When I was 17, I dated a White guy. Before me, he had dated an Asian girl. Whenever we’d argue, he would tell me I had too much of a strong character. He would say I was too outspoken, too forceful, too loud. During our heated discussions, at one point or another, he would always say:

“Why can’t you be meeker, more docile, more soft-charactered, just like an Asian girl”.

I was young and just developing my identity. He made me feel so self-aware and for years well after we broke up, I tried to become a meek, subservient, and…

How stereotypes about the sexual prowess of black girls dehumanize and hurt us

“I hear that black women are good in bed”.

I must have heard that comment at least a thousand times in my life. I’m a black woman and I grew up in Switzerland. When I moved here, I was 9 years old. The first time a white man said those words to me, I was only 13.

I had been sent to buy hair products at Africana — the only black beauty store in the whole city of Geneva at the time. It was located at the…

And you’d be surprised by what people can say

Long before the term microaggressions came into common discourse, black and brown people have been navigating the emotional distress and hurt that these aggressions cause on a daily basis.

According to Wikipedia: Microaggressions are defined as brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups.

Here are some of the worst ones I’ve heard and the context in which they were said:

1. “You are not like other black people, you’re intelligent, you’re more articulate”.

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Sometimes I have this uncomfortable feeling that extreme rights groups are radicalizing young white boys and men at a lightning-speed pace. While there might have been some doubt as to whether online radicalization is even possible, past domestic and international terrorism acts have shown that it is effective in driving people to commit some of the most heinous crimes.

So while alt-right groups are radicalizing, we have the responsibility to counter this by flooding virtual and real spaces with antiracism. …

We’ll soon get to see which companies are serious about diversity and inclusion and which are not

Fortune magazine announced last October that in 2021, it would publish a list of the most racially progressive companies in America. With its partner, Refinitiv, Fortune aims to make corporate diversity disclosure the new standard of doing business. To that, I say: Hallelujah, finally.

It’s the first time ever that a publication will shed light on this often hidden but vital piece of information, about the racial composition of corporations, and I for one, am excited to finally see if corporate commitments around…

I have a lot of friends like you. They tell me that they don’t see color, that they are nonracists. I am, however, the only black friend they have. Their kids are only exposed to one black person: me. I can tell you for a fact that you are not doing everything that you should do to make your child or children nonracists or even better, antiracists.

You need to know that you can’t outsource that education either. Don’t send them to an international school and assume that it is there that they will learn to be nonracist or antiracist…

It was the Summer of 1989, I had graduated from school the year before and I was in college. I was studying marketing and communications. To successfully pass into my second year, I needed to complete a two-month internship in an organization. Part of the learning was to be able to position oneself as an attractive talent to an organization despite not having any professional experience.

My fellow white classmates had parents with a lot of connections and as such, they found well-paid internships quite easily. It wasn’t that easy for me, I went through the phone book, identifying and…

It’s the only way we can get to a world without racism

I write about racism from my perspective. I am a black woman, so I write about how it feels to be a victim of racism. I suspect that some of my white readers are a little voyeuristic and enjoy reading about the painful situations I encounter. In the space of an article, they get to walk in my shoes for 4 minutes and then can return to the safety and comfort of their white lives. Some other white readers have the courage to comment. They tell me how…