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racism
George Jackson - 40 year commemoration
Freedom Archives
2011-08-22, Issue 545
August 21st marks the 40th anniversary of the execution of George Lester Jackson. The Chicago- born Jackson would have celebrated his 70th birthday on September 23rd. Jackson was a prisoner who became an author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family prison organization. He achieved global fame as one of the Soledad Brothers before being executed by prison guards in San Quentin Prison. Based on an edited portion of Prisons on Fire by the Freedom Archives (2001) with video editing by Oriana Bolden. George Jackson - 40 year commemoration from Freedom Archives on Vimeo. George Jackson - 40 year commemoration from Freedom Archives on Vimeo.
The problem with affirmative action
Lewis Gordon
2011-08-18, Issue 545
cc TedeytanDespite accompanying debates about supposed non-white mediocrity, resistance to affirmative action is not about maintaining standards but rather about maintaining ‘white mediocrity’, argues Lewis R. Gordon.
Reflections on the Norwegian tragedy
Yash Tandon
2011-08-11, Issue 544
cc R NYash Tandon takes a deeper look at the mass killings in Norway on 22 July. The event, he writes, 'gives us a moment to comprehend the deeper meaning of human existence'.
Mauritania: Slavery and state racism
Sy Hamdou
2011-08-03, Issue 543
cc MagharebiaTackling the racism and slavery inherent in Mauritania will rely on overthrowing ‘the ideological and religious foundations of slavery and racism with the state’, writes Sy Hamdou.
Genocidal actions by government of Sudan must be stopped
Explo N. Nani-Kofi
2011-07-13, Issue 539
© AFP/UNMIS/S.PriceThe situation in Sudan ‘demands solidarity and action from all peace-loving people and human right activists,’ writes Explo Nani-Kofi, in a call for readers everywhere to take whatever action they can to stop the government’s genocidal actions.
Manning Marable and the Malcolm X biography controversy
A response to critics
Bill Fletcher, Jr
2011-07-07, Issue 538
cc AzlsDespite the overwhelmingly positive response to the late Manning Marable’s ‘Malcolm X: A life of reinvention’, within days its publication, the book ignited ‘a firestorm in some quarters of the Black Freedom Movement’. Bill Fletcher Jr examines the controversies around the biography.
Edward Wilmot Blyden, grandfather of African liberation
Cameron Duodu
2011-07-06, Issue 538
cc WikimediaWhile George Padmore is well known as the ‘father of African emancipation’, Cameron Duodu reminds us of the life and ideas of Edward Wilmot Blyden, ‘the grandfather of African emancipation’.
Race, class and transformation in South Africa
Sehlare Makgetlaneng
2011-06-30, Issue 537
cc L LHow can the race question not be one of the key issues of concern for those who are for a better life for all South Africans? asks Sehlare Makgetlaneng.
Behind the boycott
Why South Africa's academic boycott of Ben Gurion University took hold
2011-06-30, Issue 537
cc S LOn 23 March, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa cut all ties with Ben Gurion University in the Negev in Israel. Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg and the coordinator of the Education Rights Project. While he was in Montreal in May 2011, giving a lecture at McGill University in Montreal entitled Reading Edward Said in South Africa, he spoke with Lillian Boctor regarding the University of Johannesburg’s decision to sever links with Ben Gurion University, the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid within the South African context, academic freedom and the role of academics and science in society. Listen to the interview online here.
Frantz Fanon 50 years on
Richard Pithouse
2011-06-16, Issue 535
cc Wikimedia‘On 6 December 2011, 50 years will have passed since the death of Frantz Fanon. Around the world people are getting together in universities, trade union offices, shack settlements, prisons, church halls, and other places where people try to think together, to reflect on the meaning of an extraordinary man for us and our struggles here and now,’ writes Richard Pithouse.
Race is skin deep, humanity is not
Neville Alexander
2011-05-03, Issue 527
cc A SIn the wake of the ‘furore about the racist remarks attributed to Mr Jimmy Manyi’, Neville Alexander discusses the challenges around creating a ‘raceless society’ in post-apartheid South Africa.
