To give you a better understanding of why I think current trends in diversity are set to exploit our blackness, hence failing over time; I look at how we, the black Africans, have long been an excluded group in European societies, and now, suddenly all is about diversity and inclusion? Often youth organisations, youth workers in this city address sexual, gender, and racial discrimination by putting emphasis on having young Africans or gender minorities as faces of their activism; as a symbolic gesture toward diversity, equity, and inclusivity.

I understood this later of course! I started speaking out about racism without in-depth knowledge, doing everything to avoid talking about, confronting my experience; the result of suffering from internalised racism and discrimination since teenyears. Soon I was discovered, recruited by this youth organisation, becoming a symbol of everything anti-racism in the name of all marginalised voices of all black Africans, yet among staff there is not any person with an African background. On the surface, it looks like they are taking meaningful actions against systemic racial discrimination, but underneath, their anti-racism work is a way to fame, grants; racial diversity became a commodity.

It is wrong to assume that simply because someone identifies as black they are qualified in doing anti-racism work toward equity, diversity, inclusion. I was tasked to educate others about pains, effects of systemic racial discrimination, something that I am not yet able to fully grasp, which evrytime increased the emotional burden for me; asked to relive my own unacknowledged fear, pains over and over again. None was thoughtful in ensuring psychological safety for us young black Africans engaged in this kind of anti-racism activism because the organisers are not able to relate to our struggles; making us feel confused, frustrated, and more trapped by our unspoken fears, pains, experiences, which over time leave fragments of feelings of helplessness and depersonalisation.