Like most 21st century political and social movements, Black Lives Matter started with a humble hashtag in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a Black American teen. The movement then burst onto America’s national media narrative in 2013 following the murder of yet another Black man at the hands of the police in Ferguson, Missouri. The Michael Brown shooting and the outrage it prompted from the African American community helped propel the Black Lives Matter movement to the mainstream. Fast forward to 2020 and Black American men and women still face the same racially-motivated, and often lethal, police brutality that have come to define the racial schism of American life. With the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, following the blood-curdling killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, a global solidarity movement is shifting the narrative on race and forcing societies across the world to reckon with their own racism. The MENA region is no different. In addition to the troubling history of the Arab Slave Trade—which remains largely unacknowledged as a historic injustice, Muslim, North African and Arab communities everywhere have to make…
5 Afro-Arab Female Voices to Center and Amplify in the Fight Against Anti-Black Racism
June 10, 2020
