A.H. Septimius's Blog, page 2

The blundering generals leading Negrodom to death. Part one: Afua Hirsch

With the release and excessive laudation of Marvel’s Black Panther, and Afua Hirsch’s much publicised book ‘Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging’, new battles are taking place with increasing aggression and heightened passion.  As the days pass and the stakes continue to rise it becomes easier to chart the course, and reveal the instigators of this quasi war. We see more clearly who it is that seeks to make war upon ‘everyday racism that plagues British society’. It becomes evident who, in fact, deems the release of a comic book movie an ‘Afrocentric epic’ which is ‘both a celebration of blackness and perfectly timed political commentary’, with the ability to render some of the warring party’s concerns but a distant memory.

These scholars, journalists, and academics lead the way as they have attained a position of prominence within society which grants them a stage upon which to perform, speak and thus lead. They do indeed perform and speak; but, where exactly are they leading the black race? Who are they?  What are the credentials which has granted them a position of prominence? Are they qualified to lead? Do the masses wish them to lead? These are questions all those who class themselves as black and ‘of colour’ need to ask themselves. For whether they know or not, approve or disapprove, they are being led by men and women who have no mandate, dubious motives, and little sense; but who lead them nonetheless. After decades of talented race leaders, many of whom fell upon honourable swords, what we are left with now is educated liberals with dusky skin, warped notions, and limited vision.

It is the age of the blundering generals.

After a stinging experience with white women on national television, Afua Hirsch opined ‘It’s fascinating when white people, who invariably have no personal experience of the frequent othering and subtle prejudice that comes from being born or raised in a country that does not recognise your unconditional right to its identity, tell you what you have and have not experienced.’ For those who are unaware, Hirsch is a mixed-raced woman whose father is Jewish and mother Ghanaian (her husband too is Ghanaian as we are repeatedly informed). She grew up in white ‘middle-class’ Wimbledon, attended private schools, went to Oxford University and completed the PPE course (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) which those who seek to govern this country ensure they take.

In an article the course was described as ‘the Oxford degree that runs Britain’. ‘Oxford PPE is more than a factory for politicians and the people who judge them for a living. It also gives many of these public figures a shared outlook: confident, internationalist, intellectually flexible, and above all sure that small groups of supposedly well-educated, rational people, such as themselves, can and should improve Britain and the wider world.’ Little wonder then, she has undergone a ‘lifelong search for identity’ which has culminated, at age 36, in Brit(ish): little more than a memoir of racial befuddlement.

[image error]

‘A country that does not recognize your unconditional right to its identity’, Hirsch calls England, in a fit of infantile ire at love unrequited. The Ebony Muse has indeed mused over what it is that those who have asked for legal equality, and received it, mean when they deny this equality exists (https://goo.gl/ebG7Pa). In what ways does the state not recognise mixed-raced people’s right to be deemed British? As loathsome as is this history of the British government and its nefarious attitude toward its black subjects, it is 2018; black and white are legal beneath the law. The Ebony Muse has no love for the British Government. Yet, it has for honesty and intellectual integrity.

When a census was conducted in 2011, a plethora of racial categories were included to encompass an increasingly diverse populous as the table below shows. Yet, as a former barrister Hirsch knows the law intimately; it is not legal classifications of which she speaks. The complaint, beneath the deceptive rhetoric, is that parts of the population, which does not include officialdom, do not recognise her new right to their historic identity. In short, some white English people still recognise that she has a racial heritage beyond British shores; oh, the horror!

It is clear that now the war for legal equality has been won, the war for lover’s parity has begun.

Hirsh bemoans the fact the fact the she is asked ‘the question’ one which evidently plagues her entire being, ‘where are you really from?’ As if blackness is something to be ashamed of, something ugly to hide behind glorious white Britishness, a thing to be left in the past in the face of an elevated status. Well, The Ebony Muse encourages all those with a single drop of African blood to dismiss those mortified by their blackness; and when the apparent dreaded question is asked, respond with unshakeable pride ‘Africa!’

[image error]

‘The high priestess’ of the Church of Anti-Racism, as she has been dubbed, after a career as a barrister worked as a correspondent for The Guardian (who themselves have questions to answer about the black agenda being set in their pages). ‘I seek white acceptance’ she announces in an interview which reads as a Fanonian case study ‘And I think that is a huge problem for us: in many subtle ways, people of colour in this country are given the idea that success is achieving white acceptance. And so it’s something that people aspire to – to be recognised by mainstream institutions, to behave.’ As a fortnightly correspondent for The Guardian, author of a race-related book, and having made television appearances (not to mention her place in the bosom of bourgeois PPE society) Hirsch has been able to position herself as one of Britain’s foremost thinkers and speakers on race in Britain; a weighty title to bear.

Yet, it is clear, she is not fit to lead. She speaks of ‘people of colour’ and their travails as a ‘huge problem for us’. When exactly did she abandon the middle-class, Oxbridge, PPE set and decide she was part of a black ‘us’? And who exactly accepted her entrance? Or leadership? Her book reads like a sorrowful diary of a racially confused, mixed-race girl, in a white affluent world; with undertones of racial longing and overtones of disappointment that white people recognised that she was, well, not white. This is not an apprenticeship for leadership of any black community. It is little more than a well-baked recipe for disaster.

We have seen the outcome before. People disillusioned with the fact that their own ‘elevated blackness’ is not worthy of a place in the white world attempt to rule over the lowly blacks who will accept them. They often do more damage, on what is little more than a personal crusade, than oppressive officialdom itself. What does the black community want with a woman who self-admittedly seeks white acceptance? What can she bring to the struggle, save a cornucopia of dubious tales, and self-loathing manifested in powder-puff academia?

A critic, in the degraded Evening Standard, remarked ‘Do black people have it harder than other minorities? Probably, yes, but there is no clear discussion of this in her book nor of why black Africans have tended to do better in Britain than black Caribbean’s who, conversely, are more successful in the US.’ Herein lies the grand paradox. What is being sought is not an intellectual, political, or economic solution to the problems ‘people of colour’ face today. Instead what we have is a very public show of one person’s fractured and mendacious relationship with their limited blackness and an unashamed attempt to apply those experiences to a formula to improve Britain (not the black race).

For someone who took the country’s leading course, in one of its historic academic powerhouses, her lack of intellectual ideas on the problems of race is truly scandalous. It is worthless to reel of a plethora of racist anecdotes that you, and your ‘BME elite’ friends have suffered, say that is not right, and move on to the next money spinning article or book. All one has done is told a melange of meaningless stories, exhumed your own inner demons, proposed no solution to the great race questions, taken our money from your book sales and sailed off back to bourgeois dolour.

This is not only a general who blunders, but one who leaves the field of battle, laden with the wealth of the dying, having fired not a single shot in anger.

“The message I’m trying to get across is there’s not a healthy space to explore our history and why we are the society we are,” she claims. Hirsh has so many conflicting identities that she says ‘we’ with unthinking freedom, about such varying groups, that without her zealous repetition you would forget she is a ‘woman of colour’. It is ‘we’ for the black community, ‘we’ for the mixed raced community, ‘we’ for the of colour community, ‘we’ for the British community; presumably its ‘we’ for the Jewish community too, ‘we’ for the Oxbridge set, ‘we’ for the middle-class group of which she is a member, and ‘we’ for the BME experiment of which she is certainly a zealous high-priestess. In historical academia they talk of ‘fluid identity’ for people who adapt to new cultural surroundings, acquire new identities, and merge these new identities with existing cultural facets. Hirsch epitomises this fluidity; her identity meandering wildly, bursting dams, criss-crossing continents, conjoining more powerful streams, in a disorientated frenzy to escape its source.

