What Black America Means to Europe
JVL Introduction
Liberals in Europe often console themselves that it is better here than in the States and identify closely with Black Americans and their struggles.
In a riveting essay, Gary Younge interrogates this identification and suggests it gives “a moral confidence that conveniently ignores both [Europe’s] colonial past and its own racist present”.
He draws attention to some of the realities, past and present, and concludes simply that racism is bad everywhere: “There really is no ‘better’ kind.”
[13 June: We have added a short Youtube video by Gary Younge called “Black Lives Matter and the Question of Violence” to this post]
This article was originally published by the New York Review of Books on Sat 6 Jun 2020. Read the original here.
What Black America Means to Europe
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