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posts tagged "white supremacy"

The entire "race" thing was constructed by Whites. You are 100% right on that one. The ignorance of the past still haunts us to this very day. It hurts me when you classify all white people in one category. Not all white people see the world through ignorant eyes. Fighting fire with fire will get us nowhere. As a black woman I understand where this frustration comes from. It's hard to not categorize all as one But in my I don't think it's right to do so. I see ppl as individuals ...

@eco-amazonia

You know what?? I totally understand where you are coming from. I mean few years ago I was there too and I can see that your motives are pure. I used to think EXACTLY like you but I moved on from it as I was learning about the flaws in my though process. I am just going to show you two examples of where you are wrong in this message and I have been there.

“Fighting fire with fire will get us nowhere”

This is the typical false metaphor that people use to support that non-violence and pacisfist garbage that support the racist status quo.

I am NOT fighting fire with fire. Neither were Malcolm x and the Black Panther Party. Why? Because you can NOT equate two things that are essentially different!! The violence of white supremacy as an imperialist hegemony built on white people’s quest for natural and incontestable superiority throughout history and sustain through political, soviological, cultural, economical, religious instutions such as the catholic church or the police, or the media or the educational system has absolutely NOTHING to do with the JUSTIFIED SELF-DEFENSE various POC have been opposing to it!! It has absolutely NOTHING in common!!

The motives are different: While white supremacy stands for absolute destruction and exploitation of POC, from slavery to colonialism and today neo-colonialism and a PARASITE capitalism system  based on the exploitation of POC around the world plus the institutional discrimination of POC in the west which ensures that the remain at the bottom of western societies, that they are marginalised, abused by police brutality and plunged into poverty and destitution!  We, well I personally and all the people I look up to NEVER claim RACIAL SUPERIORITY. Our motives are NOT to prove that we are better and then spread destruction, our ONLY intention is SURVIVAL!! We don not live unlike whiteness off other people just to prove our superiority! We do not plan to conquer the world and steal and loot and claim everything as our own. We do not want to dehumanise and destroy people. WE JUST WANT TO HAVE OUR HUMANITY ACKNOWLEDGE AND LIVE AS AUTONOMOUS AND FREE OF THE WHITE SUPREMACIST PARASITIC SYSTEM.

The means are different: White supremacy was build through looting, human zoos, concentration camps, biological warfare colonialism, slavery, neo-colonialism etc I challenge anyone to name me ONE black / African revolutionary who ever advocated for the use of any of these methods!

The effects are different: White supremacy/racism’s effects are different. First of all they have a global scale. Secondly they have been creating chaos from ecocide to human and cultural cultural genocide and exploitation. However, the revolutionaries I look up too such as Nkrumah, Lumumba, Sankara, Malcolm X and Huey P Newton, their legacies are all about empowerment and bringing HOPE to millions around the world and through the ages who have been physically and mentally alienated. White supremacy is the exaltation of death and destruction, those men stood for life, resistance, survival as alternatives to the slow and painful death offered by white supremacy! White supremacy is essentially the definition of racism!

So no!! It is NOT fire against fire! It is fire against water, the water and the flow of life against which white supremacy stands. Self-defense is pro-life, not racism aka white supremacy!! You can NOT compare the engineering of a genocide by a bigger power with a simple, isolated and weak person fighting back. Comparisons of this kind are not only irrational but also intellectually dishonest! You know who made such comparisons?? That vile man that was Ghandi!! He chastised Jews people fleeing and fighting back Nazism. This is how disgusting and dangerous this non-violence crap is because it always sustain the oppressive status-quo!

I have never personally heard of any historical/ empirical evidence of it working. I mean if it was the case, native Americans and Tibetan monks would have successfully tackle down their oppressors. Not even Ghandhi did, the British retreated because their power was weakening down!!

“Not all white people see the world through ignorant eyes.”

I just posted a video about prejudices in the context of discrimination. I am not quite sure about what you mean by “see the world through ignorant eyes.” but prejudices play out on the subconscious level. They may or may not see things consciously in some way, but still be driven by biases over which they have absolutely NO control! We all live in a white dominated world, meaning that WE ALL INTERNALISE  RACIST DOCTRINE, ALL OF US!! However only white people have the ultimate power to put those racist beliefs in motion!! So yeah THEY CAN NOT escape the socialization and conditioning processes of a society and culture and civilization that conceive them as superior! Hence putting all white people in one category is totally logical in the context of white supremacy, sine their motives, interest and socialisation is THE SAME!!