“A lot of British people,” she argues, “don’t fully accept that you can look like me and be British. That’s the issue.” This is axiomatically the central issue behind her misguided crusade. White people do not accept me. It always comes down to the same issue for the fraudulent contemporary revolutionaries. They attempt to reside in the white world as a fully pledged and accepted member; the white world does not accept them to the extent they hoped, and they tiptoe over to the masses purporting to lead the black race and solve its problems. The issue is not black suffering, poverty, mis-education, and mis-direction. It is not a lack of competent leaders, independent political movements, intellectual foresight, scholarly unity, nor academic creativity or independence. It is not the erosion of family values, the adoption of British culture, the alarming death of novel academic thought, the end of radicalism, the disunity of constituent parts, the utter failure of its leaders, or the nefarious nature of the British state.

What it all comes down to, in the end, is the old pathetic cry of ‘I tried to fit in and they won’t accept me’, and then inevitably ‘we must change society for all (by the way: including the group I happen to physically resemble). This is not the war cry of a people seeking freedom, but the wailing of a confused blunderer so eager to be accepted into the bosom of whiteness she is blinded by her own self-seeking desperation. She bewails “the failure of Britishness to be an identity that we all accept encompasses someone like me” with the same revulsion with which she lamented her blackness in youth, adolescence and adulthood. This is dangerous general. One who veils her reforms for the improvement of the British state as a programme of racial awakening for oppressed ‘people of colour’.

Like her classmates: BBC’s political editor, Oxford PPE graduate Nick Robinson, BBC’s economics editor, Oxford PPE graduate; Robert Peston, the host of ITV political show Peston on Sunday, Oxford PPE graduate; Paul Johnson, British civil servant and economist, currently serving as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies; former prime minister, Oxford PPE graduate David Cameron; Former Labour shadow chancellor, Oxford PPE graduate Ed Balls; former Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, Oxford PPE graduate Danny Alexander; former Lib Dem minister, Oxford PPE graduate Sir Ed Davey; former Ukip MP, Oxford PPE graduate Mark Reckless; Michael Crick, Oxford PPE graduate and political correspondent of Channel 4 News; and Times and the Sun proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, PPE at Oxford; she is part of a political/media British elite which has no interest in the improvement of the black community, but have a stake in the improvement of the British state. It should never be forgotten that Hirsh talks first of the ills that ‘plagues British society’, not the black community. She is no race leader, but a Oxbridge, English reformer; tout court.

[image error]

‘It’s hard to talk about the personal in a public setting at the best of times.’ Hirsch says disingenuously (all she does is talk about the personal) ‘when the content relates to the experience – since childhood – of white people delegitimising your voice, then having to defend that before a group of white people who attempt to delegitimise your voice, is doubly painful and draining.’ So, why bother talking? One may reasonably ask. The answer is that which is always the case with these racial parvenus. Personal glory (or wealth, her book is £16.99), dubious motives (more domestic reformer than race leader) and racial confusion (no need for an insert at this stage).

‘At the same time,’ Hirsch says while positioning herself as Britain’s foremost speaker on race, ‘I don’t want to feed into the idea that I am the black voice. If there’s an issue of race, you have to come to me: I’m the black police.” Hirsch sounds as fraudulent as Tiberius, refusing Augustus’ crown on the senate floor, while all Rome knew that there was nothing he desired more. The senate did not have to ask many more times before an unequivocal no became a foreboding yes. And the tyrannical blundering began. Perhaps Hirsch, like so many others who are culpable, will look back, as did Napoleon, and say: ‘had true people of colour properly advised me, had black people chastised me at times, Negrodom would have ruled supreme.’

Matters little, it shall be too late, blundering generals do not win wars.

 

 

(Amazon, n.d.) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brit-ish-Race-Identity-Belonging/dp/1911214284

(Rose, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/03/marvel-black-panther-chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan

(Anyangwe, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/01/black-panther-africa-colour-daniel-kaluuya-lupita-nyongo

(Hirsch, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/white-people-tv-racism-afua-hirsch

(Beckett, 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-oxford-university-degree-that-rules-britain

(Amazon, n.d.) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brit-ish-Race-Identity-Belonging/dp/1911214284quote from David Olusoga

(Statistics, 2015) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/articles/2011censusanalysisethnicityandreligionofthenonukbornpopulationinenglandandwales/2015-06-18

(The Guardian , 2018 ) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/leila-slimani-afua-hirsch-lullaby-british-interview

(Goodhart, 2018) https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/british-on-race-identity-and-belonging-by-afua-hirsch-review-a3737946.html

(The Guardian , 2018 ) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/leila-slimani-afua-hirsch-lullaby-british-interview

(Goodhart, 2018) https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/british-on-race-identity-and-belonging-by-afua-hirsch-review-a3737946.html

(The Guardian , 2018 ) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/leila-slimani-afua-hirsch-lullaby-british-interview

(Beckett, 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-oxford-university-degree-that-rules-britain

(The Guardian , 2018 ) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/leila-slimani-afua-hirsch-lullaby-british-interview

(Hirsch, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/white-people-tv-racism-afua-hirsch

(The Guardian , 2018 ) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/leila-slimani-afua-hirsch-lullaby-british-interview

 

 

Advertisements

Note to Negrodom, the Dutch are perverse. What is it that Europeans get from painting their faces black, that black people just don’t get?

Nikolaos of Myra was a fourth-century Christian, apparently, imprisoned by Emperor Diocletian and freed by his successor Constantine the Great. Though no contemporary documentary evidence exists, as with all tales in the Christian religion, it is said that he attended the Council of Nicaea and became bishop of Myra. In death, he was worshipped throughout Europe and was transported to America by Dutch colonists where he became Santa Claus in place of the Dutch Sinterklaas (a variant of St Nicholas). The nineteenth century Americans would transform an old saint into Father Christmas; and the rest, as they say, is history.

[image error][3] (Khomami, 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

Note to Negrodom, the Dutch are perverse. What is it that Europeans get from painting their faces black, that black people just don’t get?

[image error]

Black women, children and men are being raped by UN ‘peacekeepers’; who cares?

There is no need for gaudy rhetoric, or embellished truths; in this matter the facts are clear. UN soldiers sent to Africa to bring peace, and stability are instead abusing their authority to rape women, men, and generally children. This may come as a shock to many who have heard of the travails of Hollywood actresses, British Parliamentarians, Trump associates, adolescent athletes, theatre boys, and whomever else’s pain has morphed into hashtag movements. Yet, it has been almost a year since UN Secretary-General António Guterres was forced to outline a ‘new victim-centred approach to prevent and respond to such abuses committed by those serving under the UN flag.’ Let us be absolutely clear, once more; the ‘abuses’ the United Nations is forced to respond to is the rape of black men, women, and children by its ‘peacekeepers’.

