The Washington Post was forced to correct a piece that inaccurately cited the number of blacks living in Argentina in an article critical of the nation’s soccer team for not having enough black players.
The editorial in question was written by Erika Denise Edwards and published on Dec. 8, entitled “Why doesn’t Argentina have more black players in the World Cup?” In which Edwards blasted Argentina for what she maintains was a “whitening” of the country undertaken in the early 1800s, the New York Post reported.
Edwards, an associate professor of Latin American history at the University of Texas at El Paso, bemoaned Argentina’s racial mix on its national soccer team at the World Cup, saying that the team stands in “stark contrast” to the greater racial mix of other South American countries.
The author claimed that Argentina was not a “white nation” more than one hundred years ago but became whiter due to its “longer history of black erasure at the heart of the country’s self-definition.”
After Argentina’s independence in 1818, the country began importing many Europeans, Edwards noted, to bring the country “closer to Europe.”
The result, she said, means that but one percent of Argentina’s population is currently black.
Days later, though, the paper issued a correction, saying that the number is actually “far less than” 1%.”
It was bad on its own merits, imo. Lots of conflating of disparate terms, chalking up to "erasure" what is simple demographic change. For one thing, glosses over how small ARG's population was when blacks made up 20%, and how huge the immigration boom was https://t.co/mTfhaATAMd
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) December 12, 2022
“Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this piece noted that roughly one percent of the Argentinian population was black according to a 2010 government released census,” the Washington Post’s correction read. “While the number of black people cited was accurate, the percentage was actually far less than one percent, and the piece has been amended to state that.”
The New York Post added that more than 6 million Europeans migrated to Argentina from Italy and Spain throughout the 1800s, setting the demographic shift in motion.
Argentina’s national team will face Croatia in the semifinals on Dec. 13.
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