Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

the usual assumptions; ‘they are at a wedding’, ‘auntie has just shared her secret biryani recipe with the family’, ‘it’s Diwali’.

‘It’s the Indian satellite mission to Mars,’ someone shouts, and a collective pause is followed by laughter as people realise the significance of the trick.

This image may prove to be one of the most important metaphors for the twenty-first century – the picture features Seetha Somasundaram, the Programme Director of the ISRO (Indian Space and Research Organisation) space science programme, Minal Rohit, project manager of the methane sensor for Mars and Nandini Harinath, the Deputy Operations Director for the Mars Orbiter Mission.

If there was one image that I could pick that sums up the stupidity of racism and sexism, the legacies of anti-colonial struggles, and the potential of all people to be brilliant, this might well be it. This image of older brown women leading the world in literal rocket science, an area of work so challenging that it has become the metaphor for intellectual difficulty.

The election of Donald Trump, a reality TV star with no previous political experience and a man openly endorsed by Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the KKK and other beacons of light, has been sold to us even by some notable white ‘leftist’ and liberal commentators as a rebellion against the status quo, the rage of an apparently forgotten group of Americans.

The determining factor was whiteness, and as Coates explains, ‘to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world.’

But as I was watched the Trump inauguration on a TV screen in Addis Ababa, it all looked so satirical that I could not help but see the signs of an empire in decline.

significant portion of the country to proclaim themselves victims of some kind of invasion or colonisation may well not seem directly ‘racial’, but it certainly echoes quite clearly the way white America, with its long-term history of racist pogroms, lynching, slavery and segregation, has somehow emerged believing itself to be the victim of racial discrimination.

Though the threat from Islamic fascist terrorists is real enough, they are equally willing to kill black and brown people as white people – in fact, the vast majority of people killed by Isis, Boko Haram and Al Shabaab have been in Africa and the Middle East, obviously. Thus there is no reason for white populations to be any more afraid of or more willing to entertain a flat cultural essentialism about almost 1.8 billion Muslims than the rest of us.

While claiming to be supreme, these people clearly do not believe what they are selling, for if Aryans are inherently superior there would be no need at all to worry about Jews or niggers ‘replacing’ them. Surely an innate Aryan supremacy should make them by definition irreplaceable? This constant articulation of supremacy and victimhood has long been a cornerstone of white-supremacist discourse.

The answers to these questions, and the shape of the world children born now will inhabit, will be determined not just by politicians and billionaires, but by millions of supposedly ordinary people like you and me who choose whether or not to engage with difficult issues, to try and grasp history, to find their place in it, and who choose whether to act or to do nothing when faced with the mundane and mammoth conflicts of everyday life.