We fill our mouths to deny being racist, but in the European Parliament there are only 3% of non-white deputies even though they represent 10% of the European population. And at the UN, we hear the Global South’s complaint against the North’s neglect. Future stability requires change now.
Having racialized friends reduces racism among young people, but parents have more influence
Two alarms are going off this week. They are eloquent if you think about it. On the one hand, a report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reveals that the non-white European population experiences growing disaffection with an EU that does not represent them (which is also happening to young people) and, on the other hand, the United Nations General Assembly in New York is a continuous denunciation on the part of the leaders of the South against the contempt of the circle of great powers, led by this North which presents itself as “the West, beacon of civilization.”
Non-white European youth’s impression of contempt for European policy is supported by the data. The European Parliament that we elected on June 9 has only 3 percent non-white MEPs while this population is 10 percent continental. Worse still, the recently renewed European Commission chaired by Von der Leyen does not have a single non-white commissioner. In proportional logic, almost 3 would correspond to it. But what can we expect from a Commission that is even regressing in terms of gender parity?
At the global level, it is clear these days at the UN that the North, which demonstrates economic, industrial and military, scientific and intellectual power, is not stopping the live-broadcast genocide of the Palestinians, now of the Lebanese, by an Israel that violates international laws and human rights with impunity. Even the West cannot prevent the suicidal destruction of the planet. Nor does it revive democracy in the face of the voracious rise of the neo-fascist. Despite this, with ridiculous arrogance, with obvious white supremacism, irritating and intolerable for the vast majority with broad-spectrum skin, the powers that be who openly or surreptitiously identify themselves as “Western, white, Christian” cling to deciding for all.
Science proves that knowing
Under the two alarms, I was preparing to present in Seville Consciousness explained by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal by Millás and Arsuaga, a book where, at one point, they refer to an experiment in which the novelist’s head is covered with electrodes to map his brain activity. It is a test of self-discovery that reveals the non-existence of an armored boundary between our “self” and the world, but rather that parents and friends are part of the self. Scientific proof of what we all know intuitively: that we do not suffer from the illness or death of a friend or family member with whom we laugh and cry in the same way as that of the anonymous member of a “contingent” of people rescued from boats. or shipwrecked people.
In this case, why not create an AfroErasmus? Arsuaga said this Wednesday at the public library of Seville that the Erasmus exchange program for university students “is the best thing that happened to Europe” and I agree because I always thought that living in a another country, immerse yourself in its reality, its collegiality The romances, loves and children born of Erasmus have built Europe more than summits and treaties.
The experiences cited in Millás and Arsuaga’s latest book prove that there is no armored boundary between the self and the world, but rather that friends and relatives are part of the self. Which encourages us to create, in the face of the strategy of neofascist hatred, student exchange programs between Europe and Africa.
What, if not old and harmful racist prejudices, prevents Spain from considering promoting a project of enriching exchanges with the nearest continent? How can we perpetuate the demonic visa restriction that hinders the connection of ideas, as feminist anthropologist and Moroccan professor of social sciences and governance Hayat Zirari also testified this week in Seville?
Innovate against defeatism…
Many will say – or you will say – that my AfroErasmus is impossible. You will review, mentally or in comments, the reasons which prevent it. I leave aside for the moment the imperative that the name of the program be agreed with Africa. Perhaps it could be the program of Herodotus if we both recognize the Greek historian as the threshold of encounter, or the program of Cheik Anta Diop or Aimé Césaire or Fátima al-Fihri, the Tunisian Muslim emigrant who, in 859, founded the oldest university still in operation. in Morocco in the world.
Is creating an AfroErasmus more difficult than reforming the UN Security Council as President Sánchez has just proposed? Let’s open our minds and launch bold projects to emerge from the abyss into which we are pushed and build a future in coexistence.
But didn’t our president, Pedro Sánchez, and that of the European Council, the Belgian Charles Michel, defend this week that the UN Security Council be reformed so that its 5 permanent members (United States, Russia , China, Great Britain and France) don’t they always paralyze everything with their right of veto? Is AfroErasmus going to be more difficult?
Proposals like this are ambitious, complex and challenging. Of course, I don’t deny it. But without daring to leave the imposed frameworks, without designing projects to strengthen democracies and move forward together on a path of respect and kindness, we already know the dark panorama that we, individuals and species, are faced with.
…Or resign yourself to disaster
The current inertia seems fatal: with socialist Chancellor Olaf Scholz boycotting the Schengen Treaty on free European mobility by assuming the “anti-migrant” façade and closing German borders, with British Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer paying tribute to the “anti-immigration” policy of Italian neo-fascist President Giorgia Meloni – with whom President Sánchez also demonstrated anti-immigration harmony in 2023 -, and the PSOE and the Sumar government consenting to the expulsion of activists Sahrawis of Barajas and the neo-fascist – the slavery of African day laborers in our fields.
The fish in our supermarkets comes from Senegal and is fished with trawls, which depletes the sea and forces Senegalese fishermen to emigrate.
Either we continue with helplessness on our backs until it beats us, or we roll up our sleeves and work for measures that are worth it in the short, medium and long term. Starting for example at the citizen level with initiatives such as the fraternization doll with Malian, Senegalese and Mauritanian immigrants organized by a town in Lugo. And at the institutional level, approve once and for all the regularization in Congress of half a million immigrants who work like the best and do not pay taxes because we do not let them.
I see meaning in AfroErasmus. On the other hand, do not close yourself to immigration, while transport employers are already asking to mobilize the army because we are missing 14,000 bus and truck drivers. Of course, it also makes my head explode to learn that while we send money and weapons to Ukraine, it is assumed that to help it against the Russian invasion we accept – according to data from the Navy – to increase the passage of warships by 50 percent. and Russian submarines across the Strait of Gibraltar to bombard it. All because Turkey imposed controls in the Black Sea instead.
