Youth activism and safe spaces : Decoloniality and anti-racism online

Over the past decade, a plethora of online safe spaces have emerged on social media and have gained significant popularity amongst Swedish youth. Focusing on social injustices, these safe spaces operate as accessible discussion forums for youth across the country and highlight some of the key issues faced by youth. This chapter examines how issues relating to online activism, anti-Blackness and decoloniality can be explored drawing on the concepts of Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism. This is exemplified through empirical data from online safe spaces and how participants in these spaces conceptualize what activism is, how it relates to theories on decoloniality and anti-racism and how conflicting views are discussed and negotiated. The chapter pays particular attention to discussions of anti-Blackness and topics closely related to the Black Lives Matter movement, capturing the overlap with and influences from a global social movement. Further, the chapter illustrates how these safe spaces are conceptualized by the ‘adult’ world outside of them by analysing debates on anti-racism in news press. This section discusses how youth activism in general, and anti-racist youth activism, is framed as provocative, identity political and founded in distorted understandings of political theory.