From being repeatedly asked for ID to feeling threatened by harmful rhetoric, politicians say lack of diversity is undermining work of EU

From being repeatedly asked for ID to feeling threatened by harmful rhetoric, politicians say lack of diversity is undermining work of EU

As a newly minted member of the European parliament in 2019, Alice Kuhnke swiftly learned to keep her ID badge handy. Sometimes the request to see it would come just moments after she had swiped it to enter a building, other times she would be stopped hours later as she made her way to meetings.

Six months into the job, she mentioned the stringent security measures over coffee with a few colleagues. “They said ‘Are you serious? I’ve never been stopped.’”

Kuhnke, a Black MEP from Sweden, put the same question to her Black colleagues. The answer confirmed what she had suspected: “Some of them had been stopped.”

It was one of her first hints of what it meant to work in a European parliament that is profoundly out of step with the demographic reality of Europe. While racialised minorities make up an estimated 10% of the EU’s population, MEPs from these groups accounted for just 4.3% of the total lawmakers in the last mandate, according to analysis by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR).

  • 01011English
    73·
    6 months ago

    I’m guessing you missed the whole colonial era and what happened in far off places at the hands of Europeans, well into the 20th century (and arguably still in the case of France). But you go off.

      • Scroll Responsibly@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        The EU parliament (where this article takes place) is based in Belgium and France… right?

        Are the Haitians still paying the French for their slave debt or do they still have another century?

        Didn’t one of the Belgian kings do a bunch of slavery (I think the euphemism used is “forced labor”) in the Congo up until the 1960s? Like some real vile shit like chopping off hands of people who weren’t productive enough?

      • 01011English
        21·
        6 months ago

        I don’t think you have any idea how insidious colonialism is, or more specifically European style colonialism. You speak of slavery which is the theft of labor, colonialism is the theft of labor AND resources on a grand scale whilst lying to the world about benevolence.