Moreover, the racially oppressive system is built in a way that is beyond the conscious and intentional levels

‘…..this is not to say that every single white American consciously oppresses black people. He does not need to. Institutional racism has been maintained deliberately by the power structure and through indifference, inertia and lack of courage on the part of white masses as well as petty officials.’
Stokely Carmichael & Charles V. Hamilton.Excerpt from ‘Black Power : The Politics of Liberation in America’

Because racism is NOT simply interpersonal i.e. only prejudices, it is an institutional system that benefit to those in power i.e. whites!!

“It hurts me when you classify all white people in one category”

It is your business, I dont  give a fuck. If you care that much about the least oppressed group on Earth yet, the one that oppresses others the most that is your philosophy, not mine. I personally care about the lives of POC ruined by whiteness. I shouldn’t be expected to care or give any fuck about people hurting me, my people and living off a system that oppresses me. But this is just me.

From Easterly’s The white man’s burden P 20

The White Man’s Burden emerged from the West’s self-pleasing fantasy that “we” were the chose ones to save the Rest. The White Man offered himself the starring role role in an ancien regime of Harry Potter.

The Enlightenment saw the rest as a blank slate - without any meaningful institutions or history of its own - upon which the west could inscribe its superior ideals. As the Comte de Buffon put it, “It is through the European that civilization arrives … precisely because of their superiority, the civilized people are responsible for an evolved world.” The Marquis de Condorcet said, “These vast lands … need only assistance from us to be civilized.”

Even when making beneficial piecemeal reforms, such as the British anti-slave campaign in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, white arrogance was not going to disappear anytime soon. British Torry Sir Robert Peel said in a speech in June 1840 that unless whites stop the slave trade they never would convince Africans “of the superiority of the European fellow men.”

As one of the leaders of the anti-slavery, William Wilberforce, subsequently said about India, “Must we not then … endeavor to raise these wretched beings out of their present miserable condition?” James Mill in 1810, “For the sake of the natives” in India, “the British could not leave them to their own direction.”

Even the Berlin Conference of 1885, which divided Africa among European colonizers - who resembled children scrambling for candy as the pinata breaks open - included some altruistic language. The signatories were to aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization.

I bought this book about 4 years ago and this might be the tenth time I am trying to re-read and finish it, because I never managed to go further than the second chapter for the reason above. Being confronted to the vileness of whiteness was considerably worsening my moods and hence making me more depressed.

I have two certitudes in life: We all die at the end and whiteness is the most repulsive, disgusting and nasty shit to ever have happened to humanity! It is a poison, a venom that must urgently be get rid off and mercilessly fought against!

I am going to try and post the rest later, if I am not too lazy!

I am white. And I am racist.

mama-boy:

No I am not sitting around and reading Pork while wearing a shitty fake “native american headdress” with a bindi on my forehead and “wite powr” tattooed across my knuckles.

However, I am white. This means I benefit from whiteness, no matter what I do. This means I contribute to the system of whiteness, no matter what I do. I was born and bred and raised and fed by whiteness. I was taught to love my white skin and white body and all I see when I open a book or magazine or turn on a tv or the computer are white skinned bodies or whitewashed bodies. And I don’t have to be a white suprematist to be racist. All I have to be is white.

I am inherently racist. 

Racism isn’t just waking up one day and saying to yourself “I’m gonna go be a shithead”

(although thats what whiteness/white culture/white media/so on and so forth basically did and does)

because racism is so much more than that. 

I wont ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER experience racism, nor will you, fellow white folks. The closest we’ll get is being disliked. And aren’t we lucky that all we have to do is open a book/magazine, turn on a tv, look at an ad, turn off the computer or walk away, and then life is a-okay again?!

This doesn’t mean we can’t have shitty lives

This does however mean that we are inherently racist.

Fellow white folks.

We wont ever experience racism.

So why the fuck are we sitting around telling PoC what is and isn’t racism?

Or if we are or aren’t racist. 

Or that being a housewife makes us not racist. 

bleh

 Thank you for this! White people take notes!

Oppression is not something that you can willingly opt out of!! It is not! It doesnt work like that! While millions of brown people have their lives destroy for your comfort and safety, you can not just scream ‘I am not racist’ and try and wash your hands off the fact that you profit from racial oppression and you do take part in it whether you want it or not. Your good intentions are of residual importance in the racist machine.