“I fully recognise that no magic wand exists to end the problem’’ says UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Raping black women and children has become so ingrained as a normality amongst certain groups and institutions that it is seen as impossible to stop. It’s hard to recall a century when the servants of overbearing western institutions were not raping Africans. In the twentieth century, the Congo was host to Belgians who did not leave until they had enslaved, mutilated, and raped the populous. In the nineteenth century, the servants of the British Empire forced themselves upon black women from the Indies to Cape. From the eighteenth onward the ever-debauched French forced themselves upon black women from Martinique to Algiers, and from Guiana to Senegal. In the seventeenth century, as the ships crossed the oceans, tearing child from mother, women from the Gold Coast to the Congo were abused upon the ships that would take them to bondage. When they arrived, they would discover that the rape had only just begun. The Portuguese had a presence in Africa in the sixteenth century, who can doubt that they defiled the women even then? Matters little, it is the twenty-first; over to the United Nations, the rapist baton is passed on and on.

[image error]

More cases of rape by peacekeepers have occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Haiti, Liberia, South Sudan and Ivory Coast than in all other UN missions combined. Marsha Henry, Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics, remarked that there is ‘always an element of racism’ involved ‘in these contexts’. The use of the word ‘always’, and the phrase ‘in these contexts’ are significant. For the always describes the historical time-frame, of the abuse suffered in the relationship of disproportionate power, which occurs ‘in these contexts’.

In short, when the worker of a powerful European institution comes into contact with the subject of a weak African government he assumes the disproportionate power of the institution and is able to wield it over the powerless African subject. The peacekeeper, Fanonian theory shows us, becomes the embodiment of Europe; powerful, benevolent and dangerous. His power is projected through the institution of the UN itself. Benevolence renders him the philanthropist, not the pitiful receiver of charity and protection; that he is dangerous is remembered well, reinforced by the arms he carries, and confirmed by the organisation he represents. Although the variables have shifted, slightly, the components in a relationship of unequal power remain the same. As the African woman was raped in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century, so she is raped now. What has altered in the power structure which could change this conclusion?

[image error]

The governments of the nations which these ‘peacekeepers’ enter are weak, if governments at all. They can do little to enforce their own will on the country as a whole, let alone the upon the United Nations. The regions these ‘peacekeepers’ enter are often ravaged by war, stricken with poverty, and bereft of government authority. Thus, the UN’s well-armed, and well-supplied soldiers often become the highest authority in a region. However, the men hired by the overbearing institutions are not solely white European, bequeathed racist ideologies. The UN ‘peacekeepers’ are made up of men from nations across the globe. Indians, Chinese, Indonesians, Pakistani’s, Nepalese, Uruguayans, and Brazilians are all represented in the top twenty-five contributors to the peacekeeping missions. The Europeans, of course, are still represented by the French, English, Spanish and Baltic nations amongst others.

It is the presence of African soldiers which is most disturbing. Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Chad, Morocco, Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Togo, Niger, Nigeria, and Tanzania are all astonishingly in the top twenty-five contributors. The ‘rampant’ rape is not perpetrated by white men alone; men of Asia and Africa, clothed in the western power of the UN, are unashamedly defiling the women of Africa. History has shown how men of colour are able to step into role’s traditionally reserved for racist white men and adopt the persona with a gusto that evades even the original perpetrator. It is, in fact, a role which is highly desired by particular men and is accompanied by a plethora of extras which the particular male is often bereft of when outside of the white role. Yet, the moment they are able they to step into the framework of oppression they do with a conscious viciousness which is deeply disturbing and utterly contemptible. Such is the way of the psychologically conquered.

Reports of rape have emanated from The Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Mozambique, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; in short, everywhere UN soldiers have been in Africa. Such is the scale of rape in the UN’s ranks that in 2003, incumbent UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was forced to issue a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ on rape. Himself a Ghanaian, Kofi Anan must surely have questioned his place in such an organisation. The Associated Press revealed, after an investigation, that between 2004 and 2016, almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse were made against UN peacekeepers.’ Although these figures may seem high, we must factor in the distinct likelihood that they are massaged, and the real figures are in fact significantly higher. After all, until the report was leaked, the UN was loathed to even admit there was a problem at all. They suppressed the findings that eleven Frenchmen, three men from Chad and two from Equatorial Guinea had sexually abused Africans. Anders Kompass, former director of field operations at the UN human rights office in Geneva, leaked the report to French authorities. The allegations of the rape of thirteen children included the sodomy of boys ranging in age from nine to thirteen. The UN, as secretive as the Roman Catholic Church, as protective of its rapists as Rome, denounced Kompass and placed him under investigation.

In August 2015, after the rape of a twelve-year-old girl, a teenager and his father, Amnesty International implicated MINUSCA soldiers. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was forced to ask for the resignation of the head of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). In the first three months of 2017, five ‘peacekeepers’ were accused of sexual abuse; including a Romanian military observer who fathered a child, with an under-aged African girl, and was suspended. ‘The United Nations is raping children’, an article in The Independent stated. With reports of ‘peacekeepers’ offering children cookies, in return for access to their genitalia and in exchange for their innocence, we must wonder what lies beneath when ‘even the UN recognises that this is the tip of the iceberg.’

[image error]

“Let us declare in one voice: We will not tolerate anyone committing or condoning sexual exploitation and abuse. We will not let anyone cover up these crimes with the UN flag,” stated Mr Guterres. The problem with the ‘one voice’ is that it is not African. Where is the African Union? Where are the politicians of the African nations mentioned? The activists? The human rights lawyers? The police? The community workers? Where is African law, when its women and children need protection? Now, as far too often, the answer is shamefully: nowhere to be found. ‘When it comes to the UN, justice is extremely rare,’ stated Beatrice Lindstrom, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Evidently, justice will not be provided by the Africa Union, nor by national authorities; and never, by the United Nations.

Who then, can the violated of Africa look to for justice? I ask this in a week where Oxfam workers are exposed bedding black prostitutes in Haiti and Chad. Time itself has proven that neither their governments, nor their judiciaries, nor the quasi-benevolent institutions of the west have the ability or desire to protect the vulnerable. So accepted is this fact that in a year of Harvey Weinstein and #Metoo, Larry Nassar and the hundredth anniversary of semi-enfranchisement, not a word has been said of the raped women and children of Africa. When African girls were taken by Muslim terrorists, it fit the western narrative to speak publicly and proclaim boldly ‘bring back our girls’; when African girls are raped by men wearing UN uniforms, ceaselessly, not a mumbling word is uttered.

Shall we just wait then, in indifferent silence, until the institutions of the west locate the ‘magic wand’ which will bring to an end their unceasing rape of Africans?

[image error]

 

 

(MacLeod, 2017)

 (United Nations, 2017)

(United Nations, 2017)

 (Essa, 2017)

(Nations, 2016)

(United Nations, 2017)

(Essa, 2017)

(sputniknews, 2015)

(BBC, 2017)

(MacLeod, 2017)

(MacLeod, 2017)

(United Nations, 2017)

(Essa, 2017)

(Quinn, 2018)

Too many Black men dying in police custody? Prepare the graves, more will be murdered

What more can be said? What more information can be given here that the black community does not already know? What words can possibly be written which will sooth the hearts of those who mourn their dead? How much more anger can be expressed at a racist police force, biased judiciary, or emotionless politicians? How many more marches, protests, rallies and funerals will we be forced to attend? How many more tears are to be shed, by weeping mothers and fathers, before we say this is really it; it gets no better?

With 223 black people killed by the police force in America in 2017, following the 233 of 2016 and 259 in 2015 (whilst a mixed-race president was in office); what can we expect from 2018 and all following years but more of the same. For it shall get no better. Despite all the tears, the marches, the outrage, the apologies, and the false promises which follow; the reality is that the black man and woman have long been, and still evidently are seen as a threat. One which must be civilised, policed, or killed. Unfortunately, for the black community, all three strategies are enforced at once.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission, now the Independent Office for Police Conduct, expressed their ‘concern’ at the disproportional number of black people killed in police custody. The Chair of the IPCC, Anne Owers Dame Commander of the British Empire stated that “We need to look closely between the relationship between ethnicity and the use of force,” after it was revealed that “Of those (eleven who died in police custody), five men were black or mixed race, one was a black woman and the remainder were white.”

