Category: politics

Ibram X. Kendi

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Let’s revisit a 2018 post, in which Dr. Ibram X. Kendi appeared in a segment of On the Media.

Here are choice excerpts from the show’s transcript.

… the assumption about where racism thrives, namely among the uneducated, the hateful, the poor. […] this prevailing narrative is centuries old and completely wrong.

Those who were producing racist ideas were doing so to justify existing policies that typically benefitted them. So, in other words, instead of ignorance and hate leading to racist ideas and racist ideas leading to racist policies, racist policies have been leading to racist ideas and racist ideas have been leading to ignorance and hate.

In Western European slave markets at the time, sub-Sahara Africans were typically more valuable, primarily because their skin color made it more difficult for them to run away, in contrast to the more plentiful slaves in the slave market of Eastern European Slavs. And so, then they had to create a justification that defended why they were exclusively slave trading in African people.

When you make it [the argument that racism being fundamentally] about ignorance, you’re not making it about power and policy and structures and systems, that the problem centrally is not America’s institutions, is not the American story, is not American capitalism, that the problem is ignorant individuals. So it allows people to deny how fundamental racism has historically been to America.

It also allows people to believe that I as an activist can go out and educate people. I know the path in which that can be done. It’s a lot harder though as an activist to say, okay, you know what, the fundamental problem is power and policy. So it allows for some people to go the easier route as it relates to anti-racist reform.

There’s actually more violence occurring in impoverished black neighborhoods than there are richer black neighborhoods. It’s the same among all the other racial groups. [LAUGHS] In other words, there’s an actual correlation between violence and unemployment rates. The problem is not people, the problem is actually unemployment. And then it changes the calculus of how we, of course, fight violent crime.

His books, Stamped from the Beginning, 2016, How to Be an Antiracist, 2019, and Antiracist Baby, 2020.

Further readings : Antiracist reading list, The Atlantic, Center for Antiracist Research.

Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

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A bundle, of games, comics, and what-not, hosted by itch.io with content from 1000+ creators. The campaign is a response to the killing of George Floyd and in solidarity with blacklivesmatter.

All proceeds will be donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund split 50/50.  

itch.io is an open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
An Antipode Foundation film directed by Kenton Card.

… capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it.

It started racial without what people imagined race to mean which is black people and it will continue to be racial without what people imagine they’re not raised to be which is white people

Abolition geography – “all liberation struggle is place-based”

Prisons and Class Warfare: An Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore via verso.

The world as it emerges from many winters of delay

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Janet Batet’s article in hypermediamagazine. On curious use of nicknames, lack of empathy and binding to an image of America by some Cubans.

Karens, black men, and the world. via on the media.

On Monday, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis named George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer, catalyzing a new wave of protests against racist police violence in cities across the country. That same day, a white woman walking her dog in Central Park called 911 on a black man who was birdwatching in the same part of the park.

… And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay.

Martin Luther King

Yanick Lahens sur la situation en Haiti

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Entretien avec ici-radio-canada :

“Une population jeune qui est aussi ouverte vers l’extérieur avec les réseaux sociaux. Et puis, l’information circule dans toutes les couches de la société.

Les mouvements d’échanges avec la diaspora font que vous avez une population ouverte sur le monde qui est aujourd’hui marginalisée depuis quand même 200 ans, et qui aujourd’hui demande de pouvoir participer non seulement à la vie politique, mais aussi d’avoir accès à un certain nombre de choses comme l’eau, une école de qualité, des services de santé.”