‘…..this is not to say that every single white American consciously oppresses black people. He does not need to. Institutional racism has been maintained deliberately by the power structure and through indifference, inertia and lack of courage on the part of white masses as well as petty officials.’
Stokely Carmichael & Charles V. Hamilton.Excerpt from ‘Black Power : The Politics of Liberation in America’

YOU DO TAKE PART IN RACISM FOR SIMPLY BENEFITING FROM IT! It is a machine and you are one of its links, whether you want it or not, whether it makes you cry or not, whether it hurts your feelings or not, whether you think you are a good person or not!

There are NO more good white people today as there were during slavery and under the third Reich. Many people who were considered of outstanding character back then were taking part in the most horrendous and gruesome racist crimes. Just like white people today who think highly of themselves but are nothing but racist fucks!

As a white person, you can not be free of racism, just because you say so. Just like straight people cannot totally renounce to the pervasive homophobia they benefit from or men the misogyny. This is why I never bought into that ‘male feminists’ thing. They are just like white anti-racists looking for validation by annexing a movement in opposition of an oppressive structure they benefit from. They should stay in their lanes! You cannot be a male feminist, just like as a cis person, I cannot be a cis ant-transphobic. It is contradictory in essence because I am conditioned, socialised and moulded to be inherently transphobic, I just cannot escape the normalisation of transphobia in my reality! The way I speak, see the world, approach things is drenched with transphobia! I can fight against it as much as I can but should never lie to myself and pretend that I am on the side of the victims while committing the abuse and benefiting from it!

There will be no racist ONLY when white supremacy as a structure and an ideology is dismantle, until then white people, you are all inherently racist, deal with it!

(via okapidreams)

“

Another white privilege Tim Wise and other white anti-racists carry is the ability to emotionally express their views about racism without having that expression dismissed as “angry” or “too emotional”. When Wise speaks passionately and fervently about racism, his expression is understood as a sign of a person standing up for what he believes. As such, it is championed even when he is derisive or sardonic in his remarks. When we, people of color activists, speak passionately about racism, we are maligned and ridiculed as being angry, militant, even hateful and dangerous. If we wish to be heard (let alone understood), we are expected to speak calmly and politely about our experience and analysis regarding racism. Otherwise we are demonized. White moral indignation is justified. Black moral indignation is vilified. This has long been the case.

The third white privilege that Tim Wise and other so-called white anti-racists enjoy is the privilege of being honored for their anti-racist work as their Black activist counterparts and other activists of color are denounced and derided. Case in point: Several years back I spoke at a school in Massachusetts for their annual Dr. King Day commemoration. As I spoke about King’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for racial justice, I was met with outright hostility from the students gathered in the auditorium. The following year I would be contacted by an Arab faculty member at the school. She would inform me that for that year’s King Day event, the school decided to invite Tim Wise to address the student body. She went on to inform me that Wise was received with profound admiration by the very same students that heckled me the year before. Isolated incident? Chance circumstance? To my knowledge, similar events like this have at occurred on two more occasions since.

On one of the other occasions, I was contacted by a Black student organization that had to petition a reluctant administration to gain the necessary approval to invite me to speak. Just one semester following my presentation they would inform me that Tim Wise had just spoken at their school, where he received the red carpet of administrative respect and welcome. When this occurred at a third school, a Vietnamese student emailed me and rhetorically but sincerely asked, “Isn’t this what Tim Wise is supposed to be against?”. In all three cases, persons and groups that reached out to me expressed a level of frustration at witnessing the hypocrisy of the institutions they were working at or attending.
[…]
This is just one example of the ways that white anti-racists who are not in accountable relationships with activists of color can be used to work against the best interests of people of color, whether knowingly or not.

