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Author Roig: "I grew up in a racist family"
Photo: Mohamed Badarne
Emilia Roig recounts a tree on a plantation in Martinique, a majestic solitaire with widely spreading branches on her Berlin sofa, and she was seized with a kind of shudder for no external reason.
The place is used for tourism;
you can enjoy the view and taste the local rum.
She asked the facility manager if he knew anything about the tree.
He reacted evasively that he was just an employee and didn't know his way around.
Roig continued.
As a tourist, she does not ask that her mother is from Martinique, that she has spent many summers on this island.
And, when that wasn't enough: “It's about our common past.
We're both black. "
To person
Emilia Roig,
born in 1983, grew up in France and has lived in Berlin since 2005.
She has a doctorate in political science and founded the Berlin Center for Intersectional Justice.
She is the author of the book "Why we matter / The end of oppression".
On the Caribbean island of Martinique, now part of the European Union as the overseas department of France, the descendants of the white colonizers still determine economically.
About 30 families;
the plantation owner was one of them.
Their wealth is due to the cultivation of sugar cane, pineapples and bananas, which were obtained through slavery until 1848.
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