Black Luxembourg

in Kelly, Natasha A.; Vassel, Olive (Eds.) Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories (2023)

This chapter addresses migrants’ associations and narratives, and landscape traces of blackness in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It fosters a critical understanding of black representations, their ... [more ▼]

This chapter addresses migrants’ associations and narratives, and landscape traces of blackness in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It fosters a critical understanding of black representations, their absences, and presences in the country. In this context, Black Lives Matter’s (BLM’) impact has manifested itself on various levels of society, from rallies gathering together large numbers of people to artistic contestation tactics and the appropriation of public spaces, the mapping of buildings with colonial links, the defacement of monuments, and the renaming of streets, to mention just a few. All this happened in the context of uncovering Luxembourg’s colonial past, which is directly connected to Belgian colonization (Moes 2012). Although the early BLM movement had already pushed bottom-up and top-down discussions on racism, no political measures had been put in place until its impact in 2020. The events of that summer were a sort of “wake-up call” and a sudden turning point, with Black people raising their voices against unequal conditions in modern postcolonial societies in Europe, including in Luxembourg. Additionally, newly created associations of People of African Descent (PAD), such as the feminist and antiracist associations Finkapé and Lëtz Rise Up, have taken the lead and intensified their antiracist activities, shifting the conversation on race and racism from folklore to activism. As a result, the silencing of the colonial past has been broken. At the European level, an earlier study entitled “Being Black in Europe” (BBE), carried out by the Fundamental Rights Agency and published in 2018, had placed Luxembourg at the top of the list of European countries where perceptions of racism are very high. The BLM movements and the BBE study have also fostered a wave of debates at conferences, including one that focused on “Being Black in Luxembourg” and prompted studies on racism, a subject that previously had not been on the country’s public radar. [less ▲]