The cover of a Portuguese translation of Black Skins White Masks published in Brazil. Black Brazilians are incensed whilst whites are pretending not to get the racism expressed in these images. There isn’t really much to say on this except it emphasises Brazil is a racist country and racist society and that the white population are so backward when it comes to addressing race. I wonder what Fanon himself would make of this “sambofication” of Blacks in the 21st century?
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I hear that Hilary Clinton and John McCain will be in Memphis to mark the day. I am sure Barack Obama will seize the time add his $2 worth. I hear that Democratic and Republican leaders met yesterday on Capitol Hill to mark the day. No doubt the warmongering racist, Mr George Bush will speak to [dis]honour Mr King. Hypocrites everywhere will come out to speak false words and use the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr for their own interest.
They are all liars.
They will not say that the same forces who killed Martin Luther King Jr also killed Patrice Lumumba, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Thomas Sankara and thousands of others who refused to be silenced and dared to dream of another world.
They will not say that the same forces who killed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr are also responsible for the forced removal of President Bertrand Aristide who is still prevented from returning to his home and position in Haiti.
They will not say that the same forces who sought to destroy the reputation of Martin Luther King Jr are the same forces responsible for the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine - a Haitian civil rights leaders who has fought consistently for the dignity and human rights of Haitian people including the end of the UN / US Occupation of Haiti
They will not say that Martin Luther King Jr was killed one year after he began to speak out again the US war in Vietnam [April 4th 1967].
The media will be silent on these facts and Martin Luther King Jr will be whitewashed 40 years after his assassination. Just as the media whitewashed Aristide and are silent today on the kidnapping and whereabouts of Haitian leader Lovinsky.
The media will be silent on the liberties that have been eroded over the past 7 years and are now reduced to the freedom to consume. As we move nearer and nearer to the possibility of a Black man becoming the next US President the media and white people and some Black people will attempt to whitewash the daily realities of race in America.
The realisaton of the dream is still a long way off. But it is only when you dream that you KNOW what is possible, what is real.
The Harper government can declare victory after a United Nations meeting rejected calls for water to be recognized as a basic human right.
Instead, a special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain at the UN human rights council was stripped of references that recognized access to water as a human right. The countries also chose to scrap the idea of creating an international watchdog to investigate the issue, choosing instead to appoint a new consultant that would make recommendations over the next three years.
Interesting how the logic of psychopathic capitalism works. You are a human being. As such, you need water simply to stay alive. But if we recognize it as a human right, then we will not be able to bottle it and sell it to you. Therefore it is not a human right. If you cannot buy it and you incidentally die, that is not our problem.
However to that police officer, that immigration officer, that airline worker and any other officialdom you come across as a citizen of the united Kingdom, it is a matter of Yes British but not the right colour and it seem frustrating that almost on a daily basis the posse ion of the UK passport is not enough as a tool of identity to an adopted homeland, You have to prove your commitment over and over again.
So here we are Black British and Proud but yet continue to face discrimination from British Institutions, Immigration officials questioning your possession of the British passport , British airline giving you 7 to 8 looks and interrogating you in spite of your possession of a valid British passport.
I am beginning to have serious thoughts about what People of Colour are doing in this country. Just maybe it is time for us all to rethink our lives and begin to consider returning home. It is only going to get worse. Already you have to show your passport if you: register at a doctor, rent accommodation, rent a van, rent storage, go to the dentist, even the gym asked for passport ID.
I come from the population of the Americas which is the Afrodescendant people. Afrodescendants of the Americas are the largest population of African people outside Africa. We are all over the Americas, not only in the United States. My ancestors were trafficked from several different parts of Africa. They were the people who survived what is called “the Middle Passage” – that is, the ship voyage of thousands of miles and several weeks – 2 or 3 months, I think – across the Atlantic slave trade. Researchers say that Afrodescendants are 33% or one-third of the entire population of the Americas.
The White Season is publicised as a programme examining why the English white working class feel “increasingly marginalised” but what we end up with is a free for all season for racists attempting to justify their irrational hatred for all people of colour and dislike of anyone foreign. From the dying Bradford working men’s club to the lost souls in London’s east end and the ‘Poles’ in between, we are repeatedly told how bad life is and it’s all because of the them. Reluctantly at first but as each programme progresses the more the racism flows freely and unchallenged.
The hands of immigrants turn the white man black in England’s green and pleasant land!
Bradford whites have no where to go so spend their days moping over pints of Guinness and ale and eating themselves up with racist hatred for the people they imagine are the root of their problems. There is one particularly horrible scene when a young unemployed man sitting in front of an English flag with a swastika in the middle says he hates “Paki’s”so much he wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he saw a child run over.
The Barking whites, are all packing up and moving out to be with “their own kind” in “outer Essex” . The programme begins with a group of pensioners in a dancing class making comments about the changes in their community
“Theres far too many people coming into the country we don’t have enough space for them”
“and they’re not our people”
“its supposed to be a free country but it’s not free when we want to speak is it” ”
theres so many nationalities here now you don’t know who’s who you don’t know where anybody s from”.
There is a little social engineering as the programme’s narrator suggests a white couple and Nigerian couple come together even though they would prefer to be with the white Albanians. Then there is the relationship of convenience between a Polish Holocaust survivor, Monty and a Ugandan woman Betty, who come together as two lonely people. Both benefit from the relationship which we are told is platonic, she looks after him and he looks after her. But there is something distinctly unpleasant about it.