[image error]

Those who seek to improve these figures, and the society which produces them, will say the search for answers has intensified. But we have all seen this elaborate and deceitful play before. Report, after report, is commissioned. Investigations are launched. Criminal proceeding are begun (then quietly dropped). Politicians, particularly the ones with darker skin, express their disbelief at the type of world we live in and pledge to fight to improve it. Police commanders are issued new directives. Everyone feels better about themselves (save the grieving families of course) and society goes merrily on until next year’s figures are released.

On with the murderous dance.

Why? Because, as the imperial dame stated, ‘the stereotyping of young Black men as ‘dangerous, violent and volatile’ is a longstanding trope that is ingrained in the minds of many in our society.’ Ingrained in the minds of many is quite a damning statement, and given the British proclivity for understatement, we may translate that as ingrained in the minds of most. To reside in a country, as a minority and be considered ‘dangerous, violent, and volatile’ by a majority group who have a long history of displaying those same characteristics is a dangerous combination. The number of dead on the other side of the Atlantic is testament to that fact.

The black community has attempted to change the opinions of those who consider them dangerous, none can doubt that. It has become anglicised, speaks the English language, goes to state schools and colleges, finds a job, goes to football, watches (and acts in) national soaps operas, drinks in pubs, contributes to, is influenced by and influences national culture, and raises a family who is by definition English. The black community has every right to stop, and ask; what else can I do? Why is it that ‘people who identify themselves as Black or Black British are over-represented amongst arrests for notifiable offences compared with the general population.’

[image error]

The colonial vestiges never seem to die, somehow surviving amidst all the talk of progression, equality, and assimilation. Their perverse ideas and stereotypical notions seem to linger threateningly, pervading society and its institutions; ever contagious and thus, ever-present.

The report stated that ‘It is not uncommon to hear comments from police officers about a young Black man having ‘superhuman strength’ or being ‘impervious to pain’ and, often wholly inaccurately, as the ‘biggest man I have ever encountered’.

It is clear that the remnants of colonial thinking continue to linger in the subconscious. A ‘constellation of postulates’, as Fanon called it, rendering the Negro ‘a stimulus to anxiety’. Black people are still viewed through imperial lenses; not by entire populous, but enough for old ideologies to endure. A hatred for the black man, a Victorian commentator pronounced, was ‘characteristic of almost all Anglo-Saxons’. Such powerfully articulated, widely accepted, and all-encompassing ideas do not slip quickly and quietly from collective memory. Thus, the notion of the black savage as a giant animalistic specimen, bulging eyes, muscular apish body, repulsively dusky skin, abnormally sized penis, inconceivable strength, graced with a treacherous heart, and ungovernable mind has survived. Then, as now, the black man is an untrustworthy and dangerous subject.

[image error]

The release of statistics showing a rise in violent crime in England has been accompanied by societal outrage and a knowing nod toward the usual suspects. Almost instantly the debate centres around whether more ‘stop and search’ can halt this violence; all the while knowing that stop and search impacts the black community more than any other. Black people are eight times more likely to be stop and searched than their white counterparts. Thus, when we read between the lines of the rhetoric, what is really being said is, what has always been thought, ‘intensify the police pressure on the black community and crime will fall’. Politicians, white and black, have already begun making television appearances; most calling for an escalation of hands on policing.

The dust has yet to settle since the release of the figures and the Mayor Sadiq Khan has already ‘vowed’ to respond with a ‘significant’ increase of stop and search tactics in his city. The Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick, despite presiding over a cash-strapped police service, already knows ‘exactly’ what she would do with any extra funds and resources. Woe to the black community, then, if ever she receives it. Indignant politicians, bay for the blood of the Prime Minister. ‘Reckless Tory cuts’, warned the Shadow Policing Minister Louise Haigh, have ‘risked public safety.’ Just as Tennyson warned the then Prime Minister William Gladstone, so Mrs May is being warned; ‘we are too tender to our savages’, allow us to oppress the blacks; for remember always ‘niggers are tigers, niggers are tigers.’ Where in the nineteenth century they were the ‘sable mob’ which ‘revelled in blood’, in the twenty-first they are the ‘terrifying gang’ which ‘blights’ the capital; still black, still dangerous, still need to be killed for order to reign.

Returning to the report; it acknowledges that the black community resents playing the role of the giant savage, with all its perverse connotations and undeserving consequences. “Deaths of people from BAME communities, in particular young black men, resonate with the black community’s experience of systemic racism, and reflect wider concerns about discriminatory over-policing, stop and search, and criminalisation.” In 2018 the black community are still forced to ask the questions their ancestors did: why don’t they like us? Now, as then, the answers they receive shall not be to their liking.

Yet, the white community begin to ask themselves, again, in their own pursuit of societal excellence: why don’t we like them? Why are our institutions biased against them? How can we solve it? The section on race, in the imperial dame’s report, ends with nine recommendations about what the police force should do. ‘Training should take the form of a two-way dialogue allowing officers to hear the experiences of people from BAME backgrounds and include participation of bereaved families. Police training should include an understanding of institutional racism, the Macpherson report, the social context of Black deaths in custody and the impact they have had on public confidence.’  A ‘two-way dialogue’; presumably where black people prove to officers that they are not truly savages, but bereaved humans tired of persecution. Followed by an attempt to grasp the intricacies of institutional racism with a read through the review of Stephen Lawrence’s death; concluded by a pow-wow about the social context of black death. This is so far beyond laughable, it’s almost an English farce. If this is the best answer to the psychological perversion of the ‘many’, societal oppression of black folk, and institutional racism of western institutions that can be found then call off the inquiry, begin hiring the grave diggers and wait for the hastily arriving black dead.

[image error]

This writer has written before about the black pursuit of white love, and its useless folly. The pursuit of sympathy, in order to halt police brutality, is another grand fantasy. Racial stereotyping, bequeathed to the ages by empire, cannot be undone in a generation, nor in a century, nor evidently in five centuries. The collective national memory, and its archaic institutions, remembers well that the black person was a volatile and dangerous savage thirty years ago, a hundred years ago, and five hundred years ago. The concepts, notions, and indeed perceived facts about the black man/woman which were woven into the national fabrics of Europe and the Americas cannot simply dissipate. They are as enduring as the institutions which uphold their memory.

Just as many a black man still believes that he is sexually gifted in comparison to the white man, so many a white man still believes the black man is more wild and dangerous than any other. These colonial vestiges have endured, and evolved because people continue to believe them. No amount of marching, tears, words, convictions, or training courses can change that. How do you change a people from seeing you as ‘dangerous, violent, and volatile’ when those who believe it found the ideas wrapped in hundreds of years of verifiable memories? The foremost authorities search for answer, none yet has been found.

Woe to the black man.

