Be informed:
Hearing Peace

When you are googling the word racism, you will get the following definition first:

“1. A doctrine, theory (constructed, often with an ideological character for justification racial abuse, colonialism or the like,) by which people or population groups with certain biological features regarding their cultural capacity have advantages over or are inferior to others by nature.”

If you are searching for the reason of this, you will come across colonialism in Africa and South America, upon millions of Africans had been enslaved because of exploitation of natural resources in the conquered territories. The European powers had the feeling of white supremacy which was also to be reinforced by science of the 19^th century. Even though this racism has been disproved scientifically in the meantime, it still plays an important role for many people in their daily routine.

Black Lives Matter

If you look at the events since May 2020, the term “Black Lives Matter” will catch your eye in particular. This international movement which was founded in 2013 and fights against violence towards black people and people of colour, achieved a big upturn after the 46 years old Afro-American George Perry Floyd has been killed by a violent arrest on 25^th May. This incident is like the straw that broke the camel’s back because in the USA there was much frightening police brutality towards black people before. Demonstrations and protests under the slogan “I can’t breathe” were following, but not only in the USA.

The fight against racism is far from over.

The meaning of the “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation” gained in importance during these events all over Europe and played a big role on social media platforms and in the media of many countries. The attention and backing brought along a lot of support internationally. In January 2021 the civil rights movement received the Swedish Olof-Palme-Prize for making known the hardships and the rage of the Afro-American minority not to be viewed with the same dignity and not with the same rights like people with other skin colours. Co-founder Patrisse Cullors said: “Black Lives Matter” is a movement for all Blacks worldwide and the work is far from over.

The movement which has been started on social media platforms has already accomplished a feeling of understanding and community, thus a big step into the right direction.

I am in luck not to have to fight with this kind of racism personally.

I don’t have to listen to what others say about me unasked and I don’t experienced violence never before. But it concerned me very much as the first news about George Floyd appeared in the media. I wouldn’t like to say that I didn’t know about the brutality which dominates in many countries, but I wasn’t aware of the impacts of it before.

Together we can make it

Besides the awful crimes which where brought up, the social media platforms had also something else to offer: An exchange in the comments of affected people and the supposed “uninvolved”, in different languages and ways but always with the same thought.

I know that there are still a lot of people out there who think too much of themselves and don’t see the injustice but in the comments I have realised that there are also a lot of people who are sharing my view:

Human being is human being and racism something absurd and without any reason for the sophisticated human being what has no place in this world anymore.

Johanna V.

https://www.bpb.de/mediathek/178985/die-entstehung-des-rassismushttps://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/black-lives-matter-friedensnobelpreis-vorschlag-100.html