Okay here it is. I’ve come across many posts about how this group’s lives matter and that group’s lives matter to get the same attention that the BLM movement is currently getting. It’s completely understandable that many of us who are in those other movements located elsewhere

around the world want to get more global attention like BLM is right now. And there were times where some of us get those moments, although less. But one of the main reasons this is getting that big of a media exposure is because it’s happening in the US. Everyone knows how media

is big on US affairs. But it’s not fair for black people who have worked so hard for decades and sacrificed their own lives to resist and get people to see the violence they are facing every day. It’s stealing the spotlight from them. We can shed light on our own cause without

stealing it from another. This is not a wagon for everyone who faces racism to jump on. Yes, we are affected by racism, sometimes in similar ways but other times not so much. But there is a time for solidarity movements where we discuss how structures of racism (and other

oppressions) affect all of us and how we can be allies for each other without turning it into an oppression Olympics. We can have our own unique slogans and be creative in our own ways. For now, it’s more constructive to talk about how we are complicit in each other’s oppression.

Because I kid you not, we’re not so innocent. Even the most oppressed of us can oppress other groups. For folks in Kuwait, we reek of racism (anti-black racism too). Let’s not pretend it’s not a thing.Even members of the Bidoon community are guilty of this.

Whether it’s anti-blackness or racism towards other minority groups. For minorty folks in the diaspora, I grew up as a Muslim Arab woman in Canada and have witnessed anti-black racism from members in my own community who are racialized (yes, Canada has anti-black racism.

Not so exceptional.) I may get attacked for saying this because some of our community members don’t want to undermine our movements or oppressions by showing complicity or differences or acts of racism, thinking it would jeopardize our moral standing or liberation.

But we will go nowhere if we don’t begin by checking ourselves first. So instead of stealing the thunder, we should be having conversations about how anti-black racism is in our own communities and how it travels across nations too.

Because you may think racism in one country has nothing to do with what happens in another, but I can tell you so many ways we are complicit in each other’s oppression transnationally that go beyond the everyday imagination.

But I’ll leave that for another time because the point of this post is on the oppression olympics happening.