[image error]

(The Washington Post, 2018)

DBE

(Dodd, The Guardian , 2018)

(Dodd, The Guardian , 2018)

(QC, 2017 )

(Roe, 2017)

(QC, 2017 ) 88

(The Decline and Fall of the British Empire Piers Brendon, 2008) 149

(The Guardian , 2017)

(The Guardian , 2018)

(The Guardian , 2017)

(The Daily Mail , 2018 )

(Brendon, 2008) 149

(Brendon, 2008)149

(The Evening Standard , 2012)

(QC, 2017 ) 93

(QC, 2017 ) 93

 

 

Advertisements

The pursuit of love, the Three Transgressions and the race to the top…. (or the bottom)

‘What does the black man want?’ Frantz Fanon asked in his famous work ‘Black Skin White Masks’. Ask again, sixty-six years later, and the findings remain as warped and subconsciously perverse as they did over half a century ago. Yet, yesterday’s slavish desires manifest in different ways in today’s world. What today’s black man/woman desires is to reside in a majority white country, as a minority member and to be treated exactly the same as a member of the majority group specifically by the white majority group.

In the historical ‘interactions’ between black race and its white counterpart there has been the matter of the Three transgressions: Atlantic Slave Trade, Western Bondage, and the European conquest of Africa. All constitute historical episodes which contribute to todays relationship of inequality between Africa and Europe and thus also the between the descendents of Africa and Europe within the western world. The offspring of the cotton-picking and the sugarcane-cutting slaves never returned home; the lands of bondage became the freed slave’s ‘home’. After emancipation, gradually came enfranchisement, and the illusion and delusions of parity.

[image error]Slave Trade From Africa to the Americas 1650-1860

Here we are 185 years after the British ended slavery and 153 years after the Americans added the thirteenth amendment; black and white are equal before the law.

So, if beneath English law a man born in England, with an English name, who speaks the English language, is considered an Englishman; then surely, he is an Englishman? Matters little the colour of his skin, or the language of his ancestors; for contemporary nationality is colourless. So the story goes.

What is left to achieve then?

The unceasing calls for ‘greater representation’ inform us with beggarly clarity. More black faces on television, more black voices on the radio, more black politicians in the House of Commons, more black CEO’s in the boardroom, more black women on the silver screen, more black characters in the theatre, more black policemen in leadership positions, more black teachers in schools, more black bobbies on the beat, more black football managers, more black female beauty icons, and so on, and so on, and so endlessly on. In short, take as many as possible from the estimated million strong black community and thrust them in positions of public prominence with all haste.

Yet, in this race to the apparent top the question must be posed: what exactly is being sought at the finish line?

It seems to be a form of social acceptance which when dovetailed with legal equality would give the black man parity with the white. A parity which grants him access to all areas of society as a fully fledged Englishman/woman. To be a recognized and appreciated symbol of English beauty, as is the white English woman. To be considered to have as trustworthy a face as the white person to present the news on mainstream television. To be considered as marketable to lead blockbuster films, as adept at overseeing FTSE 100 companies, as adroit at managing football clubs, as capable at running the police force, and so on, and so on, and so pathetically on.

In short, to inhibit a society in which the black man is recognized as black with a smile, a wink, and open arms; all the while ignoring the fact that he is black and recognizing only his ‘Britishness’. This is no longer a question of the law, but of the mind. What the black man clearly wants is the esteem of his white counterparts, his approval and above all his love.

[image error]Cotton picking at ‘home’

For he does not say, I am misrepresented on television, I will create my own channel. Or, my image is falsely Europeanized in British magazines, I will refuse to feature in them. Or, the British Film industry is not providing the opportunities I desire, I will create my own film industry. Or the political Parties are underrepresented by black folk leading to a detachment from its black electorate, I will make my own party. Or big businesses are reluctant to hire people who look like me; I will then start my own business and collaborate with other black owned business to circumvent this issue for the next generation.

Though it may make a more tangible difference to the lives of the impoverished black masses than a black James Bond or black Prime Minister; the movie star and politician are more highly prized. To become James Bond as a black man you must be chosen by white casting director, verified by white director and of course approved of by a majority white paying public. To become Prime Minister as a black man/woman you must be chosen as candidate by a majority white party, voted in by a majority white electorate, and accepted by a majority white populous. In both examples, the white verification sought is gained at every step upon the journey to complete acceptance. The actor is a millionaire, utterly detached from the mass of working class blacks; the Prime Minister an arriviste in the bosom of the political elite completely detached from the mass of working class blacks. Both step into political and societal frameworks which prevent the seamless rise of the black man en masse, adopting the white propriety required in such lofty society. Thus neither can do anything which diverts from the propriety expected of a person in the role. In short, their success does not translate into something politically or socially tangible for the black masses. Their success, in fact, comes at the expense of their individual blackness; a racial quid pro quo.

However, it matters little to a people who hold greater value in approval than in self-made progression. To progress alone, outside the framework of white officialdom, requires a radicalism which will receive no approval from officialdom. To be bereft of that approval, which is so longed for, is unthinkable. The spirit of the masses, who themselves long for the approval showered upon their famed kin, is lifted by the sight of perceived racial progress evidenced by the new level of approval reached. The desire not to disturb the frameworks which consider you unworthy, in your natural form, is an astonishing feat of human folly; particularly when considering the timeframe of this uninterrupted dance. Sits he, English flag in hand, Union Jack woven into his clothes, British Passport a source of unshakable pride. ‘I will not destroy the framework, nor undermine it by creating my own. I will beg, cajole, fight and even die to be a part of the system and eventually, I will achieve my parity. If it can be done with the law, it can surely be done with the mind’.

This is a will-o’-the-wisp of the grandest kind; a slavish fantasy dreamt by a people severely lacking amour propre.

Yet, this is a slavish chimera to which he is forever bound. There can be no escape now. For he is now an Englishman in heart and mind, in law and culture, and thus must have faith in the institutions of his country to deliver him the desires which stir within. There is no longer any other identity, no longer any alternative route, nor any recourse. Fanon says of the adoption of culture that ‘every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the by the death and burial of its cultural originality-finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.’

Blackness long perverted, jungle long renounced; his identity is now that of the Englishman, his culture that of the Englishman, and thus his destiny that of the Englishman. Yet, while he remains a minority Briton, of little economic significance, working class origin and dusky skin; he shall have to appeal to the hearts of his whiter countrymen to be granted access to aspects of British life from which he is now excluded. Evidently this is not an issue for millions, on both sides of the Atlantic, who have become accustomed to political, and social scavenging. There is no end in sight, it has already been 185 years of hoping, waiting for that which may never arrive, pleading for better, hailing the vulgarian and celebrating the crumbs of reform.

Saddle up, the race to the top (or the bottom) has no end in sight.

[image error]

 

Henceforth ‘man’ will denote both the male and female perspective.

For the psychoanalytical perspectives on why, see Frantz Fanon Black Skin White Masks

(ONS, 2015) (992,000 Black/African/Caribbean/Black British)

(Fanon, 2008) pp9

Advertisements

A source of pride or shame? The fight for recognition, a war of attrition, and the Black Poppy Rose

 

[image error]British Caribbean soldiers posing for picture

There has been a recent move by certain people to bring to light the role played by the black subjects of Imperial England in making the country what it is today. This black contribution can extend from anything to credit from helping to build Britain’s infrastructure to recognition as the forefather its cultural diversity. The indignant cries of ‘Black people have had a presence in our history for centuries. Get over it!’[1] grow louder by the day. After the uproar from the historical community at the attempts to portray the black man as a British inhabitant since the days of Roman conquest, the African historian David Olusoga wrote ‘What we’re seeing is a backlash against any attempt, whether from the world of scholarship or popular culture, to paint non-white people back into the British past’. Clearly there is a war of attrition underway and those on the side of ‘black Britain’ have grown emboldened of late.

