The Black, African and Afro-descendant Community Platform in Majorca has reprimanded Social Justice, Feminism and LGTBI Councillor, Sonia Vivas, over her response to the Stop Racism campaign presented on Monday.
In a letter to Vivas, the Platform says "Anti-racism can no longer be just a marketing campaign that once again reproduces the stigmatisation of Son Gotleu and s’Arenal,” it states. “This campaign is an aesthetic opportunism or an exercise in paternalistic whitesplaining and anti-racism is too serious to be dictated only from the hegemonic discourse and without the help of racialized bodies that are the target of racism."
The platform was indignant, stating “We have not come here to sing hand in hand ‘We are the world, we are the children’ and we are not satisfied with a pat on the back and a photo. Not anymore! We have come to build our own voice, to constitute ourselves as a damn political subject and not as the object of political occurrences designed without our participation, without our experiences and without our perspective. This is our commitment, because we care about black lives,” the letter says.
“Last Sunday, more than 1,500 people occupied Plaza del Mercat de l'Olivar, in what is probably the largest strictly anti-racist rally that has ever taken place in Majorca and it deserved a small gesture of recognition or approach from your Council."
The protest was staged in memory of George Floyd and all the other black lives taken by institutional and social racism rooted in the United States.
“Above all, we did it to make racism visible as a global, structural phenomenon; also present in our society, said the Platform letter.