One of the student leaders of this effort would later ask me if I’d be willing to debate Wise. I informed her that I would welcome the opportunity to engage in a constructive conversation with Wise on the state, purpose and direction of anti-racist struggle. The problem with that is that Wise only debates individuals with views more conservative than his own. This way he can continue to promote himself as the most radical anti-racist voice on the scene when he is not – not even among whites. [Noel Ignatiev has called for the outright abolition of whiteness in the face of other whites’ calls for what essentially amount to a kinder, gentler whiteness. By so doing, Ignatiev is taking up the challenge to expose whiteness as a form of status within the capitalist system rather than as a biological or cultural reality, which is how it continues to get passed off as – even within certain so-called anti-racist circles. Such an assertion takes it cue from an observation James Baldwin made many moons ago: “As long as you think you’re white, there’s no hope for you.” If such an end were the aim of the movement, so-called white anti-racists could no longer go around claiming to want to use their white privilege for the good of the movement. Such a claim would be recognized as the nonsense it is.] Like Eminem in “8 Mile” taking on the Black rapper from the suburbs in his effort to establish his street cred and carry the “Blacker than thou” mantle, it seems that Wise takes on conservative intellectuals of color like Dinesh D’Sousa and Ward Connerly to prove he’s “Blacker” (more radical) than they are. That might impress some of Wise’s liberal Black bourgeois friends, but such side-show debates do nothing to bring us any closer to eradicating institutional racism.
It seems that Wise and other anti-racist whites have become higher education’s answer to people of color activists like me. As long as the dissidents are white, these schools are willing to practice the “tolerance” they claim to uphold as beacons of the liberal arts. It has even gotten to the point that nowadays it is not at all strange to see a white person giving the keynote speech for Black History Month. I honestly don’t think that is what Dr. Carter G. Woodson had in mind when he instituted the week-long celebration that would become Black History Month back in 1926. It is bad enough that February, the shortest calendar month of the year, is what Amiri Baraka calls “Black artist employment month.” Now we can’t even count on that. Like our people who are removed from the neighborhoods they grew up in as affluent whites gentrify urban communities, we find ourselves being removed from the one space our ancestors fought for on the calendar. And why is it so difficult for some of us to not see this racial switch as an attack on Black self-determination in much the same way as the current effort to dismiss Black History Month all together?

What can be deduced from these experiences is that there is clear benefit for those with white skin even in the context of anti-racist discourse. There is a distinct inequality in how we are perceived and treated by the white establishment. Despite Wise’s opposition to white supremacy and white privilege, he is a clear beneficiary of both. This is largely due to the fact that, evidently, he is not perceived as a threat to the establishment.
[…]
When grassroots Black activists speak honestly about racism at colleges across this country, we are not met with open arms by administrators and faculty. And most certainly our calendars are not full for the rest of the year let alone for the next three to five. When we speak, we are often met by the deaf ear of white denial. When Tim Wise speaks, he gets applause, standing ovations, awards and proclamations. The fact that schools can’t “hear” us when I and other people of color speak but will search out and roll out the red carpet for Wise is a statement to a kind of racism that doesn’t get discussed much – if at all – in our work. Despite all of the white anti-racist presentations given over the years at colleges and universities across the country, institutional racism at these schools remains intact. All the while, activists of color continue to be muffled and marginalized. Even in the ghetto of race discourse we remain tenants and never owners of an analysis that is ours to begin with.

One way that whites can be accountable is to stop being enablers to white supremacy by supplanting the voice of people of color with their own. We do not need white people speaking for people of color. Such talk is crass paternalism. My words do not need to be placed through a white filter in order for them to be understandable. Besides, there are some things that get lost in “translation.” If there is work for whites to do on this issue, then let it be work that addresses this deaf ear of white denial. This is a question of power. Whites that do not listen to people of color do not have a “hearing problem.” They fail to hear and to listen because they can. Those that promote the claim that white people speaking for people of color is a positive only coddle such whites in the comfort of their conformity to a way of life that denies, not just the voices of people of color, but our lives as well.
[…]
This imbalanced relationship between people of color activists and white anti-racists reinforces the power dynamic of white supremacy even within the movement. White anti-racists have been able to evade accountability on this front due to the fact that they wield power and influence over and beyond people of color activists by virtue of their white-skinned privilege. This is a fact that has dogged our movement since the days of Abolition. And to those who question my right to question Tim Wise or suggest that Wise is beyond critique, I say as Henry Highland Garnet said to the white abolitionists of his day, “If it has come to this, that I must think and act as you do, because you are an abolitionist, or be exterminated by your thunder, then I do not hesitate to say that your abolitionism is abject slavery.”

