Making room for voices that need to be heard

It's not our way of not illuminating a topic from our point of view. It's also not our way of not being able to illuminate problems in a personal matter. This time, however, the problem is bigger than us, bigger than our vanity and bigger than our need for being understood.

Racism is clearly not only reflected in a wave of the necessary protests – no matter how big the wave. Racism overshadows several generations, it shapes families, it shapes identities – irreversibly. We've always made our position clear on discrimination, racism and inequality. But that's not what this is about. Nor is it about us saying what most of you know, say or hear and should read about every recently.

We don't want to use this wave of global protests to express our guilt, our shame or our feelings. How people like us, who ultimately (un)consciously benefit from structural racism feel, is of secondary importance today. Instead, we want to make room for voices and people who haven't been heard for far too long.

We want to use our platform, step back and offer it to people who experience the intolerable problem of racism firsthand. We want them to have their say instead of us again. 

Therefore, we want to make our social media channels available for those to take over who have more to say and contribute than we could ever.

Of course we hope that the solidarity and protests will continue for a long time. Nevertheless, it’s probably only a matter of time before media interest will flatten out. That will be the time when we'll want to remember, with our planned take over, that the problem is far from being solved.

So if you have the urge to use this platform, if you have something to say, you feel unheard and the racism to which you feel exposed – please don't hesitate and contact us.

Your Manitober team