#BlackOutTuesday: the hashtag against racial discrimination
"If you remain neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" - Desmond Tutu.
This is one of the phrases circulating the most on social media these days, after the death by asphyxiation of George Floyd, the 46-year-old African American who died last May 25 after police officer Derek Chauvin blocked him on the ground. , pressing the knee to his neck for more than 8 minutes.
In the United States, racial profiling is dying
The video that incriminates the policeman went around the world and the words spoken with difficulty by Floyd, "I can't breathe" (I can't breathe), became the desperate scream with which the African American community (and not only !) calls for justice for all black people who are victims, in the true sense of the word, of racial profiling. This expression refers to the behavioral analysis conducted by the authorities for investigative purposes that targets foreign people. At the base of this practice are racial prejudices deeply rooted in society and, in particular, among some representatives of the police who, guilty of abuse of power, exploit their position to target certain people chosen according to criteria such as skin color and ethnicity.
In the United States, people die from racial profiling and George Floyd is just the latest in a long list of names. Suffice it to say that since January 1, 2015, 1252 blacks have been hit and killed by the police. Giving a voice to the innocent victims of this institutionally racist system and their families is the Black Lives Matter movement, (Black Lives Matter), born in 2013 with the aim of "To eradicate the supremacy of whites and build local powers to intervene against the violence inflicted on blacks by the state and the vigilantes".
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What is #BlackOutTuesday
It is in the wake of Black Lives Matter that yesterday, June 2, 2020, Instagram was invaded by black images accompanied by the hashtag #BlackOutTuesday. Thus the protests that are "inflaming" the US cities and have spread like wildfire until reaching, in a short time, even the European capitals, have landed on the social network to raise awareness of the collective conscience on the drama of racial violence and make (aware) information on the subject.
The initiative originally started from the idea of Jamila Thomas, executive of the Atlantic Records record label, and Brianna Agyemang, his former colleague, who last Friday proposed to temporarily suspend the publication of new content so as not to divert attention from this. that is happening in the United States and show full solidarity with those who took to the streets to demand justice and fairer treatment from authorities and institutions towards people of color.
Racism must be combated every day
Immediately after the tragic event, Will Smith shared on his social channels a sentence on which it would be appropriate to stop and reflect: "Racism is not getting worse. It's getting filmed " (the racism is not getting worse. It is being filmed). A "statement with which the actor intends to underline how much this feeling is a constant never fully eradicated and that the only difference with the past is that today it is" easier "to record the episodes of which one is victim / witness in order to be able to report them.
So when we think about racial persecution and discrimination, we don't need to go back to World War II or apartheid in South Africa. Racism is a virus that continues to claim victims daily, before our eyes, now more than ever with the advent of social media: let's make sure that there are no other George to cry and, in our own small way, let's commit ourselves to not only be against racism but actively anti-racist.
