The transnationalism of Black Lives Matter and the interpretations of contemporary racisms

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the Black Lives Matter wave of protests, which has become a transnational phenomenon, has generated public debates about systematic and structural racisms. Racial hierarchies, which were structured from slavery and colonialism, were founded on segregationist practices and discourses about the innate inferiority of non-European populations. The experience of the Holocaust, however, collapsed the pattern of these hierarchies that were consolidated in the 19th century. The creation of the UN System in the post-war period spurred the development of a regime to combat racial discrimination and the formalization of equal rights in democratic regimes. Racism, however, has undergone transformations and created new repertoires. Black Lives Matters in the United States, by denouncing police violence, spread interpretations about the distinct mechanisms of contemporary racisms among a wider public and triggered globally protests of articulations and movements that built and interconnected transnationally antiracist imaginaries.