Dear Racism | Takunda Muzondiwa | TEDxYouth@Christchurch
Video by TEDxYouth@Christchurch, TEDx Talks.
Takunda Muzondiwa giving her speech TEDxYouth@Christchurch. Photo / TEDxYouth Christchurch.
At the age of seven, Takunda Muzondiwa moved from Zimbabwe to New Zealand with her family. Seamlessly blending poetry and spoken word, Takunda shares her experiences as an ethnic-minority growing up in New Zealand. In this powerful and emotional talk, Takunda will make you think twice about how identity and racism intersect. Takunda Muzondiwa is a Mt Albert Grammar school student and orator whose recent speech at The 2019 Race Unity Speech Awards made global headlines.
She speaks about the challenges faced by her and other members of the diaspora as they struggle to maintain a strong connection to their culture. Her own experience as a dispora community helped her realise the commonalities with other minority groups going through the same experience, like Māori people here in Aotearoa experiencing their language fade right before them.
Through her words, Takunda is determined to speak up and bring awareness to the systemic ways in which cultural erasure is enforced and encourage people to take action to prevent this. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community.