America is Not Alone: The Racial Injustice Fight Abroad
Growing up as a black dude in America, I spent the first 18 years of my life only seeing and hearing about racial injustice through film and music.
Watching 90’s hood classic films like Menace 2 Society, Boyz ‘n the Hood, Juice, and so many others. Bumping that Tupac, N.W.A., KRS-One, Tribe Called Quest, and the other inspirational rebels of hip hop’s golden age.
Before phone cameras, these were the news reporters of America’s hypocrisies.
Tupac said in the song, Changes:
“I see no changes, all I see is racist faces
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races.
We under, I wonder what it takes to make this
One better place, let’s erase the wasted.
It ain’t a secret, don’t conceal the fact:
The penitentiary’s packed, and it’s filled with blacks.”
As rare as it is, I grew up in a black suburbia, which was right next to all the hoods. Every school I went to until college was 90% black, so I never really understood racism on a personal level.
But because I had the hood reporters, I understood that racism existed before my brain could really understand the societal impacts.
Now that we have these 24 megapixel phone cameras with the ability to report our own news at any time, the whole world can see the racial inequality from the discomfort of our homes.
In America, we’ve seen high-profile murders of black people at the hands of law enforcement officials and privileged citizens. Each killing is a knife in the torso.
Very few get fired, and the ones that do get charged are never convicted. So in the future, police never feel like killing a black person is wrong, because…..the justice system says it isn’t.
That’s what every stage of the criminal justice system has told us through their actions.
That black lives don’t matter.
Racism & europe
Subconsciously, I thought that moving to Europe a year ago would be an escape from that world.
I’m not so naive to think that racism against my people is contained within American borders.
After all, Europe is the founder of racism against Africans.
Just think about it. We think of America as a standalone nation.
But America is just a big ass European colony. They left the UK for liberation. What followed is the definition of hypocrisy.
- Left the UK seeking freedom.
- Committed genocide on the lands’ natives.
- NOT JUST NORTH AMERICA
- North America (Perps: UK, France, Spain)
- South America (Perps: Spain and Portugal)
- Caribbean Islands (Perps: UK, Netherlands, France, Portugal, too many to name)
- NOT JUST NORTH AMERICA
- Collabbed with Europe to kidnap Africans from their land and spread them across all of these recently genocided lands.
- Forced Africans into Slavery.
- Centuries later, raped, looted, and robbed Africa (and many other world regions) through colonialism.
- This rape still goes on today.
Knowing all that, I still thought I was leaving behind racial tension, inequality, and injustice at Raleigh/Durham Airport in North Carolina when flying to the Netherlands.
Silly of me, right?
Here’s an experience of mine that’s all about being black in Switzerland.
netherlands & racism
My first week in the Netherlands office, two of my colleagues (not from Europe) briefly brought up a famous Dutch holiday character named Zwarte Piet!
The English translation for his name is Black Pete!
My co-workers said I wonder what Zack (that’s me) would think of Zwarte Piet, because I’m obviously the only black person within at least 5 square miles of us.
I didn’t know who Piet was, so I asked about him. They didn’t want to discuss it in the office and just said “It’s a Dutch traditional thing that they do. You should just look it up.”
I knew where this was going.
When I got home, I looked up my bro Peter, and found some funky shit.
Apparently Black Pete accompanies St. Nicholas during Christmas time to help him distribute gifts and sweets to the kids during their holiday celebrations.
Pretty much Santa’s little black helper.
Aight that’s cool, You can make of that what you want.
The fucked up part is the way that they portray and represent Zwarte Piet. A Dutch guy dresses up in blackface with bright red lipstick and a curly wig.
It’s the most disturbing visual I’ve seen of a joyous holiday figure.
The kids here are raised to love and adore Zwarte Piet because he dishes out sweets and joy throughout their childhoods. Then some of these kids grow up to paint their faces black during the Sinterklaas holiday in the name of tradition.
It’s become a high-profile controversy here in the Netherlands in recent years. Black people and allies call for the Zwarte Piet portrayals to be ended, while many Dutch people give the figurative shrug of the shoulders and say it must be done in the name of tradition.
On the one hand, I feel ya.
But on my other hand. The one that might smack a fool for talking reckless. Fuck tradition!
In America, the confederates fought the civil war to keep tradition. That tradition being slavery.
Even today all around America, confederate monuments and white supremacist statues are erected in the name of tradition and national pride.
White supremacy around the world is a tradition that so many work tirelessly to conserve.
All of the traditions that bring joy to one group at the expense of others could disappear without a peep, and the world would be a better place.
Zwarte Piet is in that same category of tradition.
But I digress.
blm protest
The Black Lives Matter protest in the Netherlands opened my eyes to a new world. If I thought hard enough about it, I coulda assumed that black people face the same plights in Europe that we do in America. But I didn’t.
