Study: One in Four Spanish Youth Hold Racist Views Toward Minorities

These 25% of young people display clearly racist behaviors due to ethnicity, sex, gender or sexual orientation, towards Roma, Sub-Saharans and Moroccans, reveals the study "Young people and racism" presented on Tuesday by the General Director of the Fad Foundation for Youth, Beatriz Martín Padura, and the Deputy Director of the Reina Sofía Center on Adolescence and Youth, Anna Sanmartín.

The remaining 75% of young people, or 3 out of 4, generally reject racist postulates, promote multiculturalism and show a strong commitment to protecting vulnerable groups, particularly with universal health coverage and the care of unaccompanied minors. According to the study conducted with 1,200 young people, 40% of young people are firmly convinced that racist discourse originates from "the lack of integration of migrants".

The respondents also denounce the dissemination by certain media of intolerant discourses and their way of presenting immigration (60.4%). They also point to the xenophobic proposals of far-right parties (49.7%). Only 57% of respondents would be in favor of a migrant accessing a position of responsibility such as mayor of a municipality. Three out of ten admit to having witnessed physical racist attacks and nearly half have read racist mockery and insults on social networks.

The study also reveals a strong link between having suffered discrimination and practicing it. More than 20% of those who commit acts of intolerance have already been victims of it. "These results are very relevant, as they show the importance of what could be considered a spiral of discrimination: the fact of having suffered it facilitates the fact of exercising it," explained the authors of the study, which concludes that the establishment of affective relationships with people belonging to discriminated minorities facilitates or promotes the development of anti-racist opinions.