Editors Note: At 7:40pm CT on November 29, 2022, the State of Missouri murdered Kevin Johnson. It is, or should be, universally recognized, that poor children are not responsible for their hunger, that abused children are not to blame for being abused, and that we all have a collective responsibility to protect those too young to protect themselves. Yet if we fail in our duty to protect, and those we’ve failed to protect are irreparably damaged, and through that irreparable damage grow up to break the law, we as a society treat those same tormented children as unworthy of empathy . . .
Anti-Blackness
Out of the Clouds: Remarks on ‘anti-Blackness’ in Cuba
Transcript Wassup y’all. I had to set a timer because my comrades have better notes than I do. I want to talk to you for a little bit. My name is Salifu. I’m a member of Black Alliance for Peace. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina. I’m also a member of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party. And I want to talk to you a little bit about one of my least favorite games that the U.S. plays, because the US plays a lot of games. One of the things that the United States does is try to combat liberation struggles . . .
#SoyPorqueSomos – a Black women-led Project for a New Colombia
This article was written before the March 13 primaries when Francia Marquez received more than 780,000 votes. She received more votes than any Black politician in Colombian history. Would her outstanding performance, surpassing even candidates from right-wing parties, be enough to secure her the nomination to run as vice-president candidate in the frontrunner party Pacto Historico?* Francia Márquez Mina, a 40-year-old Black female activist from the predominantly Black and forgotten region of the Colombian Pacific coast, is shifting the terms of political debate in the second ‘Blackest’ nation in South America. Francia, the first Black woman to run for the . . .
Anti-Communism, Anti-Blackness, and Imperialism
In this talk prepared for the Albuquerque Anti-War Coalition’s Anti-Communism & Imperialism panel discussion, Dr. Charisse Burden Stelley discusses how anti-communism and anti-Blackness are intrinsically intertwined structures of white supremacist and capitalist control. . . .
The Anti-Blackness of “Professionalism”
Racist narratives under capitalism considers African people as commodities for profit, whilst creating conditions that assimilate them to their white or Non-Black People of Color (NBPOC) counterparts. Whiteness is treated as the standard, with employers who hold similar views policing Black bodies into what they deem acceptable. Under the guise of professionalism, features associated with Blackness—attire, mannerisms, vernacular, and general appearance—are viewed as unfit for an occupational setting and are deeply rooted in anti-Black sentiments. The process of upholding such standards requires focus on features that are prevalent in the African diaspora. Employers and recruitment personnel look at hair, dress . . .
Black Liberal, Your Time is Up
You are here to translate an uprising. You are here to show your black skin so that you can claim the mantle of authority on anti-Blackness that white liberals have bestowed upon you. You are here to sit at their pundit tables, before their cameras. Your face beaming across the world as it provides the safest possible interpretation of a revolution in order to police its possibilities and pave over the threat of abolition with as mild and ineffective a reform as possible. . . .
Afro-Pessimism and the (Un)Logic of Anti-Blackness
What, then, are we fighting for? I want to open the door to this critical, but absent, conversation around anti-racist organising – the space for such conversations is desperately needed. Indeed, many of the claims about race that I have challenged created a suffocating climate in the last decade in which dissent from shared assumptions and attempts to develop theoretical grounds for solidarity are routinely characterised as ‘anti-black’. . . .
Negritude; The Parent of So-called “Anti- Blackness”
Throughout African (Black) activist and social media circles today the concept of “anti-Blackness” is constantly presented as an explanation behind the suffering African people experience within this backward society. The logic of this thinking is summarized within the belief that our 529 years of suffering results from European-dominated culture disliking and disrespecting us due primarily to the fact we are different from them. Inherent in this thinking, whether expressed overtly or not, is the belief that Europeans possess some innate gene that pushes them to have this hatred of us. Also within this thought process (equally as overt and/or covert) is the belief among African people that there is really no escape from this sorry reality. . . .