I’m traveling outside the U.S. right now, so more tuned into international news of racism at the moment. Along those lines, Jerome Taylor, writing at IndyBlogs, notes that the award for the “Most Racist Article of the Year” has just been handed out by Survival International, a human rights organization that campaigns on behalf of indigenous tribal peoples. The dubious distinction goes to the Parguayan newspaper La Nacion for an article about a group of indigenous Indians who had taken over a square in the city of Asuncion. Here’s Taylor’s description of the piece:

Comparing them to a “dangerous cancer, spreading bad smells, destruction and contamination” the article went on to call this particular tribe “Neo-lithic” with a “withered culture” and said they should return to the jungle to “carry on living with the animals”.

The “award” that Survival International will send the editors of the paper is a certificate inscribed with a quotation from Luther Standing Bear, of the Lakota Souix (UPDATED: with thanks to Bryce for the correction) a Native American author who died in 1939. The inscription reads: “All the years of calling the Indian a savage has never made him one.”


More about racism outside the U.S. in upcoming posts.