ENAR Steering Group on Afrophobia- Code Orange
On Friday April 10th about 20 people gathered in Brussels, Belgium. We were from all over Europe: Hungary, Slovenia, Germany, Ireland, London, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Belgium and Denmark and we came together to move towards a EU framework for national strategies to combat Afrophobia and promote the inclusion of people of African descent and Black Europeans. Afrophobia (a term that rightfully warrants a thorough discussion on the merits of using such a term in the first place) attempts to put a name to a force that many people of African descent have all too commonly had to face around the world: of living within an oppressive sometimes subliminally, sometimes more openly, racist society. The failure of many to see the direct relationship between the way in which the policy of racism privileges a certain group and disenfranchises many others is strange to me. What is startling is that anti-Black racism as a phenomenon per se is not even officially recognized...