Word to the Wise: Unpacking the White Privilege of Tim Wise

“

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions. Good. Evil. These words do not mean anything to them. They are beyond morality. They are there to make corporate systems function. If insurance companies abandon tens of millions of sick to suffer and die, so be it. If banks and sheriff departments toss families out of their homes, so be it. If financial firms rob citizens of their savings, so be it. If the government shuts down schools and libraries, so be it. If the military murders children in Pakistan or Afghanistan, so be it. If commodity speculators drive up the cost of rice and corn and wheat so that they are unaffordable for hundreds of millions of poor across the planet, so be it. If Congress and the courts strip citizens of basic civil liberties, so be it. If the fossil fuel industry turns the earth into a broiler of greenhouse gases that doom us, so be it. They serve the system. The god of profit and exploitation. The most dangerous force in the industrialized world does not come from those who wield radical creeds, whether Islamic radicalism or Christian fundamentalism, but from legions of faceless bureaucrats who claw their way up layered corporate and governmental machines. They serve any system that meets their pathetic quota of needs.

Chris Hedges (via azspot)

Mind-blowing and terrifying because the ‘system’ is now totally uncontrollable and fagocitating those who built it up and used to benefit the most from it i.e. westerners.

You have created an indomitable monster.  

(via silas216)

One of the reasons I’m tired of these discussions I see on my dash

daniellemertina:

eclecticspectrum:

Is that people don’t push out of white hegemonic thinking patterns. It’s why I made this post. 

When we focus on proving our humanity and worth, we uphold the notion that our humanity is something that must be quantified, weighed, and judged.

The need to be seen as beautiful, intelligent, good, clean, delicate, etc is forced upon us in a society that use those qualifiers to shun others who don’t fit this mold. 

Dismantling oppression is not forcing yourself into the sickness, it’s eradicating it and building something new. 

Rarely do I encounter posts on my corner of Tumblr that fully challenge these problematic thought patterns. 

I think this is complicated because nobody should have to constantly say “I’m beautiful, intelligent, & etc etc too” but it’s not just about feeling good about ourselves. all this stuff is linked to systematic oppression.

fact is that if POC can’t seemingly fit in with middle class white normative values then life becomes a lot harder. which is why folks always be talking about how natural hair doesn’t mean you’re dirty or lazy or unkempt. and why folks always be saying AAVE doesn’t mean you not intelligent… it’s trying to reinforce the idea that you should be valued while being culturally tied to blackness. which complicates the notion that i must give up my blackness in order to be respected in society.

but i know as a student & someone who works, i have to compromise myself all the time. compromise how i speak, what i say, maybe even how i look so that in spite of being a black woman i have a chance at being read as attractive and intelligent… because if i’m not opportunities lessen and sometimes disappear. 

It is basically bound to where and what environment one lives in. If a black person lives at the heart of white supremacy i.e. the west, it will be every difficult, I may even say impossible to escape the conditional nature of their humanity because it is constantly reminded and pushed on them and also it is a matter of survival! It is the idea that what is commonly referred to as ‘self-hate’ stems from self-preservation. 

I remember writing a post on almost the same topic. It was about how problematic it was for black women to assert their worth as human beings by clamoring their beauty. I basically developed the same idea as Afia i.e. doing so does not challenge the white supremacist idea that black people are not wholly humans and that our humanity is incontestable. Now I understand that as black people we have very diverging takes on race and I may never have felt the same pressing need to clamor ‘Black is beautiful’ because I was born and raised in a country where everybody, from the screens to the streets, is black and even if I live in the west now, I spent my early years in a place where my blackness was never linked to my worth.

OP’s post will be very needed right now in  Africa where the white-washing of standards of beauty and norms is progressing through the western media more and more present. Our generation and the next generation of Africans must and CAN be raised by not falling prey of the white fallacy that our humanity is conditional. But is this possible for black people in the west?? I don’t know. Tbh I don’t think so. 

rootsdeep: white parasites. This is the ****BEST**** ILLUSTRATION OF ****WHITE SUPREMACY **** fuckin EVER!! Every single one of you, white people, are literally the parasite sitting there are feeding of the death and exploitation of brown lives!! This is what white privilege looks like!!

rootsdeep:

white parasites.

This is the ****BEST**** ILLUSTRATION OF ****WHITE SUPREMACY **** fuckin EVER!!

Every single one of you, white people, are literally the parasite sitting there are feeding of the death and exploitation of brown lives!! This is what white privilege looks like!!

(via corazon-lleno-de-hielo-seco)

So this is it…

bankuei:

I point out racism produces sociopathic behaviors, white people flip out.

