Why Am I Made To Feel Lesser In My Country, Switzerland?
Enough is enough, racism and xenophobia will not, cannot prevail
It was a lazy Monday evening in my household. My biracial daughter whom I have often talked about in this blog, was preparing her university applications and I was catching up on my reading. I’d just come back from a 4K run in preparation for our annual Escalade race in Geneva in December and felt relaxed. The dopamine from my run was still playing its magic.
I asked my daughter to go get the mail. When she came back, she had a somber look on her face. Gone was her wide, infectious smile and bubbly laughter. I immediately asked her what was wrong and she showed me the political advertisement featured above. I looked at it, scanning through its xenophobic and racist content before my eyes set on both photos at the top. On the left, there was a crowd of Black people huddled together on the ground, their faces exposed. They looked unkempt, menacing, ready to take over. On the other was a white family — immaculate, innocent, on the Grütli prairie — a place that strongly symbolizes Switzerland — like the Eiffel Tower symbolizes France.
The ad seeks to portray Black people as a threat. They are blamed for all of Switzerland’s problems: increasing crime rates, higher health insurance premiums…