The Barking programme is surreal as Betty attends a Holocaust reunion, she the only Black woman and only the men speaking to her and looking lost as they all stand up to sing the national anthem. Colour plays a large role in the prejudices, as the white couple wonder about their neighbor who doesn’t look too black well not black like a Nigerian - which is what he is. And the odd scene in which Dave the resident bigot and BNP campaigner with two mixed race grandchildren, is confused over a young lad when he is told the boy is mixed race and his mother African - he clearly thought the lad was white!
It’s all a bit suspicious having this programme which feeds so intensely into the latest immigration panic. Labour falling over itself whipping up anti-immigration sentiment with ideas floating around such as a “welfare” tax where immigrants have to pay a one off fee to offset any use of the health service and education; a £1000 bond payment by Britons for non EU relatives and friends who visit; no more council funded interpreters as foreigners must learn English; a “British” day and swearing allegiance to the Queen – judging from CiF in the Guardian this one is definitely going to be a non-starter except maybe for BNP supporters.
It is ironic that the BBC should broadcast a TV programme about white working class feeling marginalised when a fair percentage of English TV is centered around those very people such as East Enders, Coronation Street, a host of day time talk shows, sit coms, game shows etc. Try to find a Muslim or an African / African Caribbean on TV - the former will be something about terrorism - an attempt to blow up Parliament and the latter drugs, gangs and 419 scams. Furthermore because their is no opposing point of view the audience is left thinking the people in the programme are representative of the English white working class.
I notice Margaret Hodge (MP for Barking and Dagenham) adding her 5 cents worth to the programme in CiF with a spiel about how the borough has changed over the past 15 years. Hodge’s racism though not crude like Dave’s and the Bradford working mens club, is not even subtle. Back in October 2005, I commented on Hodge’s calls for immigrants to integrate. Then the immigration panic grew out of a Muslims wanting to have government funding for their schools. There have always been government funded faith based schools but it was only when Muslims began to want funding that they became an issue.
The basis of Ms Hodge’s demands is the rising racism amongst Britain’s white working class whose perception of generations of immigrants living in Britain, is based on complete myth and one which is forever being developed by sections of the tabloid press. The solution for Ms Hodge is not to combat the racists or educate this section of British society on the realities of immigration, asylum seekers and immigrants but to pander to the racists by implying that racism is the fault of the mainly Asian but also Black communities for not integrating. The word integration means that immigrants (in Britain the term refers to all non-white people no matter how long they or their families have actually lived in Britain, whether they were born there or whether they hold British nationality or not) must adopt the dominant morals, values and language the host culture.
Hodge is optimistic that in the end everything will be green and pleasant and Jerusalem will be found in multicultural Barking. I am also optimistic but only because in another 5 years there probably wont be any more white English working class in Barking and the BNP will have moved along with them to outer Essex in which case I might move to Barking myself. What the programme does show is that the racisms expressed have no rationality whatsoever and are built on myths and anger at the meaningless and emptiness of their own lives.
The “Million women rise” march organised as part of the IWD event in London and supposed to be a day of solidarity between women and women’s group from across Britain ended with one group of women being silenced. The march started in Hyde Park and ended in a rally in Trafalgar Square. Whilst other women spoke about domestic violence, Iraq, Zimbabwe and expressed solidarity with women from everywhere on a range of issues one group were excluded. As poet and activist, Jean Binta Breeze stood on stage and read two of her poems on violence against women.
Across the square two members of the organising committee were informing one woman that she would no longer be allowed to speak.
Terisa Mackay of the Solidarity 1st Coalition to Decriminalise Prostitution based in Ipswich and who is also a member of the TGWU.
Terisa was due to speak about sex workers in Ipswich and how the women women were coming to terms with the murders and conviction of serial killer, Steve Wright, trying to return to their work and lives. Just before she was due to speak Terisa was informed that the organisers had changed their minds and she would no longer be able to speak. This decision was taken on the basis that two of the organising committee members did not approve of her speech and rather than challenge the two women they agreed to their decision.
What was supposed to be “a show of political, social, economic and creative solidarity.” was anything but that as I personally witnessed acts of verbal and physical violence from one group of women against another.
Ushers called in reinforcements to line up in front of the stage to prevent women from the various groups such as the English Collective of Prostitutes, Women Against Rape, All Africa’s Group’s Campaign and the Black Women’s Rape Project and their supporters from accessing the stage to express their disgust with the organisers decision.
They were further prevented from using their loudspeaker system and one of their members who was filming was attacked by another woman from the crowd. I witnessed all of the above plus women shouting that the sex workers should not be allowed to speak and one of them calling my friend a “black bitch”.
I and my friends and colleagues left, what had started out as a march of solidarity - or so we thought at the beginning- with not just a sense of frustration and disgust but the realisation that the words RESPECT and SOLIDARITY were not in the vocabulary of some of the women attending the march and rally. Whilst they were prepared to listen to Middle Eastern and African women about violence, rape and prostitution, they were not prepared to listen to sex workers in their own cities and country not to speak of the vulgar racism spouting out of their mouths. Clearly for some attending the march, sex workers were not entitled to respect, solidarity or a voice and Black women were bitches!
How safe to stand up in London and shout support for the “other” not on your doorstep yet when you are face to face with the presence of sex workers and women of colour you try to silence them and scream “not in my backyard”!
Criminalisation and marginalisation of Sex Workers
Andrea Spyropoulos 10 minute talk at meeting held by the Safety First Coalition at the Houses of Parliament, London, 17 October 2007 — versus the increased criminalisation of sex-work in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
