Thread by @monaeltahawy

Soon after I moved to #NYC in 2002, I began a relationship with a Black man. We lived together for 3yrs. Very soon after we became a couple, I insisted we boycott Arab (Yemeni, I believe) owned stores in our neighbourhood because of their anti-Black racism.

#BlackLivesMatter

The men behind the counter in those stores didn’t know I speak Arabic. And when Marcus and I would go in together, they would say the most disgusting racist shit about Black men and why I was with a Black man. I confronted them. Shamed them. And boycotted them. #BlackLivesMatter

After one yelling match with them, I reminded them that post-9/11, Arabs or Muslims who knew what being profiled or being subjected to discrimination and violence was like, should be the last people to be racist.

#BlackLivesMatter

One evening, as we got into a cab, Marcus - who’d begun to learn Arabic - told me he thought our driver was speaking Arabic.

He was right. As I listened to the driver speak on the phone, I could hear that the driver was #Egyptian and was saying ugly racist shit about Marcus.

I was so shocked and enraged, I banged on the divider and made the driver stop and yelled at him about his racism. We got out and I was too ashamed to tell Marcus what the driver had been saying.

Too many other anecdotes. Fuck racism.

#BlackLivesMatter

In 1990/1, when I still lived in #Egypt, Spike Lee came to #Egypt to film Malcolm X. I spent a couple of days on set, met Spike and talked to many involved with the film. A Black American man and a Sierra Leonean told me of racist attacks they’d been subjected to in Cairo.

The Sierra Leonean told me of being spat at, having racist slurs yelled at him as he walked in #Cairo.

The Black American told me how the way police treated him at a Metro station changed when he showed his US passport. They thought he was Nigerian.

#BlackLivesMatter

#Egyptians say “I’m going to Africa” when they visit other countries on the continent, as if Egypt were floating in a bubble of its own. google.com/amp/s/www.wash…

Racism is fatal in #Egypt. In December 2005, #Egyptian riot police killed at least 23 unarmed Sudanese refugees, including small children, who had occupied a public park in front of a United Nations office for three months.

#BlackLivesMatter

In 2017, prominent #Nubian activist Gamal Sorour died in detention. He was among 25 Nubians arrested for staging a peaceful protest “demanding the return of Nubians to their ancestral lands, from which they were evicted in the 1960s to make way for the lake behind the High Dam.”

“Egyptians are v racist.I’ve seen it against Sudanese and Nubian friends and against darker-skinned friends who’ve been treated terribly.I’ve seen some people refuse to shake hands with them as if they have leprosy or an infectious disease or something. It really pisses me off.”

In pop culture and movies, black Egyptians and Sudanese are portrayed as “housekeepers and doormen,” which “has created a stereotype of black Africans as subservient,”

#BlackLivesMatter

“I have worked with refugees in Egypt from Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, as well as Syria and Iraq, and it indicated to me that all migrants may experience xenophobia in Egypt, but that black Africans additionally face racism, colorism and classism”

Anti-black racism is not just an Egyptian problem. It exists in many parts of the Arab world. The trade that sent enslaved Africans east of the continent has yet to have a similar reckoning — incomplete as it is — as that which headed west of Africa.

#BlackLivesMattters

The word “abeed” (slave) is casually a used to refer to people who are Black in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula.

#BlackLivesMatter

As an #Egyptian, I hold my country of birth to a higher standard — and my shame is that much sharper — because we are right there on the map as part of Africa.

#BlackLivesMatter

The fight against racism must be seen as a revolutionary one. One of the pillars of racism has been the centralized — and chauvinist — definition of “Egyptian,” which for decades was determined by Cairo-based military rulers. #Egyptians are more diverse and complex than that.

Since the #Jan25 revolution, activists from #Egypt’s #Nubian community have rightfully demanded rights to their ancestral lands and a recognition of their cultural heritage. But it is not the responsibility of the victims of Egypt’s racism to end that racism.

#BlackLivesMatter

Every revolution aims to create a place that has yet to exist. #Egypt must know if we want to create a nation of “dignity” & “social justice” as our revolution demanded, we must rise up against anti-Blackness.

The Black-led revolution in the US is an urgent call.

#BlackSpring

This a shorter earlier thread based on an essay I wrote in 2008 about anti-Black racism in #Egypt

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1268971730757988354?s=21

https://t.co/DNt3PCjczo