Episode 2

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Published on:

27th Jun 2020

Slavery in 2020

Host Terrell J Starr talks to Banchi Yimer about the kafala system in this episode of Black Diplomats. Yimer traveled from her native Ethiopia to Yemen in search of work, and took a job as a domestic servant in Lebanon. She was promised a fair wage and the right to make decisions about her life, but she soon found herself trapped inside the house with no money or even her passport.

When she was able to escape she realized she was in the middle of a growing crisis of women in similar situations. Thousands of domestic servants were dumped on the street with nothing when the Lebanese economy crashed in 2019. Many of them are still there, waiting for the world to hear their stories.

Find more information about Banchi on her Twitter feed, or learn about Egna Legna Besides, the organization she founded to help protect women like her.

Donate to their GoFundMe to help migrant domestic workers in the Middle East.

To read more about the kafala system and it's impact you can go here, here, or here. This article about the death rate involving alleged suicide is heart breaking.

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About the Podcast

Black Diplomats
The world is full of black people, but when the mainstream media talks about the world, we hardly ever hear from them. Black Diplomats—a podcast dedicated to international politics and culture from the perspective of people of color—is going to...
Founded in 2020 and led by Terrell Jermaine Starr, Black Diplomats is the go-to podcast for those who want relatable content on global affairs that doesn’t center the perspectives of white male experts.

Few foreign policy shows are led by Black people or center the opinions, experiences and expertise of people of color. Black Diplomats is one exception. Guests are mostly people of color and people who are indigenous to the regions the episodes focus on.
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Terrell Starr

Terrell Jermaine Starr is the senior reporter at The Root, where he writes about the 2020 election and foreign policy, mostly U.S. relations with Ukraine and Russia. He is also the The Root’s 2020 correspondent and is tasked with interviewing presidential candidates and traveling to communities around the country to see who voters are eyeing to cast ballots for during the 2020 primary and the general election.

Some of the people Starr have conducted sit-down interviews with include U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former U.S. Congressman Beto O’Rourke, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, U.S. Senator Cory Booker and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, among other politicians.

Before working at The Root, Starr was at Foxtrot Alpha, a blog that focuses on military, technology and policy. Prior to that, he worked for FUSION as a national political correspondent covering the 2016 presidential campaign. He lived Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow, and Georgia as a Peace Corps volunteer. Starr has over four years of experience living in the former Soviet Union and more than eight years working as a reporter. Starr uses his media skills to break down Russia-U.S. relations in ways that make him not sound like a Washington hack. He is a frequent guest and co-host of the popular podcast In The Thick and his work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mother Jones and Buzzfeed.

Starr is a regularly sought after speaker on U.S.-Russian relations, Ukrainian politics and the intersection of race and politics in America.