Which brings us to the attempts to ‘paint non-white people back into the British past’ and specifically to the ‘Black Poppy Rose’. The founders of this ‘project’ state, ‘there is a severe lack of representation displaying the full picture of history, including all of its contributors’. They seek to address this issue as, ‘The BlackPoppyRose is a symbol for us to remember not only the soldiers, but also the people’s, of Africans/Black/West Indian/Pacific Island communities who contributed in any way for the War effort’. It is clear then that the BlackPoppyRose is a symbol of the emboldened black left and the cultural war underway.

[image error]German propaganda poster

Let us be honest about the ‘African/Black/West Indian’ contribution to the ‘war effort’ and give the ‘full picture of history’ as BlackPoppyRose requests. Those who fought for Britain were fighting for an empire steeped in the racist doctrine of Social Darwinism, with racial discrimination and segregation central components of its rule. These issues did not disappear during the war. The ‘child races’, as those from the ‘African/Black/West Indian/Pacific Island communities’ were known, were initially considered to primitive to fight in a ‘white man’s war’. It was only after much time, and white death, that the ‘savages’ were thrown into the trenches. Tens of thousands of Africans were unwilling to leave the tranquillity of their homes to fight in a war they knew nothing of for a master who oppressed him. Local chiefs, under increasing pressure from the colonial government, were forced to become ‘recruiting agents’ for the British army. Once more villagers were torn from their homes by pressured chiefs, and handed over to colonial agents, men who would travel to distant lands and never return home.

 

Africans received a melange of ill-fitting uniform. They received no footwear from the authorities, making boots a ‘highly prized’ commodity. Even those that did find soldiers boots were forced to wear shoe which did not fit and they could not tie as they had no laces. Most used as labourers, those who were forced into battle were ill-equipped and often completely unarmed. The colour bar remained in full effect and those who fought and died did so for half the pay of their white brothers in arms. Black soldiers slept, ate, and washed in segregated and inferior living quarters in all British colonial armies. Soldiers of colour complained of the standard of the ‘native chop’ they were fed, in comparison to the ‘white man’s food’. They were often led by young aristocratic generals, who enforced a rigid prefectural structure on their units.

[image error]German propaganda poster

One can almost see the black soldiers, bootless, scantily-clad, ambling across the boundless plain barely able to stand through exhaustion and lack of food. On his waist an old musket, in his pouch an insufficient amount of bullets to save his life, beside a rusting old sword which will be the difference between life and death. Calls of ‘move it you filthy nigger!’ come unceasingly from the mouth of their white commander, his aristocratic rearing rendering each member of his black regiment a savage. Those who cannot keep pace are introduced to the whip which his ancestors knew so well. All that is needed is some amusing music and this scene could quite easily be mistaken for a perverse Carry On movie.

 

 

This is a source of pride? The foundation of our right to claim we fought for the freedoms which now exist in the contemporary western world?

Involvement in European wars, and its subsequent glory or shame, must be placed in a global context. It was not for Britain alone that black men fought for. The imperial armies of both sides were furnished by black soldiers who fought whether willing or not in World War Two.

[image error]

The African-American GI’s, despite protestations from the British government, had a more impactful stay in England than any British colonial regiment. The appearance of black British subjects in the war was no singular achievement; Africans were forced to fight by many an imperial nation. This, however, occurred after a sustained period of racial aloofness towards the animalistic black. Those who eventually broke the rules of military civility were merciless criticised for stooping so low as to place savages on the field. And those who were criticised, as well as those who did the criticising, were both guilty of treating black soldiers as inhuman. If the BlackPoppyRose celebrates the contribution of black soldiers does it also condemn the circumstances under which they made these contributions? If not, the black poppy represents nothing but a shameless fallacy, and desperate attempt to gain recognition.

 

One cannot say ‘I celebrate the involvement of black soldiers in the British Army’ and simply ignore the race-based selection, machine-gun conscription, apartheid camps, barefooted Africans, and slaughtered soldiers. Neither can one be proud of the involvement of men from the Caribbean colonies and say nothing of the self-loathing which would lead men to beg to fight for a master who refuses to allow it because he deems you unworthy racially, culturally and scientifically. Nor can one claim to adorn the pin because ‘they’ don’t wish to celebrate black involvement; for neither do ‘they’ wish to highlight the suffering involved and none has asked for that to be brought to light. BlackPoppyRose states that they ‘do not wish to focus on negative aspects of history’. Well, they should leave ‘black history’ well alone then! For there has been barely a positive moment to speak of, let alone write of or celebrate, during its ‘interactions’ with the British Empire. While ‘BlackPoppyRose fully supports the legacy of the red poppy’, they state, ‘we feel that it is important that our ancestors are recognised for their dues’.

[image error]Fully supports the legacy of the red poppy? (alias the British army?) It has just been laid out, how the army treated its black soldiers. How can a ‘project’ which was established to remember proffer support to such a legacy? Perhaps when they find the answer they can also inform the public what ‘dues’ they believe their ancestors deserve other than a paper flower? For surely the first thing due is an honest legacy. History can be distorted to suit the needs of a particular group, but if those lies are themselves unknowingly detrimental to that group then the entire exercise is foolhardy. Furthermore, their knowing silence dishonours the dead; buried half-clothed, shoeless and unarmed.

Those who speak only of black attendance, interracial affairs, and their outrage over the ensuing silence should be careful not to distort history for their advantage. Many rhapsodise about the Caribbean contribution to the war effort, the RAF fighters receiving particular acclaim. However, I’ve yet to hear that praise balanced with the cold truth that after a disappointing performance in World War One the Caribbean regiment was disbanded in 1927. It may seem so to some, but nothing more is to be gained socially or politically from acknowledgement that black troops fought in the world wars. Neither it, nor BlackPoppyRose, can win the national acclaim, annual thousand-gun salute, and the subsequent respect which seem to be sought. What is owed to the dead is an impartial remembrance of innocent men who were forced to fight, treated nefariously during the war, and sent to their deaths with little chance of defending themselves.

[image error]The befuddled black left, and their liberal partners in crime, may tell you so but it is not enough to say, simply, the motherland called and we fought; woe to the dead, and to the living goes their glory. Those who lead the way in attempting to establish ‘black Britain’ as a respectable and acceptable entity have a vested interest in romanticising its history. They lead the charge in the cultural war and hope that a respectable past will gain they them a respected future. The problem is no matter how many black Romans, interracial love affairs in the midst of racism, ground-breaking sports stars, and brave black colonial soldiers they bring to life, the past cannot be altered; there is nothing glorious about ‘black British’ history.

 

(Olusoga, 2017)

Ibid

(BlackPoppyRose, 2018)

ibid

(Killingray, 2010) pp75

Ibid pp93

Ibid pp127

(BlackPoppyRose, 2018)

(BlackPoppyRose, 2018)

(Healy, 2000) pp72

 

Advertisements

All power to the people, or the arriviste?

The dichotomy between the ‘good’ black and ‘bad’ black, the ‘revolting savage’ and the ‘noble savage’, the ‘black gentleman’ and the ‘primitive black’ has a long history. So influential were these categorizations that they were eventually propagated by the subjects themselves, throughout and after their subjugation.