GodZuma and Black Theology
Pedro Alexis Tabensky
2011-05-05, Issue 527
cc A S‘Few things are more hateful’ than the ‘deliberate manipulation of the minds of the broken and destitute in the name of liberation,’ writes Pedro Alexis Tabensky, as the ANC attempts to win support from South Africa’s poorest communities by portraying the party as ‘the representatives of God on earth’.
Manning Marable and the march towards a socialist America
Horace Campbell
2011-04-07, Issue 524
cc G LManning Marable, African American activist, scholar and author, passed away on April 1. Horace Campbell pays tribute to a man who dedicated his life to the struggle against oppression.
Manning Marable and Malcolm X
Michael Dyson, Bill Fletcher Jr
2011-04-07, Issue 524
cc WikipediaRenowned African American historian Manning Marable passed away on April 1 at the age of 60, days before the publication of his new biography of Malcolm X. Sociologist Michael Dyson and Bill Fletcher Jr, founder of the Black Radical Congress, discuss Marable’s legacy with Democracy Now! Watch the interview. Read the transcript.
Who said blackness cannot be synonymous with excellence?
Veli Mbele
2011-03-23, Issue 522
cc Frerieke‘The best legacy that we can bequeath to our children and grandchildren [is a] legacy of pride in ourselves, and of excellence,’ asserts Veli Mbele.
Black (or White?) History Month
Chika Ezeanya
2011-02-02, Issue 515
cc D CBlack History Month ‘allows Africans to tell their “his-story” starting only from the period when they set foot on the enslaver’s soil and became subjected to his “civilising” efforts', argues Chika Ezeanya.
Reparations and the slave trade
Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua
2011-01-11, Issue 512
cc WikimediaDemands for reparations around the transatlantic slave trade have been absent from United Nations conferences on racism. Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua discusses the history and context behind them.
Education and racism: Defending Brazil’s candace girls
Andréia Lisboa de Sousa
2011-01-06, Issue 511
cc P A RWhile edicts around the need for non-discrimination and racial equality within Brazil’s education system have changed, the attitudes of figures in positions of educational authority have not, writes Andréia Lisboa de Sousa.
‘The Souls of White Folk’ rediscovered
Bill Fletcher, Jr
2010-11-25, Issue 507
cc WikimediaRe-reading W.E.B Dubois’s 90-year old essay on race and modern imperialism, Bill Fletcher Jr finds that is still relevant today, in the wake of the US’s November 2010 elections and ‘the victories…by the political Right’.
US revolution and counterrevolution: Turns, twists and zigzags
Horace Campbell
2010-11-04, Issue 503
cc White HouseAs the US rounds up its mid-term elections, Horace Campbell stresses that there must be renewed efforts to organise in response to the country’s right-wing oligarchy and educate people that ‘fighting wars overseas cannot be the basis for economic reconstruction’.
South Africa in 2010: A history that must happen
Trevor Ngwane
2010-10-28, Issue 502
The social weight of organised, mobilised workers is beginning to consolidate in South Africa. The September public sector strike was a shining example, writes Trevor Ngwane.
'To be young, gifted and black'
The struggles of black young people today
Veli Mbele
2010-10-21, Issue 501
cc M SIn a speech marking the 33rd anniversary of Steve Biko’s death in detention, Veli Mbele, president of the Azanian Youth Organisation, looks at the lessons young black people can learn from Biko’s life and ideas.
The global capitalist crisis and Africa’s future
Part 2: What is the way forward?
Dani W. Nabudere
2010-09-30, Issue 498
cc B SIf we are to create and provide space and a platform for African autonomous thinking on issues of the future of the continent, we have to begin by liberating ourselves from Western ways of thinking and draw knowledge and inspiration from our own heritages, argues Dani W. Nabudere, in the second half of a two-part article based on his inaugural address to the newly formed Nile Heritage Forum on political economy.
Obama and racism in the West: What does it mean for Africa?
