zuky:

guerrillamamamedicine:

liquornspice:

escapefromcrete:

liquornspice:

I want to investigate the idea that intra-POC racism could not be about white people. But I’m having a hard time conceiving of it. Because there are, of course, peoples who experienced conflict centuries before whiteness was invented…but there’s still the global problem of white supremacy today.  Like the racism we’re seeing in the Libyan uprising. Arab oppression of non-Arab Black (that label is problematic, but the best I can do) Africans existed for a loooooooong time before our current concept of whiteness (although…idk, it kind of seems like it had a hand in creating it. Seeing as how it kind of facilitated the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade…) But, today, the oppression and murder of “Black African” Libyans by “Arab Libyans” has a whole SHIT TON to do with white supremacy and privileges gained by distancing oneself from Blackness and “Black Africa.”

And then there’s the whole problem of Tiara’s fairly clear-cut use of anti-Black racism to get her voice heard. And people actively ignoring the anti-Black racism and basically re-imagining the actual text of that first post.

And…her response to me about appropriation was SO CLEARLY fucked up I don’t understand how people are still saying this has nothing to do with a hatred or, at least, resentment of Black women????

And feeling resentment is okay! I feel a ton of resentment and bitterness toward other POC groups! I write about it all the time! But I think it becomes a really big problem when everyone starts pretending like resentment isn’t there and it just “makes sense” to target one marginalized group without mention of larger structures at play.  If you resent the visibility of Black women let’s talk about it. Like I said in the beginning, many of us don’t like that hypervisibility either! Let’s all journey together thru the Googles to examine what other Black and Brown peeps have been saying about Black American hypervisibility!

I’m actually currently reading accounts of Black US American and Latin@ immigrant organizing and it’s really complicated and really interesting stuff! There’s a lot of work to be done to break up the Black/White dichotomy of “race relations” and the Mestiz@/White dichotomy of “US immigration” (props to RadicallyHottOff for making that point clear!)

So, I mean…people are definitely working through these issues. I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to get this ish off my chest  ::shrug::

OH MY GOD.  OKAY.  So yes, racism and white supremacy are REALLY BIG ISSUES.  But, as Jeremiah Wright says, “all colonizers ain’t white.”

The “African Libyans” you’re talking about are Imazighen.  My VERY DIVERSE ethnic group.  Indigenous to pretty much all of North Africa and some Saharan/sub-Saharan parts of the continent, too.  We range from very very pale to very very dark in skin color.  Our hair can be blonde and straight or it can be black and “African” — most of us are somewhere in between — but regardless of how we look we are INDIGENOUS AFRICAN PEOPLE.  If you look at skin color alone, we are indistinguishable from Arabs — our Arab colonizers, that is.  In the Maghreb countries, Libya included, Arabs and Imazighen are NOT distinguished by color.  Most Libyan Africans are a shade of brown.  We are distinguished by language.  Language is everything for a lot of Imazighen because it defines our indigenous struggle.  

Yes, Gaddafi is trying to commit an ethnic cleansing against the Imazighen in Libya.  BUT it’s not about brown people and darker brown people, it is NOT about white supremacy.  The conflict here is about colonizers and indigenous people.  People of color can oppress too, and it’s hard because I have so much anti-Arab sentiment, but it’s not like Arabs in the US need any more of that, so it can’t really be expressed because I don’t want to make thing harder for Arabs or people who are seen as Arab (like Imazighen, or Sikhs, & on & on…).  

So once again.  There is no “Arab Africa” and “Black Africa”, there is just one continent.  The “bad people” are not always determined by skin color, but it IS determined by who’s doing the colonizing.  Get your fucking head out of your Eurocentric worldview — the way oppression works in the US is NOT how it works everywhere in the world.  And obviously, if you knew anything about the situation in Libya (like if you knew any indigenous Libyans…) you would know all the things I just said.

Thank you for this. I should’ve been more clear with what I meant by the scare quotes— that I think the distinction between “Black” and “Arab” Libyans or Africans is bogus. And I still question whether white supremacy exacerbated situations like what we saw with the “African mercenary” propaganda that was spread by Al Jazeer and other news sources?  But you’re absolutely right, I really don’t know anything about Libya.  And I definitely did erase indigenous peoples and for that I apologize.

EDIT: And ya know what? I think I just did what I got so mad at Tiara for doing: using someone else’s identity to prove a point without engaging with those other people. That was really wrong and, I think, kind of imperialist of me.  I’m definitely going to stick to talking about my own experiences and listening to other people’s.

ok.  but a larger point is that there in north africa (and i have experienced this in egypt and have had friends from libya tell me there is a parallel experience there) is that there is a strong anti-black bias from arabs.   i can only speak from my own experiences, observations, and knowledge, and am not claiming to speak for my friends who are arab, or imazighen, or black african.  

yes, imazighen range in color and are one of the indigenous peoples of north africa (this is something that i learned only a year ago, that in upper egypt there are several indigenous ethnicities who are oppressed by arab north africans, not just nubians, as i had thought before). 

but there is also a distinct anti-black oppression.  this stems from several sources including the history of black african slavery in mena (to this day an insult to black skinned folks is ‘abd’ which means slave), sub saharan african immigration to mena and europe (let us not forget that gaddafi threatened to make europe ‘black’, and libya was known for shooting black immigrants crossing through the desert to europe, and al jazeera over hyped claims that gaddafi was importing ‘african’ mercenaries to fight the revolutionaries), and most definitely, racist eurocentric globalized media (which is why baggy jeans here are called ‘nigger pants’). 

now we can speculate (speculative fiction?) whether there would be such a strong anti-black oppression, if eurocentrism did not operate systematically, in mena.  but i dont think that we can make a claim, in this world as it exists now, that post colonial globalized eurocentrism does not play a large role in maintaining anti-black oppression in mena.

Great points by Maia. And hopefully without derailing, I would offer perhaps tangentially similar observations from East Asia. You can find hip hop fans in cities and towns and even villages in China, South Korea, Japan; young folks who listen to Black American MCs and emulate their stylings and their fashion. Know what else you can find? White racism.

I vividly remember a number of conversations I had when I was a student in China, in which I was asked (being Chinese American) about the shocking level of gun violence and criminality in the USA. I would try to explain, “There are many, many factors.” More than once, I heard the same basic question: “It’s because of the Blacks, right?” I would respond, “Where did you get this idea?” The answer: “American movies. American TV shows. American news shows.” 

Mass media is USA’s proudest “soft power” export, right? That means it’s the missionary edge of the imperialist sword. That means that a person who might have never met either a black or white person in their life might be thinking, speaking, or acting from a white supremacist impulse.