Those considered ‘good’ blacks were those who conformed to European ideals of civility, and politics. They spoke not of the destruction of the empires, countries, or institutions which had oppressed the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ black. They instead attempted to improve their bedraggled race within a political framework which would allow blacks to rise with as little disturbance to white supremacy as possible.  Those deemed ‘bad’, plainly, did not. They instead promoted what were considered dangerous political ideas, and refused to conform to widely accepted notions of societal and political propriety. Rather than attempt to uplift their own people under the auspices of white patrons they built radical organisations led and followed by blacks alone. They spoke not of black improvement on white timetables, or under white guidance, but sought immediate freedom at the expense of white privilege.

So abiding were these notions that ‘black politics’ in the western world was, in essence, dominated by figures which fit, or were perhaps placed, into the created categories. The fight for supremacy in early twentieth century African American politics between Du Bois and Marcus Garvey was dominated by the difference between the two great rivals. Their rivalry, and that of their race-based organisations, was often set in the ‘good’ black, ‘bad’ black framework.[image error]

W. E. the ‘good ’Du Bois, eloquent, educated, and affable, face of a race improvement organisation in which he was the only person of partial colour, advocated a gradual improvement of the black race beneath the guidance of its ‘talented tenth’. The ‘talented tenth’ of the black populous, he seldom mentioned, were to operate at the behest of its white benefactors who had a vested interest in the status quo remaining, well, the status quo.

Yet, improvement was upon offer. In an age of Jim Crow, racial segregation, and overt racism Du Bois promoted an integrationist ideal in which peoples of all races could live beneath the star-spangled banner without racial prejudice poisoning utopia. Towards this end, oppressed and oppressor were to work together, essentially, uplifting each other and the United states. As Du Bois stated the ‘the battle of the Negro is to be fought right here in America’.

[image error]

Marcus the ‘bad’ Garvey eloquent, educated, and affable, president of a race based organisation created and led by black people, with six million followers at its apogee, offered something very different indeed. His organisation, which he started with his wife Amy Ashwood Garvey, operated on a race first policy, and it was the African race that was given precedence. There was to be no easing into a civilised state under the guidance of those who were indeed oppressors. Garvey sought the immediate withdrawal of the colonial powers from Africa, a land his organisation claimed as the natural possession of black men who walked the earth, and was promptly named its Provisional President. Africa was the black man’s rightful home, America but a captive’s cage and if a battle was to be fought there it would be a guerrilla war in the name of freedom.

Garvey the ‘bad’ would find that upon the battlefield he would be face the U.S government and the mercenary forces of the C.I.A, and F.B.I; shadowy enemies seldom bested. Despite this the UNIA reached heady heights with 6 million members and 118 chapters across the globe. From the Cape to Wales, and from Costa Rica to New York a revolutionary fire had been ignited by what would come to be known as Garveyism.

His ideology doing little to spread radical ideas, disturb the peace, nor alter the status quo, Du Bois would be faced with less determined enemies. Mary White Ovington once remarked that ‘his career has been made by whites’. Importantly, it was also preserved by whites allowing the ‘good black’ to retain his position, and reputation.

Yet, Garvey the ‘bad black’ was to end his days in relative obscurity after being convicted, after a dogged pursuit, by the American authorities, who received assistance from Du Bois, in imprisoning a man in case with 94 irregularities.

[image error]

Interestingly the comparisons continue in death. The late twentieth century saw many bear the name radical, as a revolutionary renaissance took hold. Malcom X and Martin Luther King two leading figures of the period have been given very different legacies in popular culture. Despite not being treated so in life, in death Martin Luther King has been placed within the ‘good black’ category. Hindsight had shown his radicalism to be little more than what is now expected, at least outwardly, of a nation with varying ethnic groups. The ‘dream’ of having children of different races hand in hand is no longer a heady aspiration but has been revealed as little more than good sense in the name of a harmonious society and adherence to principles of common humanity. Yet still, Martin ‘the good’ Luther King has been raised to heights for his foresight, Christian principles, and most importantly his nonviolent methodology.

[image error]

For while King dreamed, Malcom X concerned himself with the reality of police brutality, and the violence of the forces which opposed African advancement in America and on the continent. The liberation of a people was not to be achieved through tiresome marches, well-crafted speeches, and adherence to the principles of turning the other cheek from corrupting Christendom. A revolution was to be won by meeting oppressive force with zealously wielded force. Little wonder then, revolutionist Malcom, adherent of Islam, has been placed in the ‘bad black’ category. For as the previous example laid bare, those who attempt to take by force are always on the side of the ‘bad blacks’. Those who appeal to the conscience of vested interest and hope in time they free the oppressed are on the side of the ‘good blacks’.

What this has produced is an endless stream of ambitious men who know well that to wield power they must be ‘good blacks.’ Once propagating revolutionary ideas or advocating, and performing, political acts of violence in order to free the people was considered radical; now having a black spouse and towing the ‘good black’ line is considered praiseworthy. Matters little if the people continue to toil beneath the oppressive weight of an administration you serve in, or indeed lead; the role of ‘good black’ is too tempting, too rewarding, and too fulfilling for certain men.

[image error]

Has the West progressed and now accepts blacks gleefully ‘good’ or ‘bad’? The racial tensions which have escalated into protest, rioting, violence, and murder in America and to a lesser extent in England would suggest not. Furthermore, the presence of people like Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Chuka Umuna, Sam Gyimah, Adam Afriyie, Kwasi Kwarteng, and David Lammy to name but a fraction, would suggest that there are simply no ‘bad blacks’ left. All that remains is sycophantic ‘good blacks’, barely bothering to veil themselves as ‘bad’.

What becomes of an oppressed people who have no revolutionary leaders?

Cast your eye over the black communities in Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa; it will not take long to discover the answer.

Advertisements

Dear Mr President, why are American troops in Mali?

We are often reminded by politicians that the first duty of a government is to safeguard the country and ensure the safety of its citizens. This is the first, and thus most important responsibility a government must bear. If a government cannot fulfil its first duty, logically it must fall and replaced by one which can. It is not enough to say the threat faced is too great and calls for external aid to buttress an elected government. Particularly when the threat amounts to a few hundred armed zealots and the aid consists of soldiers from the armies of your former imperial overlords.

In 2013 Ibrahim Boubacar Keita stood before the members of the United Nations having ‘chased out’ terrorists and rebel groups. Almost five years later the situation has worsened to such an extent that American troops are casually engaging in reconnaissance missions in the country. Mali’s terrorists have become so emboldened that the sight of American troops, far from discouraging, is a call to arms in a shadow war which is just beginning to emerge into the light. Four American special force soldiers died recently in an ambush which alerted the world to the fact that there were active US troops in Mali; a fact both governments had until then had expertly veiled.

Back in 2013 Keita urged the ‘international community’ to face what is undoubtedly a frightening threat of terrorism together. ‘No country’, the president opined, ‘is protected from violent and barbarous acts’. He was correct. In the ensuing years it has become clear that contemporary terrorists will find a way to strike even the most highly policed and wealthiest nations. Yet, what is also clear is that although all countries are vulnerable, few invite foreign soldiers to assuage their fears.

[image error]

Imperialism, the crowned heads of Europe and the politics of forgetting

There is a long-standing, widely acknowledged, European notion in which responsibility is seen to have an expiration date. Where past deeds, and heinous acts are no longer relevant to contemporary society. Former provinces, and people’s once free from imperial yoke must not look to the activities of past occupiers as a source of contemporary problems. When this expiration day arrives the formerly conquered must look to themselves of the land is not the utopia freedom promised. Wounds must heal, crops must grow, cruelty must end, rape must cease, democracy must flourish, corruption must dissipate, pride must reappear, racial self-loathing must disappear, commerce must appear, and enmity toward one’s former conqueror must be forever banished. Hochschild calls this the ‘politics of forgetting’, a political art in which the west specialises.