Patricia Daley
2009-10-29, Issue 455
cc AdaminaThe prominence of the Obama family has brought black people's humanity onto the world stage, writes Patricia Daley. The Obama family's success challenges patriarchal systems headed by white alpha-males and reveals possibilities of overcoming exclusion for non-white people across North and South America and Europe, Daley contends, albeit in the face of a backlash aimed at reinforcing white supremacy. But if struggles in the West over racial exclusivity can ultimately promote greater confidence from Africans and black people around the world, will there be a fresh impetus to challenge explicit and implicit claims of superiority?
Naomi Klein does reparations movement a disservice
Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno
2009-09-24, Issue 449
cc Rele TompAn article by activist and writer Naomi Klein on the UN’s April conference on racism, which was recently published in Harpers Magazine, ‘does a disservice’ both to ‘movements for reparations and redress for crimes against people of African descent and for self determination for the Palestinian people’, Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno argue in this week’s Pambazuka News.
Darfur 'genocide' lies unravelling
African Union says only 1,500 Darfuris died in 2008
Bruce A. Dixon
2009-07-16, Issue 442
Stopping genocide is apolitical, purely a matter of conscience and goodwill. At least, that's what the Save Darfur campaign would have us believe, says Bruce A. Dixon. While Save Darfur's good-vs-evil battle has consistently touted a total figure of 400,000 dead in Darfur, sources on the ground indicate that there were actually around 1,500 deaths last year. That people are dying is not to be minimised or downplayed, Dixon contends, but the notion that the US's global might is needed to slay a unified evil is increasingly revealing itself as purely a means to establish domestic consent for military intervention in Africa.
Landmark ruling allows apartheid victims to sue multinationals
Khadija Sharife
2009-07-16, Issue 442
cc T SlyIn one of the most significant legal rulings in the post-apartheid history of South Africa, victims of apartheid have finally received the green light from a US judge to sue multinational corporations that knowingly aided and abetted the regime. The implications of this ruling are colossal, writes Khadija Sharife, not only for Africa but for the world at large.
Why I love-hate Euro-America
Chambi Chachage
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc catface3Chambi Chachage doesn’t hate America, he actually loves it ‘a lot’. It ‘could be a model for deracialising the continents’, Chacage believes, as ‘probably the only habitable continent for humans that is not really seen as a continent that belongs to a particular “race”.’ But says Chachage, America is also haunted by what President Obama describes as the 'original sin of slavery and racism', epitomised by the Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of native Americans. Chacage concludes that what he feels is actually what historian Colin Legum describes as a ‘disappointed love’ – the colonised ‘believe there has been no proper recognition of, nor retribution for, the injury of colonialism’, while the colonisers ‘feel let down because Africa has not lived up to the expectations of European liberal values.’
Reparations and regrets: Why is the US Senate apologising now?
Horace Campbell
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc Murky1With the US Senate approving a resolution formally acknowledging the historic injustice behind slavery and the country's 'Jim Crow' laws on 18 June, Horace Campbell asks 'Why now?' Coming in the same week as a call for a new, multi-polar world order from the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the timing of the apology from a US Senate edgy about the internationalisation of reparations claims is no coincidence, Campbell argues. But with the Senate clear that the resolution offers no scope for any 'claim' against the United States, Campbell situates such action within an established tradition of pre-emptive apologies designed to inhibit further action. With political circles in the US keen to ensure the country's access to Africa's abundant resources, resolutions such as the US Senate's represent an attempt to replace crude conservative tactics with a more nuanced approach to imperial expansion, Campbell contends, an approach which must be countered by sustained will from progressive forces around the world to see reparative justice fulfilled.
When do ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’?
Chambi Chachage
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc ChadicaChambi Chachage explores when and how ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’, in the first of a series of three articles exploring the idea of dual citizenship with reference to Tanzania. Definitions of citizenship in modern nation-states in ‘societies other than Euro-American ones’ were influenced by how the notion developed in Euro-America and how it was ‘selectively applied in the Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America in the context(s) of colonialism, imperialism and developmentalism,’ Chachage argues. ‘It is this colouring that we need to unpack as we trace the historical and political trajectories and implications of the idea and praxis/practice of citizenship in Africa,’ says Chacage.