Seeing the passion, pain, and demon slayin’ at the protest by people of all races showed me that racial inequality cuts just as deeply on the eastern side of the Atlantic as it does in America.
It’s more highly-publicized, and may occur more frequently in America. And America’s racial history is much uglier.
The interesting thing is many of the black people in Europe are directly linked to Africa. They know what country their ancestors are from. They know whether they have Somalian or Ghanain blood running through their veins.
Many Afro-Europeans moved from Africa to Europe in their own lifetime. That’s a far cry from African-Americans who’ve been in the USA for centuries and have had their heritage and history intentionally erased.
Black Americans can’t experiment with family trees. Even worse, black Americans are filled with the same images of their homeland as all of the white Americans and view the continent in the same way.
If you ask a black American their top 5 travel destinations that they want to visit, I put money down that an African country isn’t on that list.
Obviously every black American isn’t the same and views the world differently; I’m making a generalization. But I don’t need to generalize for you to know that all our lives, African nations have been portrayed as, in Donald Trump’s words, shithole countries.
Black Americans were robbed of any connection to their motherland.
Black Europeans, on the flipside, took the Euro-shaft from another angle.
They know what African country they’re from. But they also know that their country was colonized by a European nation. They know their country’s national language is French, Dutch, English, or Portuguese.
Although their country has a rich history of incredible civilizations, culture, and stability. Much of that was taken from them during colonialism in the past century, and they also know that.
The political instability caused by colonialism created an avenue for corrupt officials and murderous military regimes to take control of African countries once the Europeans left.
If you have a hard time understanding how steady African civilizations can be converted into unstable and corrupt nations over a few decades time… picture this.
Africa has mostly stable and successful civilizations. Europeans draw lines on the map of Africa and say “Great Britain takes this area and we’ll call it South Africa.
France you take this area and we’ll call it…hmmm, what can we steal from them? Ivory? And it’s on the coast? Just peachy, we’ll call it the Ivory Coast.
These lines are drawn with no basis. They combine dozens or hundreds of tribes and civilizations with their own cultures that were happy to be separate, into one nation.
The Europeans arrive and use their advanced technology (guns) to assume control over the country through murder, chemical warfare, and theft.
Dozens of years later, the European government leaves the African country, and hands the keys over to a military regime or the officials that come forward with the most force.
The only condition: Make sure we can still rob the land of all of its resources and you can do what you want with the people and money.
Either that or they don’t hand the keys over at all. They just allow a free-for-all of regimes from different tribes to fight for power. So many civil wars occurred because of this. Millions of lives lost and displaced for nothing.
In 2020, unstable and corrupt African societies with struggling economies can be directly traced back to colonialism.
Afro-Europeans know that their families moved to Europe for better opportunities that can’t be found in Africa, because of the instability that Europeans caused.
That’s a cruel mind-fuck of a reality.
global racism today
The parallels between the socioeconomic conditions of Afro-Europeans and Afro-Americans today are uncanny, although they got to this point in different ways.
Black people in both continents are generally concentrated in lower-income regions of their respective cities.
In America, black people were enslaved for hundreds of years. Once freed, there were laws put in place along with systemic racism to keep them from obtaining generational wealth.
In Europe, black people were raped of their land and resources in Africa very recently and just started making their way to Europe for better opportunities.
It’s extremely difficult to obtain generational wealth within one or two generations of living in Europe, especially with the social systems already in place.
At the Black Lives Matter protest in the Netherlands, I learned that black people are racially profiled in Europe, as well.
Black people in Europe are more likely to be harassed by the police than white people. They face a lot of the same racial injustices at the hands of law enforcement.
Many of these issues start at the social and political level and there are two levels to attacking this issue.
The first level is at the ground floor. The people marching in the streets and teaching people about the racism that takes place daily.
That’s currently being done around the world, especially in America.
The second level is filled with powerful people and organizations wanting to back up the struggle by putting their names and their money behind the changes that are required.
The top floor is taken up by the political powers that be. They need to recognize the injustices taking place, listen to the ground floor about the changes that need to be made, and execute those changes.
conclusion
Although we grew up in different places, all black people are much more African than we are American, European, or any other continent-ean.
The world is finally noticing it as we fight for equality in nearly every country around the globe.
One of the most important next steps in our future is to bridge the gap between black people all over the world.
There’s a serious disconnect caused by many reasons that I talked about in my post about the relationship between Black Americans and Africans.
The racial injustice fight will continue around the globe and it’s up to us to create actual change with that momentum. Just as important, we have to realize that we’re not alone in this fight.
Black Lives Matter protests have been demonstrated in over 60 countries and in every continent aside from Antarctica….we don’t do the cold.
Wherever you are in the world, you’re not alone in this fight and we’ll take it all the way home together and link up in the Motherland. See ya there!
Ya boi,
Zekarias