[image error]Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar – Lionel Royer, 1899

 

Yet, as stated, this is a notion not a fact. Those who have been raped, whipped, murdered, flayed, plundered, psychologically tormented, mutilated, sacked, conquered, have a right to continue their grievance until the end of time if they so wish. It is a time-honoured right that the griever recovers not on the schedule of the any who induced them to grieve, but according to the emotional time-frame the mind creates.

So, to the forgetful inducers of grief, Belgium, and its royal family, heirs of King Leopold II.

Behind the fragrant waffles, imaginative chocolates, and majestic architecture Belgium has a seedy past which is often ignored; the Congo. When death takes place on such a scale, without official numbers, scholars use categories to calculate the scale of death. Beneath Belgian rule was a reign of terror in which death was spread over four gruesome categories: murder; starvation, exhaustion and exposure; disease; and falling birth rate; we are reliably informed that there was an ‘abundance’ of each.

Historians estimate that between 1880 and 1920 the Congolese population was cut by half. That is the death of ten million people in forty years; little wonder the numbers are so shamefully high with district commanders offering those within locales ‘absolute submission or complete extermination.’ It seems even with absolute submission an attempt was made to completely exterminate. The figure of ten million does not include those men mutilated, children maimed, women raped and towns tyrannized throughout what can only be called a ‘reign of terror’.

[image error]The massacre of innocents- Rubens

 

Why? It is reasonable to ask. For surely imperialism took place without such a gargantuan number of deaths. In short, half the populous of the Congo perished for rubber.

A conservative estimate of the wealth made by Leopold alone is $1.1 billion.

The Royal Museum for Central Africa is home to one of the world largest African collections. A plaque which lists the names of several dozen Force Publique officers who ‘rest in African earth’. Hundreds more plaques throughout name white ‘pioneers’ who perished in Africa. Spears, arrows, masks, musical instruments, costumes, drums, and stuffed animals of the African hinterlands fill the collection of stolen goods.

[image error]The Triumphal Arch (Arc De Triomphe) In The Cinquantenaire Park In Brussels, Belgium

Surely it is bad enough to have a contrite knowing silence, but this is a celebratory silence which does everything but utter the words ‘We raped Africa, and her people, and by Jove look what wonders we got in exchange!’

What of the grievers? Ten million Africans who perished in a holocaust. What of the systematic slave labour system? Where is that commemorated? What of the estimated $1 billion which Leopold himself received from Africa’s soil? Where is that recognized? What of the severed hands of the Congolese men, women, and children? Shall that not be remembered?

Nay, of course not, and why should they be?

Would it not dull the vibrancy of Belgium? Would it not remind those who lounged in sumptuous public squares that their pleasure was provided by the Butcher of Congo? Would it not sour the wondrous taste of the chocolate?  Would it be not too potent a reminded that the beauty of Belgium was paid for by a regime guilty of wanton savagery, mass rape, and genocidal murder, blatant slavery and pillaging hitherto unseen?

The monarchy is Belgium still exists, still lives in luxury paid for by African blood, still resides in residences paid for and renovated by African wealth, and still have made no contrition in any form.   The sumptuous royal palace, with it undulating columns, renovated with Congo money still stands. The chateau of Laeken, favourite residence of Leopold I, renovated with Congolese profits, famed greenhouses still inspiring awe, still stands. The imposing Cinquantenaire arch, which Hochschild has called the ‘grandest Congo-financed extravagance of all’, with its perfectly symmetrical colonnades surrounding what is a monumental structure, still stands.

Why, I hear many ask, should the contemporary Belgian royals give a fig about the crimes of their great-great-grandfather? Well, if they care not for his crimes, they should care even less for his criminal proceeds and vacate all royal residences funded by the Congo butchery, which is indeed all, with haste. Furthermore, the fifty million franks given to Leopold by the Belgian government as ‘gratitude for his great sacrifices made for the Congo’, which were to be ‘extracted From the Congo itself’, should be extracted from the family which benefitted.

Those who commit acts society deems criminal are not able to walk effortlessly away with ill-gotten gains. They are forced to compensate the victims, even if that encompasses bankruptcy. Yet, for the crowned heads of western Europe and their governments these rules do not stand. While persecuting those who committed ‘historical crimes’ in their country, their own historical crimes abroad are buried so deep in the annals they are forgotten by all.

[image error]Christiaenvan Couwenbergh-Three Young White Men and a Black Woman-1632

Some will say that in response to the ‘politics of forgetting’, the ‘politics of envy’ begins to hold sway as the ‘unfortunate’ look upon the fortune of the ‘fortunate’ and seek to deprive them of that which they have. Matters little that the ‘fortunate’ are thus only by plundering the less fortunate.

Yet, China, a nation which can no longer be considered ‘unfortunate’ continues to demand their plundered artefacts be returned. Taken at a time when the nation was upon an unending list of nations plundered by the West, China’s status has since risen inexorably.

Their demands are now taken extremely seriously by nations who respect only military and economic power. With an arsenal to compete with any found in the west, and an economy out performing any in the west, China can no longer be bullied nor ignored. Thus, the return of ancient Chinese artefacts by western government is certainly noteworthy. For it shows that the politics of forgetting is purely political, and memories are soon jogged when faced with a nation wealthy and armed.

Of course, Belgium was not unique in its plunder of Africa, not in its systematic brutality of the indigenous. Neither is it in its shameless flaunting. Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, Austria, and particularly England are all guilty of the dual crime of plunder and parade. The British Museum, while bearing testament to British imperial reach of yesteryear, also lays bare the extent of her own pluderous past.

The difference between reparation and compensation is clear. Where there is irrefutable evidence of goods, art, or minerals taken without the consent of the government of the day, they quite clearly should be returned. As with the plundered Chinese art, and the fifty million ‘extracted’ from the Congo. The ICC (International Criminal Court) restricts itself to only a few contemporary African despots. Yet, it is clear that there is a need for an international arbitrator with a purview to include the criminality, which has taken place in Africa and Asia, where the politics of forgetting has obscured historical crimes. The conflicts between nations which have plundered and nations which have been robbed is evidence that it is not the perpetrator, but the victim who decides the length of time he wishes to grieve for. Thus, the grieving Chinese should not have to wrangle with their plunderer until they are rewarded with the return of their ancient national artefacts. Historical scholars have long unveiled the scale of looting which took place by the colonial powers; revealing figures, places, names, dates, conversion rates, and a host of other revealing facts.

What prevents an International Compensatory Court (ICC ironically) from being established, the world’s foremost scholars presenting it with evidence, a body of esteem legal minds considering all evidence available, and presenting the disputing nations with a legal binding, impartial, verdict? In a word, power. China is an anomaly. The majority of grieving nations have not risen to the heights which allows them to look upon former plunderers with a sense of equality. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the greatest example. Unable to feed its own citizens, drag itself out of the depths of civil war, or even hold an election free of blatant corruption; Congolese diplomats are in no fit state to look their counterparts in the face, let alone negotiate a compensation package with the savvy Brussels elite.

[image error]Daniel In The Lions’ Den- Peter Paul Rubens

For the lions have always encircled the weak and shall continue to until the end of time in differing forms. Thus, power must be assumed by the courts which have the ability to protect, empower, and compensate the weak.