Boulevard du Village Noir
04.01.2024
Swiss Press Award 24 Audio - E - Shyaka Kagame
Racism Beneath the Surface
Podcast RTS
2024
Shyaka Kagame
2nd place 2024
It all started three years ago, with a racist attack in Geneva. The journalist Shyaka Kagame was called a monkey by a stranger in a Geneva café. This, in exactly in the same location where the “Negro Village” once stood, part of the Swiss National Exhibition of 1896. However, the aggressor is not convicted of racism. This is the starting point of a podcast in six episodes for Radio RTS, which delves into the racist and colonialist subconscious of Switzerland. For the journalist, the difficulty lay in finding the right balance between his personal and family story and the bigger picture. And also between the different narrative forms: reconstructions, witness statements, first-person narratives or expert interviews. The author analyzes the Swiss legal framework concerning racism and discrimination, including retracing its development, before returning to the place where his mother had been the victim of a racist attack 40 years previously, and finally rediscovering the origins of the famous “Negro village” in the archives.