Then the cops shoot the very child they were called to protect.  Shoot the child handcuffed and unable to fight back.  Shoot the child in the head.

It’s always important to keep killing Black people.  Not because they want to kill everybody, they just need to remind everyone they can be killed.  And to keep everyone accustomed and numb and normalized to the murder of innocent people.

“It’s ok to kill Black people.  The cops do it all the time.”

The point is not killing the bodies, the point is to kill the soul by reminding Black folks constantly how little their lives are worth.

The simple action of constantly reinforcing your own value by violently reminding Black people to know their worth(lessness) is all that’s needed to set up this cycle.  And it never matters how blatant or over-the-top the violence is, because when your life is worthless, they can never see it as wrong.

They say I don’t know the meaning of the word sociopathic when I use it.

(via howshinisterofme-deactivated201)

vagabondaesthetics:

dreams-from-my-father:

kavitya:

dreams-from-my-father:

vagabondaesthetics:

dreams-from-my-father:

needynefertiti replied to your post: [snip]

on your last point, this makes me scared about the amount of anti-blackness I have internalized here in the West, especially. I don’t even know anymore and non-black POC do and say some of the most anti-black ish.

I don’t think there is anyone on this planet, black people included, that hasn’t internalized a great deal of anti-blackness. This is why I tend to be so lenient towards people who partake in it. Yet paradoxically I think the idea of POC solidarity is VERY DANGEROUS because it is based on a on-dimensional idea of racism where only white people can be racially oppressive and it never address the racial hierarchy within white supremacy where we black people are firmly at the bottom. So you have these non-black POC teens who think it is totally appropriate for them to use the N-word and do all these anti-black stuff because they are not white, they get away with it. 

If we base the definition of racism on privilege plus power, we see that black people are being RACIALLY OPPRESSED by non-black POC in North Africa, Asia, the middle-East and Latin America.

White people can not be victim of racism. Yet this idea was somehow distorted to support the claim that only white people can be racist. This is a fucking lie. This lie is at the heart of the POC solidarity crap!! Where and when non-black POC have power, they never hesitate to shit on us!! NEVER!! Anti-blackness is rampant and rife in this communities and most of it is TOTALLY INDEPENDENT OF WHITE SUPREMACY and is deeply rooted in those cultures.

Additionally, it functions on another praxis that is very rarely brought up: the nation. Being Black in the US/Canada is different from being Black in continental Latin American countries which is different from Latin American countries on islands which is different from nearly unilateral Black Caribbean countries which also breaks down between colonized islands v. sovereign nations and then there’s of course African immigrants/emigrants scattered across Europe which I’m sure varies with people in the actual continent of Africa at the very bottom.

Edit: I completely forgot the Middle East as well!

Yep, the notion of race is extremely complex and fluid. I think that over-focusing on anti-balckness at the heart of white supremacy i.e. in white counties has hindered our understanding of the different forms of anti-blackness around the world. And this is really problematic because if we fail to understand or recognize those diverse forms of anti-blackness, they will go unchallenged. This is once again one of the adverse effects of the POC solidarity lie.

For instance, anti-blackness in the arab world, is not mostly based on skin color like in the west, it is a complex web of tribalism, anti-africanism (new word lol), even islam plays a role in how a black person will be accepted in the Arab world. 

this is a really great conversation, thank you for posting this.

if it’s okay to say, i don’t think that anti-blackness can be separated from white supremacy (the line about how it is deeply rooted in various POC cultures, i think, is problematic in the sense that it presumes cultural essentialism). i think a lot of the time anti-blackness is taught to all POC part and parcel with white supremacy, similarly to how white supremacy has imperialized and colonized and changed cultural history in such a way that it’s hard to even speculate about what indigenous or “true” cultural history is (not that there is any one true cultural history).

i really appreciate learning about anti-blackness in non-western contexts though, i feel like that’s something that is not talked about enough at all (though it sucks that the onus is on you to talk about it, it should not be like that either). but, yeah, thank you!

