them were caring and dedicated women, apart from a handful of young men and they too were the exact kinds of male anyone could hope for as role models for him.

As well, my thoughts can’t go much further than to the selfless people who work with such heart and humanity in the public health system here. I owe a great deal to them all and so does my wife.

And there’s always The Big Smoke, the capital that brings tourists from everywhere. I was first one myself almost 25 years ago and now as a local I love to busy myself in the crowds on the streets. Every part of Barcelona is a gift, even the least attractive corners.

My Catalonia continues to spur the imagination. (I once had the idea of a book of photos of every rambla in every town where they could be found across the land).

Now, in my more optimistic times, I see somewhere I’d never want to leave. As it is, I don’t want to live anywhere else. Here is as good as it gets.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2022.]

"WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF #REFUGEES? / by ELIF SHAFAK"

"In this episode, [Turkish writer] Elif Shafak is focusing on the word #REFUGEE. Why are we afraid of them?"

Yet another new ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review for my latest book

"What counts are [his] encounters with the locals..."
"This narrative integrates history without overburdening the text..."
"He's done a great job of immersing himself."
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NJG91W7/...