A Catalan-Negalese mother: "I'm experiencing the same racism I experienced as a child with my children."

MataróGrandma Dolors opens the door to her street-level apartment in Mataró. Then, from the adjacent apartment, Bintou Jarju and her children, Arlet and Sam, ages 12 and 10 respectively, appear, looking as if they've gone to bed late. It's Santa Fe, and the city is celebrating. Sam is in the band Diablos, and Arlet enjoys the concerts more, I'm told. During the photo shoot for our report, diverse physical features compose the images: Dolors is rather short and pale, while her daughter Bintou and the children—who are Catalan-Negalesan—have dark skin and are on the tall side. How is it that even now so many prejudices are placed on such naturalized differences in this family?

"Now, at 46, I'm finding myself and my children in the same situations I experienced as a child. Yesterday we went to Santes, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Afro-descendant children there. We have an elephant in the dining room, and no one is taking it seriously, considering its size. We're only half-listened to. In a way, progress has been made, but something has slipped. We're talking about the grandchildren of migrants. "It's our space, where we share what's happening to us, and when things happen, we go to whoever we need to talk to."

Alert to teachers

"I don't care if I can pronounce this child's name, it's very difficult. Couldn't they have named him Jaume?" This sincere and perhaps ill-timed comment from a teacher reveals at least a significant lack of sensitivity and awareness." Bintou has been particularly familiar with the education sector for 20 years. One of her current professional responsibilities is supporting teachers, and, as everywhere, she encounters racism. "If you have Muslim students in the classroom, I'm not saying you have to be an expert on the subject, but you should know something," Bintou believes. Nowadays, there's no excuse: there are videos, bibliography, and specialized professionals like her.

"I have to get used to the fact that this girl wearing henna doesn't bother me. I have to get used to the fact that this girl, since there are certain spices in her house, smells different from the smell of Nenuco cologne. This is the mother of all things," says Bintou, who believes that we have made a half-hearted social process, but only half-heartedly in the social arena. A situation that requires training (she says, poking the air with her finger). She refers to putting the spotlight on white privilege: "You also have a responsibility when you think I dance something really well, or you imagine I play the djembe really well because you see me with a certain color. How does this affect me? But how does it affect you?" And she claims that housing policies, economic policies, and educational policies are needed: "How many people do we have with diplomas and degrees in their countries of origin who are doing unskilled work? This does not bring dignity and can be a seed of exclusion and racism."

Language is one of the stumbling blocks of identity, and Catalan's weak times also demonstrate that something is wrong. "Physically, they speak to me in Spanish. I'm tired. Whose responsibility is it?" she asks rhetorically. Here Sam is contributing. "One day we were talking with Arlet and a woman said, 'Oh, yes, very good, speak Catalan.'" "Yesterday I was at the top of a hill and a photographer said to me:Can I come up for a moment?"And I answered: "Yes, without any problem." And he stood still..." He has a lot of anecdotes, he experiences it every day.

Living together is knowing

Dolors, who arrived from Jaén when she was nine months old, compares this discrimination to that suffered by her mother—the housekeeper for whom she sewed said she was very polished, "despite being Andalusian"—and attributes racism to a lack of knowledge: "You can't know a society if you don't live together." She knows this firsthand. She met her husband, Bintou's father, by chance on a trip to the Liceu. "It was a soap opera," she says, moved. She remembers how in the 1980s, people would stop in their tracks when they entered her shop upon seeing her husband, one of the pioneers of anti-racist associations in Mataró and a leading figure in the Senegalese and Gambian communities, who died in 2020. Since Dolors had always had "a revolutionary tendency" and "didn't tolerate injustice" while leading strikes, it was just as if nothing had happened. As her father used to say: "If the immigration law doesn't change, she'll have a big problem that will spiral out of control." Just look at the attacks on Torre Pacheco and the rise of the far right, we commented while the children played a board game. It's clear that Bintou's childhood and upbringing, "amidst demonstrations, meetings, and unexpected phone calls," shaped her unflappable character.

Bintou, Sam, and Arlet have been living in the same building as their grandmother for a few months. They made this decision considering that Dolores lived alone in a home that wasn't very suitable for her age. This also allows her to act more like a grandmother and take care of meals from time to time. They also have a nice terrace where Sam and Arlet can play soccer. She will soon start playing a federated sport. "Now we're opening up a spectrum. Every time you leave your familiar space, there are risks of violence that manifest themselves in different ways," Bintou notes.

Sam's "I'm hungry" pulls us from the depths of a conversation that aims to save the world from the clutches of racism. Bintou and the children accompany me for part of the way. It's a Diolan tradition, the Senegalese ethnic group of their father's family, which she has recently sought to revive in the ongoing reconstruction of a multiple identity: "We do it when we receive good news."