Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

As indentured servitude turned to chattel slavery and slavery came to be reserved strictly for people of African heritage, this white privilege became all the more important, as it literally became the difference between still being a human being and becoming a piece of property.

In short, the study confirmed that teachers are human beings and that they project their biases and those of our society onto children.

These seemingly odd responses to black excellence did not pop out of a vacuum, but rather stem from centuries of anti-black marketing in European literature, thought, philosophy and historiography.

Is tbs not exactly what lana del rey was doing on her racist ass instagram post about all the woc artist at tbe top of the bilboard cbart?

Linford did further complicate the picture and invite justifiable accusations of hypocrisy by later making adverts that overtly played on his Lunchbox; one for Kleenex featured a topless Linford with the slogan ‘I’ve got a small packet’. He also became the face of underwear campaigns, which again invited a certain criticism.

Im not sure i feel the same as akala in this moment. To me, (speaking as a white woman howe ver) this is a reclaimation. He has every right to regain control of how the media presents him post-objectification. To me tbis is a 'we're onna do this? Alright, well i'll do it then'. It is not great to be pushed into this corner but i'm glad he found a way tol get himself out of it.

quite clearly the innate difference between black nationalism and white nationalism as political imperatives.

We must remind ourselves that we are talking about a period of British history where it took almost a century of debate, reform and much consternation to abolish domestic child labour. Are we really to believe that a British parliament that had only just come to abolish the labour of its ‘own’ children felt such a loving affinity for faraway negroes? Furthermore,

So, despite Britain spending almost two centuries as the dominant transatlantic slave trader, with all the torture, rape and mass murder that entailed, despite Britain refusing to back abolition when other European powers had paved the way, despite Britain spending the 1790s warring to keep slavery intact all over the Caribbean, despite Britain trying to crush the only successful slave revolution in human history and then helping their French enemies attempt to do the same, despite Britain refusing to even recognise the first Caribbean state to abolish slavery, despite all of this, some ‘historians’, teachers and assorted nationalists are asking us all to believe the self-serving fairy tale that suddenly, in 1807 – just three years after Haitian independence – guided by William Wilberforce alone, Britain abolished slavery because it was ‘the right thing to do’.

There is no doubt of course that these slave-dealing elites existed in Africa – they had been Britain’s business partners after all – but the idea that the Scramble for Africa ‘saved’ the African masses is so ridiculous that even the most nationalistic of historians would find it hard to spin.

The primary difference between Britain and other empires was not that ‘we were not as bad as the Belgians or the Third Reich’ – which is true but is such a shit boast – but

Those that kill for Britain are glorious, those killed by Britain are unpeople.

Racism as a word only really came into popular usage during the 1930s, and specifically in relation to the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the Nazis and American hatred of other European immigrants.8 We will almost certainly always have a degree of ethnocentrism in human societies but to conflate this with racism proper is lazy and dangerous. Ethnocentrism can be overcome, but overt racism or the idea of permanent hierarchical racial difference is a chasm much deeper and more difficult to surmount.

In the inner cities of the UK, teenage boys racialised as black are instead introduced to the fact that the protection of the law does not apply to our bodies.

When you meet your own powerlessness before the institution that claims to be protecting you, you feel both stupid and cheated.

so Samuel’s comments just reek of American exceptionalism in blackface.

Despite hundreds of millions of ‘white’ people killing each other throughout European history, witch hunts, mass rapes, hangings, torture and sexual abuse, and despite the fact that the two most violent regions of Britain in the 1990s were almost entirely white, there was no such thing as white-on-white violence.

The key question therefore becomes this: what happens once money no longer whitens? When whiteness is no longer a metaphor for power? When whiteness is no longer default?