“You are doing racism wrong” – I think this has been the overwhelming British response to #MyTramExperience which was uploaded to Youtube this week. We denounced this woman emphatically; Croydon MP Gavin Barwell told The Voice “Frankly it is people like this woman that the country would be better off without” and journalist Piers Morgan tweeted that the woman should be deported, (what is with this archaic British territorialism?) The reality is the protesting was far more concerned about maintaining the British culture of – well, lets call it diplomacy shall we – than an allegiance to anti-racism.

Emma West was arrested. Order was restored. And we have congratulated ourselves on how civilised we are about these things. Might I remind you it is only just over forty years sinceConservative MP Enoch Powell, (a member of the gang governing us now), gave his ‘River of Blood’ speech, in which he addressed the nation with the exact same message as the Croydon perpetrator above. The same year as the 1968 Immigration Act which essentially made this racism a part of government policy. Racism plays a more prominent role in our society than many of us our willing to accept.

The relentless commitment to the personification of racism – that is, conceptualising racism as a single person/action – makes it almost impossible to recognise the complex ways it informs our social reality. We – or you really – are apathetic about race/ism in this country. ‘My Tram Experience’ was trending worldwide. However when there were successive revelations of fraudulence and belligerence in the Mark Duggan case – the man whose murder was the catalyst of rioting across the country this summer – metropolitan police corruption was not trending.

I have not witnessed the same level of national outrage at the unjustifiable deaths of Black men in police custody; or that over the last six years in Haringey, for the 10300 job seekers there have been 352 vacancies¹. People lets get serious. I am not impressed that we arrested a woman with visibly poor mental health for her racist ranting. This is all a part of state performance. Emma West was not doing racism right. Our government agencies have shown us there are more efficient and quite frankly less noisy ways of denigrating Black and Ethnic Minority citizens in Britain. Underemployment, housing overcrowding and incarceration have all been working fine so far. Perhaps we would turn our attention to these areas if we were not so caught up in racism through drama.

Nichole Black

(via crunkfeministcollective)

afrolez:

 I will most assuredly fight to end the prison industrial complex, sexual violence, and unbridled capitalism, but I will do so from a space that centers the racist roots of incarceration, criminal “justice,” capitalism, and sexual violence.  Thankfully, those spaces already exist – even if they remain peripheral in the mainstream media (and in much of what is left of the lefty media). But it is time to pivot the center. Without reflexive analysis of racism and coalition work grounded in antiracist movement, we miss the real root of the problem as well as real opportunities to create change.

(via aomuse)

Growing up in Nigeria during the 90s, I remember being offered a soft drink, and my hostess jokingly telling me to choose something other than a Coke because it “would make me darker”. Even being a fairly confident and logical child, and despite understanding that a drink had no effect on my complexion, I changed my mind. During a decade there, it would not be the only time I would alter my drink order. - Bim Adewumni, The Guardian

In her article Racism and Skin Colour: The Many Shades of Prejudice Bin Adewunmi navigates readers through a series of events, experiences and comments as a succinct written gauge of the social and cultural atmosphere to meet the ‘Dark Girls’ documentary screening next week in The International Black Firm Festival. 

There will undoubtedly be the pain of exposure as the malignance of colourism in Black communities opens us up to international inspection, to which I’m sure there will be much resistance. But the greater pain still of how shadism has hurt and distorted the experience of Black women.  

There are two things I am looking out for in this documentary: Firstly an informed, and critical engagement with the socio-historical context for colourism in contrast to the unprogressive nonchalance of “Aren’t we over it yet?” In Adewumni’s article, Ruth Fisher project manager of the ‘Understanding Slavery Initiative’ suggests the division of house and field slaves as a source for colourism. She describes: 

That started a divide within the African community on the plantation, because then those who were closer to the house had some of the less back-breaking work and therefore they felt that they were a bit more privileged.

Though this colour bias certainly had resounding impact on the relationship between African slaves, I am suspicious of the suggestion that ‘privilege’ was felt - perhaps an anachronistic and presumptuous explanation. Quite ironic that we - only having known freedom - would see privilege in any form of slavery. I am therefore interested in slave narratives as primary sources that reflect on this dynamic. In addition, I am always compelled to pull the Black British experience up from under African-American cultural hegemony. How was colourism practised in Britain where there were no plantations (in contrast to Caribbean colonies)? Where we are now concerned with beauty, what was the impact of power divisions, for example the largely ‘Mulatto’ ruling class in nineteenth century Haiti? How far will this documentary grapple with history and grasp colourism as an issue relevant to the wider African diaspora? 

Secondly, I am hoping to see a reduction of the performance of shadism (i.e, sombre music, harrowing tales, men emphatically denouncing dark skin women) in a serious effort to open up this discussion to balance and nuance. As a friend said, moving away from the pathology of it, and toward an engagement with the many dark skin women who are busy about their hustle and feel beautiful. Little girls who struggled up and out of colourism and are keeping it moving so to speak. I suspect there will be a weakness in this documentary that is suggested in its title, and that is looking at the impact of colourism on dark skinned girls in isolation. Our social realities are not filtered out in this way: light vs dark skin daily face offs, or walking two steps behind white women as the social ideal. Black women, and ultimately all women have complex relationships with each other and the European beauty standard. A successful documentary would have to engage with this. 

Between the documentary posters of a Black woman crying, and another Black woman in front of the American flag, my hopes for this documentary are not very high. But if any of you get to see it, watch it critically and let me know what you think.

Nichole Black. 

novembernegro:

“Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.”

-The Combahee River Collective 

(via crunkfeministcollective)