- When my nephew walks out of the door, I worry for him.
You're not 100% sure whether they're coming home or not.
(light music)
- [Narrator] These accounts are from six Black people
that have experienced racial discrimination
in their respected countries.
How would you describe your upbringing?
- Growing up in America
has been a very complex and interesting relationship.
I'm from Brooklyn, New York, born and raised.
I was born very cultured,
always thought about my roots,
always thought to be proud of myself,
be proud of my skin complexion, be proud of my lineage.
But when you step outside of your house,
the world and society teaches us
a slightly different narrative of what it means to be black.
- Growing up in Japan was interesting,
because from 12 years old to 18 years old,
I lived on Yokota Air Base.
It was a US Air Force Base.
So I went to an American school,
my teachers taught me English, I had American teachers.
We used dollars on base,
we still used gallons and Fahrenheit.
Outside Yokota, right outside the gate,
was the real Japan.
They used Celsius, they used kilometers,
they used Japanese yen for their money.
We had a community, however small it was,
it was a few people who looked like me,
who looked like Americans, you know?
- There is a lot of life in South Africa,
there is a lot of joy, there is a lot of pride
in what is now known as The Rainbow Nation.
But I think that image of The Rainbow Nation
also blindsided people to what's actually happening,
what majority of the country is actually experiencing.
If I'm describing Khayelitsha,
Khayelistha is a township that was created
under apartheid rule.
It is where majority Black,
middle to lower class people live.
And it was what you expect in that area,
there is a lot of complexity
in the beauty you kind of see in this area,
because you see this beautiful area
of vibrancy and people are so grateful for life,
but you also see their situations,
and you also see their realities,
and their lived experiences,
which kind of contrasts this beauty,
and it's sort of that kind of experience.
- [Narrator] Do you think other countries
are aware of the racial inequality
that happens in your country?
- I think people who are outside of Australia,
are acutely aware of the racial inequality.
However, it's not widely reported on,
and so I think people have a very idealized version
of what they know of the country.
- The UK birthed the US,
so to think that UK is not racist is stupid.
We taught the US racism.
I don't wanna say we invented it,
but we definitely perfected it.
We perfected it so much so,
that the people in this country
think that racism doesn't exist.
I think the difference is,
I like to call the US a baby country,
because you know, the US is quite new,
and as a baby country, they're in their toddler phase,
and they're still really loud.
The UK is very mature,
we're the mature old sister that can suppress
and really be vindictive with their own doings.
So as the US's racism is so overt, it's in your face,
ours is like very underlined.
- You know, I think when people think of Canada,
they think that we're so polite,
and we're multi-cultural,
and there couldn't possibly be racism here,
but there's a lot of racism here.
People of color experience it almost everyday.
It needs to be known, something needs to be said about it,
'cause we're always so quiet,
and you know, at this point in time,
I'm doing being polite, I'm done being quiet.
- I look at the township that I live in,
it's about 28 minutes from central Cape Town,
which is the touristy area
with Table Mountain and Waterfront.
So when a tourist is visiting South Africa,
they might choose to go to places like
Robben Island, Table Mountain, Waterfront,
all of the beautiful, Instagram worthy places.
People are living very different lives
from what you are seeing from those Instagram pictures.
An interesting thing is that many children of color
don't get to go to these tourist areas,
even though they're right here in their countries,
just because it's such a luxury.
And so I think as someone
coming in from a different country,
you might choose to not see it,
because you're here for a good time.
- [Narrator] Can you recall an instance
of racial discrimination.
- The first time I felt racism,
I think I was around seven years old.
In our school, I went to an all girls school,
it was basically, you know what it is,
it's the policy that if you're gonna invite
one person to your birthday party
you must invite everybody to your birthday party.
A girl in my class, her birthday party had come around,
she gave everybody invitations for her birthday.
I was like, one of the only black kids
in the class and when it came to me
she was like, "Oh, I'm really sorry,
"I can't give you an invitation,
"because my mom says I can't have any people like you
"at my birthday party."
- I was in elementary,
and there were four little white girls
that tormented me and my sister.
And we used to fight every day.
Every single day, we fought,
because those four girls loved to use that N word,
and you know, I didn't really know
why it was a bad word,
I just knew that it was bad and it used to hurt.
Like, every time that they said, it would hurt my stomach.
- I was working for a company
where there was a racial dispute
and when I brought it up, I was fired.
It made me feel unsafe.
It made me feel as though I couldn't use my voice
in a constructive way.
It made me really depressed.
- I remember being stopped by the police,
'cause I was driving my mother's car,
and they couldn't believe that a young Black man
I guess was driving an Infiniti.
They didn't think it was my car,
they thought I stole it.
And after that instance, which unfortunately,
a lot of Black people go through,
you start to see very skewed perceptions
of what it means to be Black in America.
- The cops stopped me pretty much my entire stay there,
out of the 17 years,
I've been stopped without fail multiple times.
I've been stopped by cops for standing on a corner,
daytime or nighttime.
I've been searched.
My backpack has been searched,
my shoes have been searched,
my underwear's been searched.
You know, and there's no problem protecting your home,
the issue is, why are you stopping me,
when I'm trying to get to my English class
to teach your kids?
- [Narrator] How has the racial protests in the US
affected your country?
- So the protests and everything that you see on TV
with regards to America,
it's really lit a fire under us
to say, hey, it's happening there,
but it's happening here too.
Don't think that just because we live in Canada,
and you know, it's not as blatant,
that it's not still happening.
- When the Black Lives Matter movement
got a lot of attention in terms of the media,
that magnified the issue that police brutality
in South Africa, that has been happening,
and during lockdown, there's been this fear
around the South African Defense Force,
and monitoring townships and other areas like that,
because they tend to be very violent.
The timing was so good.
I mean, it's a bad thing,
but the timing was so good,
because then the two issues sort of combined,
and a lot more attention was now put on it.
And a lot more attention was put to get justice
for many victims in South Africa,
who were hurt or died under the hands of police.
- I'm so proud of the Black community globally,
for really coming together and deciding
in this time of a pandemic,
as if we don't have other things to think about,
but we have come together as a collective and said,
it is enough, we will not stop.
- Unfortunately, this is something that every Black person
in my opinion, experiences in some way, shape, or form.
Whether it's microaggressions, whether it's direct,
whether it's subtle, it's there.
- You can't take off this uniform
and so we stand out worldwide.
- It isn't a lot that we're asking for,
we're just asking to be treated like human beings.
Just give me the same recognition,
the same human rights, as my white neighbor, and that's it.
- If a non-Black person is at a place
where they are willing to look at their own internal biases,
the lived experiences that they hear from,
Black people's own, and the information,
and the education they get from Black people,
becomes easier to understand
and easier to empathize with,
because you are now aware of your non-Black identity.
- I think we have a long way to go,
but I think as long as we're having the conversations,
we're on the right path.
(light music)