Culture
Black Lives Matter Protests
“We all watched in horror and consternations what is going on in the United States. It is a time to pull people together. But it is a time to learn what injustices continue despite progress over years and decades,” comments the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in response to the violence toward protesters following the killing of African American George Floyd.
Painting of George Floyd – credit Malak Mattar
Could something similar happen in Switzerland? How does it feel to be Black in Switzerland? How is the Black community treated?
Vivamost talked to an African American/Swiss man living in Swiss Romandie to have a feeling of how it is to be born Black and to live in Switzerland.
Cyrille says luckily he is privileged with an University degree, with competence and no African accent. But when some of his clients meet him and hear him talk they are shocked. They were expecting something else from a Black man. He continues and says that in Switzerland when people see coloured people they are most often scared and want to show they are superior. He feels sometimes he is treated as a woman would be.
Photo by munshots on Unsplash
Racism is very present. People are judged by their colour. Black have no value, he adds. In Switzerland racial profiling is accompanied by large automatic a priories. Right away people think you may be a dealer, lazy or inferior.
Finding an executive position in a Swiss institution as a Black person is almost impossible.
“I have a dream that one day (Yes) this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” said Martin Luther King.
It is as almost 60 years after his speech delivered in Washington during a march protesting for more jobs and freedom, a lot more work still needs to be done for equality.
Once Cyrille had a flat tire on the highway and the police didn´t stop to ask him if he needed help but to ask him his car papers! He found that totally aberrant.
Cyrille says that here problems with the police can´t be compared with those in the USA. And here the cases are less documented.
In the USA, racial profiling is integrated into the fear of the black man and the police tend to draw faster. In Switzerland, this profiling results in more checks but there is no fear of dying and the need to constantly protect yourself with phones or filming. It makes a big difference.
Most pedestrians would not stop but continue their ways if something like in Minneapolis would happen, he adds.
Is Cyrille for violence? What does he think of the lootings happening in America?
No, he is totally against violence and looting. But “at some point it gets really dumb to look at the consequences and focus on that while ignoring the root causes and the chain of events to got people to riot against a system that is doing everything but to protect them,” he continues.
What is sure he shares at last is that for the young generation like his teenage son, things are much easier. Nowadays there are more mixed couples and young people between them don´t act racist as during his time.
“If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up its highest ideals, we can and must be better,” says former US President Barack Obama. The killing of an unarmed Black man by a police force “shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America:”
