MA students from the International Institute of Social Studies` (ISS) Black Community stood up together and drafted a solidarity message to support the movement Black Lives Matter.
Who are we?
Day by day I keep asking this question as reasons fly out the window when I see the monstrosity perpetrated against each other. Today it is racism, tomorrow it is gender inequality, ethnicity bias, Religious conflict, everyday it’s a constant struggle over one divide or the other.
Now, we live in constant fear of the people around us not knowing who will snap next and reveal a side we never believed existed. It’s sad to teach our young kids the rudiments of survival as a black kid robbing them of the innocence of just being a child. Why should we apologize or made to feel bad for being born the way we are? Why does skin color matter?
Even though the message has been sang a million times, we will not stop singing this mantra!!! Yes all lives matter but Black Lives Matter!!! Stop killing us.
It’s time we unlearn the myths and echoes of colonization which has driven us here. The dictates of who belongs and who doesn’t, end the segregation in race, gender, religion, ethnicity and all the divide… it is tearing us apart. If we are stripped of all the privileges and titles, all that will be left is our humanity.
We were first humans before anything. The way we produce knowledge needs to change. The new knowledge should be value and respect for one another. Humanity first. Let us give our future a better chance to actually live without these fears. Let`s end racism, gender inequalities, let`s end it now.
As Frantz Fanon said, “We protest, because we can no longer breathe”.
#BlackLivesMatter in The Hague
ISS` MA students joined a demonstration in the Malieveld, The Hague, in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement
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