COLLECTION 01.1 // Social Rejections
“This part talks about racism, discrimination and harassment. This is about how so many of the people here are treating you and how that makes you feel like you should avoid some parts of the city or that you should not trust them. Like if they treat you like you don’t belong to their part of the world.
It is people in the street staring at you when you walk and it makes you feel uncomfortable or it makes you feel like you are not safe.
It is people telling you racist things, and they insult you.
It is people treating you like you are dirty or they are treating you like you are not intelligent.
And if Europeans look down on you all the time and they do not treat you like a human being. They do not want to mingle with you.
Maybe it is people acting like they do not see you - they ignore you - and they do not hear you when you talk to them.
It can be the bus driver who will not stop the bus for you.
Maybe it is white women acting like they are scared of you and when they see you walking at night, they run away from you because of your skin color.
It can be if you are in a shop and the owner of the shop is watching you because he acts like you are a criminal. Or the shop owner makes you leave the shop and the security following you because they think you are going to steal something and they makes you leave.
Or it is people who will use you. If they lie to you and try to cheat you. At the workplace and in many more places like in social situations. ”
It is people in the street staring at you when you walk and it makes you feel uncomfortable or it makes you feel like you are not safe.
It is people telling you racist things, and they insult you.
It is people treating you like you are dirty or they are treating you like you are not intelligent.
And if Europeans look down on you all the time and they do not treat you like a human being. They do not want to mingle with you.
Maybe it is people acting like they do not see you - they ignore you - and they do not hear you when you talk to them.
It can be the bus driver who will not stop the bus for you.
It can also be situations where people are treating you like a criminal.
Maybe it is white women acting like they are scared of you and when they see you walking at night, they run away from you because of your skin color.
It can be if you are in a shop and the owner of the shop is watching you because he acts like you are a criminal. Or the shop owner makes you leave the shop and the security following you because they think you are going to steal something and they makes you leave.
Or it is people who will use you. If they lie to you and try to cheat you. At the workplace and in many more places like in social situations. ”
Edited by F.S. & E.C.
REF. A.I_01.1_AUG19
DATE:
Summer 2019
AUTHOR:
L.S., Age 31, Fula, from Mali
PLACE RECORDED:
Tiburtina, Rome IT
“They do not wait for me to cross the street. If the Italian driver in a car sees a black man crossing the street, the driver will speed up. And the bus driver in Italy, he doesn’t stop for the black man. He keeps going when he sees the black man waiting at the bus stop.”
REF. A.I_01.1_AUG19
DATE:
Summer 2019
AUTHOR:
M.S., Age 26, Mandinka, from The Gambia
PLACE RECORDED:
Tiburtina, Rome IT
“How can you talk if the people run away? They look at us and think the black man will steal something from them. They treat us like criminals. Like they are scared. I don’t want to go to the city center because of that. I just want to sit here.”
REF. A.I_01.1_FEB20
DATE:
Winter 2020
AUTHOR:
K.G., Age 31, Soninke, from Mali
PLACE RECORDED:
Colosseo, Rome IT
“When I am walking in the street one night, I am walking with a friend, a white woman, and someone leans out of his car and screams at us: ‘che schifo!’ because we are walking together...
This means in Italian: ‘how disgusting.’”
REF. C.IV_01.1_MAY21
DATE:
Spring 2021
AUTHOR:
M., Age 23, Mandinka, from Sierra Leone
PLACE RECORDED:
Moguer, Huelva ES
“How they look at you, their faces already say many things. You can feel that they don’t want you here. When they are staring at you, and you give them greetings, they immediately throw their faces away with no response. They don’t even want to associate with you. We are always bombarded with discrimination in public gathering, at work, and even where we are living.”