Webinar Series: Fight against Racism amidst the pandemic
Report by: Gaurika Kalsi
The Empower People Organization has organized a webinar series to support and
help people towards their overall empowerment in these harsh times of the
pandemic.
The following report is based on one of those webinars.
The topic of the panel discussion was “Fight against Racism amidst the Pandemic”.
It was conducted on 7 th June 2020 at 09:30pm(IST).
Panellists for the session were Mr. Shafiq R Khan (Social activist& founder of
Empower People),Ms. Durga Dingari (Freelance writer, RJ at TORI,Beadwork
entrepreneur), and Mr. Chaitanya (Video journalist,NYTimes).
Ms.Durga started the panel discussion with the introduction of panellists
and the news update of police brutality in USA.
Some of the key points of Ms Durga’s discussion:
- George Floyd’s case
- USA protest amidst Covid-19
- “Still I rise” poem by Maya Angelo
- Racism in the US
- Issues in minorities
- Difficulties in employment
- Statistics of police killing
Some of the key points of by Mr. Chaitanya:
- Be consistently anti-racist rather than just “not racist”
- Existence of the racism & denial
- Lack of acknowledgement of the efforts and struggles of African-American protests & resultant privileges that Asian obtain in US
- Immigration act 1965& Civil rights act 1968
- Aftereffects of slavery
- Indian’s fairness standards and casteism
- Racist comments
Some of the key points of by Mr.Shafiq :
- Racism in India
- Fairness obsession
- Lack of anti-racism movement
- Dalit &OBC movements
- Muslims and religious conflicts
- Indo-Africans
- Personal experiences
- Cast, religion, faith, physical appearance and language judgements in India
