Postage stamp campaign indicted for perpetuating racism

Spain stops stamp campaign accused of being racist 0:36

(CNN) -

Just three days after its launch, Correos, Spain's postal service, ended a widely criticized postage stamp campaign that was inspired by different skin tones after being accused of perpetuating racism.

The government-run postal service released "Equality Stamps" earlier this week, a collection of four stamps intended to represent different skin colors.

The lightest of the stamps cost 90 cents more than the darkest stamp, a price difference meant to reflect the value Spaniards place on people based on the color of their skin, according to an ad campaign for the stamps.

At Correos we believe that a person's value should not have color, that's why we launched #EqualityStamps: a collection of stamps in which the darker the stamp's color, the less value it will have.

Thus reflecting an unfair and painful reality that should not exist.

- Correos (@Correos) May 25, 2021

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The response online was overwhelmingly negative.

Thousands of users on Twitter have criticized the campaign since its launch, calling it insensitive or "accidentally racist."

Many users were surprised that a government-run service approved such a product.

Sales of the stamps ended Friday morning, a Post Office spokesperson told CNN.

He said the postal service "will not comment" on the criticism the campaign received.

When asked if the end of the campaign was a reaction to those criticisms, he told CNN: "It is not like that."

"Correos is an anti-racist company," said the spokesman, who noted that the postal service does not usually specify when a campaign will end.

The stamps were meant to 'reflect an unfair and painful reality'

The campaign was launched during European Diversity Month, specifically the year after George Floyd's assassination.

Correos partnered with the Spanish Federation of SOS Racism, a nonprofit organization, the postal service said in a press release.

To promote the "Equality Stamps" stamps, Correos enlisted the help of Afro-Spanish rapper Domingo Edjang Moreno, better known as El Chojín.

In an ad for the collection, Moreno says that the stamps "reflect an unfair reality that should never exist."

Of the four stamp shades, the lightest one had a cost of 1.60 euros (about US $ 1.95), while the stamp with the darkest shade cost 0.70 euros, about 85 cents.

"The darker the stamp, the less value it will have," Moreno said in the ad.

“To send something away you will need more black stamps than white ones.

In this way, we turn each letter and each shipment into a reflection of the inequality that racism creates.

In a protest ».

Critics of Correos saw that the stamps fed racism instead of fighting it.

While the ad described the collection as an act of protest "claiming that the value of a life should not have color," the campaign ended up offending people of color in Spain, whom the ad targets, said Antumi Toasijé, president. of the Council for the Elimination of Racial or Ethnic Discrimination.

"A campaign that outrages those it claims to defend is always a mistake," Toasijé tweeted earlier this week.

He urged the Post Office to suspend the stamp campaign.

A campaign that outrages those it claims to defend is always a mistake.

In the fight against racism, irony, double meanings and "even if it is badly spoken" do not help.

We can all make mistakes, now it's time to fix it: @Correos must withdraw its #EqualityStamps campaign.

- Antumi Toasijé (@toasije) May 27, 2021

CNN reached out to Moreno for comment on the campaign.

A spokesperson for SOS Racism said the organization is "aware of the controversy" surrounding the labels and is deciding its next steps.

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