You are welcome :-)

When I said that anti-blackness thrives independently from white supremacy I mean that not all of it is a result of whiteness. It is not obviously the case for example in Latin America where anti-blackness is directly linked to white supremacy but in the Arab word, anti-blackness did precede white hegemony (from the 14 centuries of black slavery to the oppression of native African tribes in North Africa such the Touaregs and Nubians)

Thinking that anti-blackness was simply taught to POC by white folks is fallacious for many reasons. First of all, it disregards the fact many non-black POC communities are extremely receptive to white supremacist anti-blackness because they already have some elements of it in their own culture. Secondly, it forces a euro-centric lense on race relations in non-white countries. And I have already explained why this is damageable especially in the Arab world. And thirdly, there is the issue of accountability, in other words, non-black POC getting away with their anti-blackness by simply claiming ‘whitey taught me’ and not assessing their own cultures and the factors that made them so receptive to it. 

Futhermore, it erases the fact that PoC have intersecting histories prior to and independent of white people.

Yep people ALWAYS forget this!! Africans were dealing with Arab people and even some Asian peoples long before Europeans got to Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Our history does not solely start with European colonization.

kavitya:

dreams-from-my-father:

vagabondaesthetics:

dreams-from-my-father:

needynefertiti replied to your post: [snip]

on your last point, this makes me scared about the amount of anti-blackness I have internalized here in the West, especially. I don’t even know anymore and non-black POC do and say some of the most anti-black ish.

I don’t think there is anyone on this planet, black people included, that hasn’t internalized a great deal of anti-blackness. This is why I tend to be so lenient towards people who partake in it. Yet paradoxically I think the idea of POC solidarity is VERY DANGEROUS because it is based on a on-dimensional idea of racism where only white people can be racially oppressive and it never address the racial hierarchy within white supremacy where we black people are firmly at the bottom. So you have these non-black POC teens who think it is totally appropriate for them to use the N-word and do all these anti-black stuff because they are not white, they get away with it. 

If we base the definition of racism on privilege plus power, we see that black people are being RACIALLY OPPRESSED by non-black POC in North Africa, Asia, the middle-East and Latin America.

White people can not be victim of racism. Yet this idea was somehow distorted to support the claim that only white people can be racist. This is a fucking lie. This lie is at the heart of the POC solidarity crap!! Where and when non-black POC have power, they never hesitate to shit on us!! NEVER!! Anti-blackness is rampant and rife in this communities and most of it is TOTALLY INDEPENDENT OF WHITE SUPREMACY and is deeply rooted in those cultures.

Additionally, it functions on another praxis that is very rarely brought up: the nation. Being Black in the US/Canada is different from being Black in continental Latin American countries which is different from Latin American countries on islands which is different from nearly unilateral Black Caribbean countries which also breaks down between colonized islands v. sovereign nations and then there’s of course African immigrants/emigrants scattered across Europe which I’m sure varies with people in the actual continent of Africa at the very bottom.

Edit: I completely forgot the Middle East as well!

Yep, the notion of race is extremely complex and fluid. I think that over-focusing on anti-balckness at the heart of white supremacy i.e. in white counties has hindered our understanding of the different forms of anti-blackness around the world. And this is really problematic because if we fail to understand or recognize those diverse forms of anti-blackness, they will go unchallenged. This is once again one of the adverse effects of the POC solidarity lie.

For instance, anti-blackness in the arab world, is not mostly based on skin color like in the west, it is a complex web of tribalism, anti-africanism (new word lol), even islam plays a role in how a black person will be accepted in the Arab world. 

this is a really great conversation, thank you for posting this.

if it’s okay to say, i don’t think that anti-blackness can be separated from white supremacy (the line about how it is deeply rooted in various POC cultures, i think, is problematic in the sense that it presumes cultural essentialism). i think a lot of the time anti-blackness is taught to all POC part and parcel with white supremacy, similarly to how white supremacy has imperialized and colonized and changed cultural history in such a way that it’s hard to even speculate about what indigenous or “true” cultural history is (not that there is any one true cultural history).

i really appreciate learning about anti-blackness in non-western contexts though, i feel like that’s something that is not talked about enough at all (though it sucks that the onus is on you to talk about it, it should not be like that either). but, yeah, thank you!

You are welcome :-)

When I said that anti-blackness thrives independently from white supremacy I mean that not all of it is a result of whiteness. It is not obviously the case for example in Latin America where anti-blackness is directly linked to white supremacy but in the Arab word, anti-blackness did precede white hegemony (from the 14 centuries of black slavery to the oppression of native African tribes in North Africa such the Touaregs and Nubians)

Thinking that anti-blackness was simply taught to POC by white folks is fallacious for many reasons. First of all, it disregards the fact many non-black POC communities are extremely receptive to white supremacist anti-blackness because they already have some elements of it in their own culture. Secondly, it forces a euro-centric lense on race relations in non-white countries. And I have already explained why this is damageable especially in the Arab world. And thirdly, there is the issue of accountability, in other words, non-black POC getting away with their anti-blackness by simply claiming ‘whitey taught me’ and not accessing their own cultures and the factors that made them so receptive to it. 

