Analysis Of Colette Guillaumin's 'The Changing Face Of Race'

In her article “The Changing Face of Race” (1999) contained in the book “Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader”, Colette Guillaumin tries to explain how a simple word like “race” changed in its meaning and impact in society during its history, making it unreliable when trying to describe a concept. An explanation on her theory and its importance will be given in this illustrative essay, as will a clarification on why Guillaumin (1999) states that scientists are partly to blame for the discriminating connotation of this word, and how none of the sciences, natural or social, wants to take responsibility. It will also try to explain how Guillaumin thinks this idea is socially constructed and why she believes that even though the concept as
However, the country has a long history of discrimination and violations of Human Rights, especially during the dark period that was the dictatorship of Francisco Franco starting in the Civil War of 1936,until his death and therefore absolution of the regime in 1975. During this time, a vast number of social groups like republicans, communists, anarchists were prosecuted, alongside minorities like Black, Muslim, Homosexual and Roma people. The latter is the one we will be focusing on in this essay.
In Spain, Roma or Romani people are commonly known as “gitanos”, a word that directly translates to “gypsy”, but has lost in the Spanish language the pejorative connotation that the latter contains . Gitanos in Spain belong to Iberian Kale group, and most speak a language called Caló, which basically blends a range of regional Spanish dialects with loan words of Romani descent. Most of them, however, identify with Andalusian culture and music due to the large amount of Roma population in said region. In 2007 it was recorded that Roma people make up roughly 2% of the Spanish population, meaning there are around one million gitanos in the
During the Spanish Civil War, they remained impartial to the conflict, even though they were being hunted down by both Republicans and Nationalists alike, as is demonstrated in the events that occurred on the 26th of February, 1939, when two soldiers shot down a number of Roma people that were completely unarmed, with the pretext that they were trying to “steal cows from them”. This is a stereotype that reoccurs during the whole of Roma discrimination. Roma people are designated character traits in relation to their ethnicity, when the reality is, just like Guillaumin (1999) points out, these have no correlation whatsoever. This topic will be revisited later.
During Franco’s dictatorship, there was a clear xenophobic and racist connotation in the legislation of the regime. A series of laws were used to justify their repression. Thousands of Roma people entered Franquist prison, and the rest were banished to slums at the outskirts of towns. During the dictatorship, it was forbidden for them to speak Caló, and the Vagrancy Act of 1942 resulted in the increased control of vigilance on them, deeming them as