A month on from the killing of George Floyd – an innocent Black man – at the hands of police in Minneapolis, USA, conversations about racial inequality have risen to a crescendo in America. Persisting protests are laying bare grievances that are centuries old and the events’ impact is rippling out to other parts of the world. With statues and legacies of historical and political figures associated with racism being torn down from the US to the UK to Belgium, prevailing narratives of history are being revisited and challenged. Meanwhile, conversations around race and racial justice have reached some dining rooms and social media communities in Egypt, where other communities frequently experience varied forms of racism. Refugees – particularly Black refugees from Sudan, Eritrea, or sub-Saharan Africa are often subjected to discriminatory behaviour. Racial slurs are casually and frequently used to taunt or simply to describe. As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, Egypt also witnessed incidents of racist behaviour toward immigrants from various east Asian countries, particularly China. Despite this, little is publicly known about the history of racism in Egypt. An explanation for this might lie in historian Amina Elbendary’s…
