In line with the StopSars-protests + keeping in mind Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo's argument in 'Decolonizing the mind' (1986) (e.i. the African mind) + acknowledging that you don't need 'white people' around in order to reproduce 'whiteness' ('whiteness is not a color at all, but a set of power relations' (Jamaican philosopher Charles Mills in 'The racial Contract' 1997) , I quote Guyanese historian Walter Rodney: 'the Black police force of Jamaica have demonstrated that they can be as savage in their approach to black brothers as the white police in New York, for ultimately they serve the same masters” (Rodney 1969)
'Woke' hasn't been with us in the UK for very long, 4 or 5 years if that? For many years before that I bemoaned what I called the 'black ideology' or 'blackism'. Black leaders have allowed or promoted a preoccupation with blackness. Pan-Africanism today may be more familiar to academics than to regular people, but there was a time when struggles against apartheid, US segregation, for anti-colonialism in Africa and national independence in the West Indies, involved masses of black people (and white people). Pan-Africanism brought these struggles together in the name of solidarity. The UK has now lost most of it's colonies, Apartheid has been dismantled and black Americans can freely ride on the bus, vote etc.
The worry then is that a contemporary Pan-Africanism will not be focused on solidarity and specific aims, but on 'racism'. For anti-racists today all of black history, liberation struggles and political campaigns are subservient to 'racism', as the definitive, dominating factor of black life and history.
This is a parody of Marxism, for Marxists class was the dominant social and historic entity in the development of human society. There were some crude Marxists who shoehorned every aspect of human society into this framework. Today black ideologues are doing this with race. Rather than looking at colonialism, slavery and segregation in their own terms, black ideologues are retrospectively imposing their own ideological understanding on the past.
The last 30 years has seen a profound failure of black leadership and intellectual development. I don't think that we will get far by attempting to resurrect 'pan-Africanism', we really do need to think afresh.
There is nothing wrong with solidarity, but the black ideology is imposed from above by self-selected leaders and unity is presumed rather than argued for and created. The black ideology today is dominated by antiracism, we might even call it anti-whitism. Black solidarity is presumed, black and white solidarity is not considered possible.
The symbol of the defiant black fist, should maybe be replaced by a giant white thumb, to reflect the mindset of today's abject black ideologues.
Incisive. Query whether black solidarity is a coherent presumption if there are 1 billion black people on the planet with 1 billion different life stories, experiences and perspectives on life. See Out of Africa: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith R. Richburg. Thanks for your comment.
In line with the StopSars-protests + keeping in mind Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo's argument in 'Decolonizing the mind' (1986) (e.i. the African mind) + acknowledging that you don't need 'white people' around in order to reproduce 'whiteness' ('whiteness is not a color at all, but a set of power relations' (Jamaican philosopher Charles Mills in 'The racial Contract' 1997) , I quote Guyanese historian Walter Rodney: 'the Black police force of Jamaica have demonstrated that they can be as savage in their approach to black brothers as the white police in New York, for ultimately they serve the same masters” (Rodney 1969)
'Woke' hasn't been with us in the UK for very long, 4 or 5 years if that? For many years before that I bemoaned what I called the 'black ideology' or 'blackism'. Black leaders have allowed or promoted a preoccupation with blackness. Pan-Africanism today may be more familiar to academics than to regular people, but there was a time when struggles against apartheid, US segregation, for anti-colonialism in Africa and national independence in the West Indies, involved masses of black people (and white people). Pan-Africanism brought these struggles together in the name of solidarity. The UK has now lost most of it's colonies, Apartheid has been dismantled and black Americans can freely ride on the bus, vote etc.
The worry then is that a contemporary Pan-Africanism will not be focused on solidarity and specific aims, but on 'racism'. For anti-racists today all of black history, liberation struggles and political campaigns are subservient to 'racism', as the definitive, dominating factor of black life and history.
This is a parody of Marxism, for Marxists class was the dominant social and historic entity in the development of human society. There were some crude Marxists who shoehorned every aspect of human society into this framework. Today black ideologues are doing this with race. Rather than looking at colonialism, slavery and segregation in their own terms, black ideologues are retrospectively imposing their own ideological understanding on the past.
The last 30 years has seen a profound failure of black leadership and intellectual development. I don't think that we will get far by attempting to resurrect 'pan-Africanism', we really do need to think afresh.
There is nothing wrong with solidarity, but the black ideology is imposed from above by self-selected leaders and unity is presumed rather than argued for and created. The black ideology today is dominated by antiracism, we might even call it anti-whitism. Black solidarity is presumed, black and white solidarity is not considered possible.
The symbol of the defiant black fist, should maybe be replaced by a giant white thumb, to reflect the mindset of today's abject black ideologues.
Incisive. Query whether black solidarity is a coherent presumption if there are 1 billion black people on the planet with 1 billion different life stories, experiences and perspectives on life. See Out of Africa: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith R. Richburg. Thanks for your comment.