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My views on race and racism are informed by the experience I had as a Black youth growing up in contemporary Europe. Where racism continues to plague European societies, complicating the burdens and difficulties of Black life and experience. Many of us experience everyday racism such as racial profiling and microaggressions. Indeed, no Black person is exempt or immune from racism, so we all should express our own need for racial healing. Imagine being a 14-year-old Black teen hanging out with your friend. On a hot summer day, you and your friend enter a store just to maybe buy some soda and some snacks.
You have money in your pocket for the purchase, however, upon entering a store, you and your friend, who also happens to be Black, are followed from aisle to aisle by a White store clerk, who because of her own racism, has stereotyped you and your friend as being thieves and unsafe for being in her store. Once you realise what is going on, you put back your purchase and leave the store. Unfortunately, this story is not fictional. This was my reality as a 14-year-old; it was perhaps one of the first times in my life that I realised that the world was not always a safe place for Black kids like me. I remember feeling hurt, humiliated, frustrated, confused and angered by the situation.
I remember leaving the store and telling my mother about the experience and her trying to explain racism to me and how to handle these situations. And as I got older, this positive racial socialisation was normalised in our home. My parents knew they had to protect their children from a world that was quick to treat them as inferior. This impacted me so much to the point that now as an adult and decades later I still remember that hurt. For me, this experience represents an encounter with racism that shifted race out of the background and pushed me into positive racial identity development. I was for the first time forced to reckon with the impact racism would have in my life. |
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Published on 10.07.2026 at 11:54 