(via andiante)

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RENAMING: Dutch colonists called the Khoi-khoi people “Hottentots” (stutterers). Russians called the northwest Siberian Nentsy “Samoyed” (cannibals). These are blatant examples, but many nationalities are still called by unflattering names given by their enemies: “Sioux” (Lakota); “Miao” (Hmong); “Lapps” (Saami); “Basques” (Euskadi); “Eskimos” (Inuit). European names have replaced the originals in many places: Nigeria, Australia, New Caledonia, New Britain, etc. (But “Rhodesia” bit the dust, after a revolution.)

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES: Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media (via cosmicyoruba)
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DEGRADATION OF MEANINGS: “Mumbo jumbo” has become a cliché signifying meaningless superstitions, but it comes from a Mandinke word — mama dyambo — for a ritual staff bearing the image of a female ancestor. (Look it up in any good dictionary.) “Fetish” now connotes an obsessive sexual fixation, but originated as a Portuguese interpretation of sacred West African images as “sorcery” (feitição). The holy city of Islam is often appropriated in phrases like “a Mecca for shoppers.

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES: Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media (via cosmicyoruba)
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POLARIZATION: “Scientific thought” vs. “primitive belief”; “undeveloped” vs “civilized”; or “the world’s great religions” vs. “tribal superstitions,” “cults,” “idolatry” or “devil-worship.” Depending on where it was created, a sculpture could either be a “masterpiece of religious art” or an “idol,” “fetish,” or “devil.” Few people realize that “Western” scientists did not match the accuracy of ancient Maya calculations of the length of the solar year until the mid-20th century

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES: Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media (via cosmicyoruba)
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The BERING STRAIT DOCTRINE insists that all indigenous American peoples came across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, filtering down through Central America into South America. Problem: numerous archaeological sites in the Americas predate any possible Bering Strait migration by many thousands of years. Access from Alaska to the rest of North America was blocked for millennia by two great ice sheets that covered Canada. An narrow opening that might have allowed passage appeared much too late (about 13,500 years ago) to explain the growing evidence that people were living in both North and South America much earlier than these “first” migrations.

By 1997-98, the tide of opinion began to turn: several scientific conclaves declared that a majority of attending scholars rejected the Bering Strait theory as a full explanation of how the Americas were peopled.The long-doctrinal hypothesis of Clovis hunters as the first immigrants is crumbling before the new dating, as hundreds of pre-Clovis sites pile up: Cactus Hill, Virginia (13,500 BP); Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania (14,000 - 17,000 Before Present); Monte Verde (13,500 BP); Pedra-Furada, Brazil (15,000 BP, and possibly as old as 32,000 BP).

Bering Strait diehards discount the oral histories of indigenous Americans. In spite of the huge diversity among the American peoples and differences between most Americans and east Asians, all are declared to be of “Mongoloid racial origin.” After the initial press stampede declaring “Kennewick Man” to be “white,” study of the genetic evidence shows something entirely different. Instead, it appears that there have been several waves of migration: from central China, from the ancient Jomon culture of Japan, from south Asia or the Pacific islands. And “Luzia,” an 11,500-year-old female skeleton in Brazil “appeared to be more Negroid in its cranial features than Mongoloid,” in the stodgy anthropological terminology of the New York Times (Nov 9, 1999). (Actually she most closely resembles aborignal Australians.) But there is also a uniquely North American X-haploid group of mitochondrial DNA, which has yet to be explained.

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES: Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media (via cosmicyoruba)
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The AFRICAN GAP DOCTRINE: After examining the first humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, this historical approach completely skips over most of the African archaeological record. It discusses ancient Egypt but ascribes its civilization to “the Middle East,” denying its African identity and archaeological connections with Saharan and southern Nilotic civilizations. Saharan civilization, Ile-Ife or Mwanamutapa are not discussed at all. Africa is simply dropped from historical consideration until the era of European slaving and colonization, when it is portrayed as culturally and technologically deficient. The existence of female spheres of power in Africa is ignored.

RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES: Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media (via cosmicyoruba)