One of the reasons that La Nacion is the premier newspaper in Costa Rica is that their staff and management, in the past 30 years, refuses to avoid taboo topics. This week, the paper ran five stories meeting the topic of racism head on without blushing.

Reporter Allan Andino hung the stories on the news peg of U.S. television star Oprah Winfrey speaking out about a racial stereotype she encountered last August 13th in a Swiss store where she was told by a salesgirl that she’d best forget buying the item she was looking at because it was “too expensive.”

The laughable part is that media mogul Oprah, who among other things, owns her own TV cable network, could have whipped out her checkbook and bought the store and its inventory. But Oprah is a bigger person than that and bears no ill will toward the employee or the store.

She was merely making a point that racism is not obsolete and that racial stereotypes abound. Reporter Andino was out to indicate that, although racism may be less in Costa Rica, it still hangs on like a bad case of the flu. By interviewing four prominent blacks, all eloquent on the subject, he showed that, in this country, racism isn’t dead.

Racism in the form of segregation persisted in this country before 1948. Descendants of the Caribbean blacks who helped build the railroad from Limon to the capital were forbidden to enter the Central Valley and had to leave the train at Turrialba.

It was the iconic liberal President Jose “Don Pepe” Figueres who decreed that this segregation was to end immediately. That was the first true blow against racism and since then even women blacks like former lawmaker Epsy Campbell have entered the political arena with success.

But racial slurs do continue among the ignorant here, even those who swear they harbor no racial prejudice. The adept goalie for Alajuela and the national All Star soccer team Patrick Pemberton received two responses in his Facebook page that Andino’s report called “grotesque commentaries” and felt compelled to reply.

Worse was the experience of a colleague, Waylon Francis of the Heredia team, when racist slurs from the stands directed against him caused a brief suspension of an Heredia-Cartago match. Pemberton put it all in perspective: “It’s a reality we can’t escape. It exists still in a small percentage of persons who have this mentality and we have to try to eradicate it.

“It hasn’t been in grand scale as we see in the United States and some parts of Europe, but yes, there’s a small number in whom we have to create a consciousness so it won’t continue to recur,” says the sport star. But he has received support not only from Alajuela fans but those of other clubs.

But Pemberton isn’t the only star to have received social slurs. Singer Sasha Campbell on the morning Channel 7 TV show Buen Dia has also received her share. She feels that racism (except perhaps in the soccer stands) is ignored by those who haven’t felt it, like the person who asked her in Facebook “why blacks are always charging racism.”

Campbell says, “I took the time to reply that one shouldn’t comment about discrimination when one hasn’t lived it, it’s easy for some to say there isn’t racism since they don’t know what it is.”

It was Facebook that gave her a taste of racism when she posed with the Mexican comedian Adal Ramones on Facebook during his visit to this country. One comment posted under the photo (where she sported a red blouse) read, “And the monkey in red? Is that Adal’s pet?”

She says it’s total rubbish to pass it off as merely ignorance. Those “inoffensive” jokes, sayings, attitudes, looks and commentaries are neither superficial nor unimportant, she maintains. “The problem is that people swear that they didn’t give (offense), that it’s not racism but something else,” she says.

Racial stereotypes, she says, is what the people in Limon live every day: “(They say) no one goes to Limon because it’s violent — as if San Jose isn’t violent,” she scoffs.

Radio announcer Mario McGregor of Columbia radio’s Deportes Columbia 98.7 FM has also experienced rebuffs. He told Andino that when he goes to places in Central America where there are few blacks he receives odd looks but his own native land is where he gets blasted by racism.

Some of it is subtle such as when a sales person in a supermarket is handing out free samples, he says. “When a person of color passes they don’t offer the product but when a white person does, they call out to him.” The veteran sports announcer known as “double M” says his children feel it, too.

He says his children find employment a problem. “Like many parents, I’ve invested in their education and none of my kids, professionals, have managed to get jobs in their specialty.” He asks, “In what are black kids supposed to work? In a call center and nothing more?”

He, like Campbell, believes that many racists don’t really realize they are. “The guy who is a racist says he isn’t, that it’s simply a complex of the persons he is hurting. The same thing happens with Nicaraguans.” He says that even in sports, the black player gets criticized for his behavior, like soccer star Froylan Ledezma when many more white players are “crazier.”

Professional female boxer Hannah Gabriels says that her experiences in childhood convinced her that when she defended herself, racism turned into bullying. Although she remembers a hotel in Mexico where she endured racism with her fiance, it is in Alajuela where her step-daughter goes to school that rankles most.

Gabriels says that her step-daughter receives so much bullying for being a black that she prefers sitting in the library to mixing with other kids. But she would rather see a dialogue than racism swept under the rug. “As long as we don’t admit it, we won’t correct it,” she says, “It’s a question of admitting that racial discrimination exists and then correct it.”

Remember in the 1970s that a Peace Corps black volunteer from Los Angeles, California, encountered almost the first racism she ever experienced — in Escazu, where she was looking for an apartment. Twice she was told, “Sorry, no blacks.”

She was astounded. Costa Rica had (and has) the reputation of being a friendly, tolerant society. But, if this country faces the hidden enemy of racism, it is closer to eradicating it than, say, some places in the U.S. Talking to kids in school would be a good starting point.