A narrative on why March 21 refuses to be forgotten — and what it still asks of us.
Every year on March 21, the world pauses — or is supposed to — to confront one of humanity’s oldest and most stubborn failures: racial discrimination. The date is not arbitrary. It was chosen in memory of a massacre, because the truest reckonings begin with blood.
In 1960, South African police opened fire on peaceful protesters in Sharpeville who had gathered to resist apartheid’s pass laws — documents Black South Africans were forced to carry at all times to prove they had permission to exist in public spaces. Sixty-nine people were killed during this activity, most shot in the back while fleeing. Six years later, the United Nations designated March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, anchoring the date in that grief and demanding the world not look away. This year, with the theme, “VOICES FOR ACTION AGAINST RACISM”, the United Nations through this celebration aims to solidify the need to look past and not judge people based on their financial status and colour.
Racial discrimination in its true sense is not a relic of the past. It is a present-tense reality experienced by billions across every continent. It operates through laws and policies, through the hidden algorithms of hiring software, through the split-second judgements that determine who receives a loan, who is stopped by police, or who is believed by a doctor.The UN’s own report consistently shows that racial and ethnic minorities face disproportionate rates of poverty, incarceration, educational exclusion, and health inequality. Indigenous peoples continue to be dispossessed of land. Afro-descendants in Latin America face structural exclusion backed by decades of data. The targets shift by geography, but the machinery of dehumanization is consistent.
Racism as a public health crisis
Health pandemics like the COVID-19 pandemic made vivid what epidemiologists had long documented: race is a social determinant of health. Racial minorities in many countries died at dramatically higher rates — not because of biology, but because of the downstream consequences of poverty, overcrowded housing, essential-worker status, and reduced access to healthcare. The body count of racism extends far beyond its most visible moments.
The digital frontier
Contemporary discrimination increasingly lives inside systems that appear neutral. Facial recognition software is measurably less accurate for darker skin tones. Algorithms governing sentencing, credit, and hiring have been shown to replicate and amplify historical disparities. This is not incidental. When biased outcomes are interwoven and accepted into infrastructure, the bias scales.
Our work at TCR- The world must not look away.
At The Community Revolution, with our core values being rooted in empowerment, diversity and inclusion, we strongly believe and advocate for social and digital inclusion where everyone across all boards is treated equally and fairly. This belief is largely shown in our works and projects aimed at improving the lives of individuals and minority communities facing injustice, racial and cultural discrimination and exclusion with the purpose of restoring dignity, creating research and volunteer opportunities and ensuring that underrepresented communities and groups thrive socially and economically. Our efforts at TCR resonates with the DDPA which has enhanced global efforts for combatting and preventing racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; it has contributed to the proliferation of legislative measures, the development of national action plans and monitoring mechanisms; and has helped to place the issue of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as an urgent priority on the international agenda.
The demand that remains
Solidarity is one of those words that has been used so often it has started to hollow out. It gets posted, hash tagged, stitched onto tote bags. But in its original weight, solidarity is not a sentiment. It is a decision. It is the choice to act as though someone else’s unfreedom diminishes your own — because it does.
Just like TCR, what March 21 asks of us is not comfortable. It asks us to look at the institutions we inhabit and ask honestly whether they produce equal outcomes. It asks us to support the policies that address structural disadvantages even when we do not personally experience that disadvantage. It asks us to speak up inside the rooms we have access to; especially the rooms where the people most affected are not present.
None of this requires a grand gesture. Most of it is quiet, persistent, and unglamorous. It looks like a doctor who takes a patient’s pain seriously the first time. A hiring manager who notices when the shortlist is not diverse and asks why. A policy maker who reads the evidence even when it is inconvenient and lets it change their position.
The dust in Sharpeville settled a long time ago. The sixty-nine were buried. The world moved on, as it does. But every March 21, the date rises again and asks the same question it has always asked: what are you going to do now that you know?
That question has no expiry date.
Join our team at TCR to make a difference today against racial discrimination.