Tag: racism

The implicit racism of ‘All lives matter’

Men holding signs reading "Black Lives Matter" march in the 30th annual Kingdom Day Parade in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on  January 19 2015 in Los Angeles. (Pic: AFP)
Men holding signs reading “Black Lives Matter” march in the 30th annual Kingdom Day Parade in honour of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. on January 19 2015 in Los Angeles. (Pic: AFP)

Last week, I stumbled across a BuzzFeed video of children from black families reminiscing about their parents’ struggles to put them through school and give them better lives. They talked of exceptional sacrifices: a mother who went without food to feed her sons, another who left a dancing career because of childbirth, or even the absentee father who made a point of always being there for his son. They spoke of retired parents rejoining the workforce to make enough money to get their children through college and of a mother sacrificing relationships because she wanted to avoid turmoil for her children. Like every normal person, I was moved by these stories and touched by the depth of sacrifice these parents made, as well as the gratitude their children exhibited. My disappointment in humanity however was awakened when I scrolled down to read the comments: “Are you going to make a thing about white families sacrificing for their kids too?” asked one user. “As parents we all make sacrifices for our children,” said another. There is something systemically off with these lines of thinking.

First, it is indisputable that all parents make some level of sacrifice for their children. Whether it is the discomfort of waking up in the middle of the night to check their crib, or forgoing something for the sake of their young ones. Nobody denies this. But the problem with the statements above lies in their complete ignorance of historical context. When the video showed black children remembering their parents’ struggles, it did not negate other people’s struggles. It does not mean that because they had difficult childhoods, then everyone else had it easy. When one story is told in positive light, it does not inevitably send everything else in darkness. Thus, the people who felt some level of bias in the story missed a crucial part of American history. History is not comparative in its telling, it is not linear in its production and neither is it singular in perspective.

This idea of sameness of struggle is usually echoed in response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement that sprung up after a number of police shootings in the United States. The same people who disregard America’s racial history want it to be said that “All Lives Matter.” But in reality, that statement in itself is an oxymoron and asserting it as true is nothing less than insincere on the part of its proponents. If all lives did matter, then the American justice system would be a completely different scene today. But all lives don’t matter, because American history is one of intended and completed racialisation of minority populations, especially black people.

Eric Garner and Tamir Rice are not victims of circumstance; they are a disclosure of successful policy implementation. American history is white history. The same country that declared “all men are created equal,” propagated slavery. If it was self-evident that some men were more equal than others in the founding of America, isn’t it logical that they still would not gain equality in the building of America? Whether it is America’s Prison Industrial Complex, or the Japanese Internment, whether COINTELPRO and the Black Panthers, or the Federal Housing Agency and Colour Coding (aka Redlining) which led to the rise of the Projects, American history was the active disenfranchisement of one racial group at the expense of another. The ideology of racial supremacy that founded the United States informed policy and led to the current injustices facing the black person.

If one is not a minority, they have probably benefited from the policies that allowed their families to own a home when other families could not because the FHA would not subsidise their mortgages since they lived in yellow or red lined zones. My point is not that people who are racialised as white are automatically racist, but they have benefited – whether intentionally or unwittingly – from the historical injustices of racism.

It is only in failing to understand this fact that you can hastily declare that all lives matter, and thereby repeat the incongruities in the founding documents of the American state. You will not understand that poverty breeds a social bubble in which violence is the only outpouring of economic frustration, because you have never needed to be violent. If you have only been on one side of history, you will never understand what it means to bend the arc of history toward justice when your opponent has power on their side. You will not easily wrap your head around the fact that at some point, this history shows itself in modern life; that this context paints the black life in all shades and hues. So, we could probably make a video of white children talking of their parent’s struggles after the housing bubble of 2008, or even of those white innocent people who die of police brutality. But we cannot account for their history because it has been the only history that has been told. What of that one police officer who likes black children? Or what of the fact that you have black friends? Or what of the fact that you have been to Africa? If you think these can erase the fundamental flaws and systemic injustices created in the writing and telling of American history, you are part of the problem.

Franklyn Odhiambo is an alumni of the African Leadership Academy, and a student of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Kenyan.

Fifa probes blackface fan photos at World Cup

Fifa is investigating a possible racial discrimination case after photographs circulated of fans with blackface makeup at Germany’s match against Ghana.

Images posted on social media networks showed two men, appearing to be Germany fans, with blackened faces in the Fortaleza stadium on Saturday.

A spectator at the Germany-Ghana World Cup match on June 21. (Pic: AFP)
A spectator at the Germany-Ghana World Cup match on June 21. (Pic: Reuters)

Fifa said on Sunday that its disciplinary committee is considering opening a case. It will also consider a report by the Fifa match commissioner, Eggert Magnusson of Iceland.

“We do not respect any discriminatory messages,” spokesperson Delia Fischer said.

Fifa holds national football federations responsible for their fans’ behavior inside stadiums.

In a second incident, a man ran onto the pitch in the second half of the 2-2 draw.

The shirtless fan had an email address and telephone number written on his back. He was ushered away by Ghana midfielder Sulley Muntari before being detained by stewards.

Brazil’s organising committee spokesperson Saint-Clair Milesi said the man was reportedly from Poland.

“He came running, charged and jumped over the stewards,” Milesi said. “Such behavior is totally unacceptable. He was taken to the local authorities for the proper measures.” – Sapa-AP

Italy: African immigrants use films and books to fight racism

Seven years ago, Dagmawi Yimer was “between life and death” when Italian navy officers rescued him and 30 others from a skiff in heavy seas between Libya and the island of Lampedusa.

Today, Yimer directs documentary films about immigrants like himself from the home he shares with his Italian partner and their two-year-old daughter in the northern city of Verona.

He is part of the fast-growing immigrant population that is changing the face of Italy, just as it has transformed the populations of more northern European countries such as Britain, France or Germany.

He is also one of many foreigners who are trying – through cultural initiatives such as films and books – to change the racist views of many Italians of the immigrants in their midst.

Contrary to popular perceptions, immigrants are making their mark across the Italian economy, politics and society. African-born author Kossi Komla-Ebri, a 59-year-old medical doctor, has published six books, all in Italian.

“Many immigrants think our emancipation is only economic and political, but we are convinced it’s cultural and that we can have a more profound influence through culture,” he said.

It isn’t easy. Italy’s immigration wave is swelling just as the country is struggling to emerge from its deepest economic downturn in the post-war era.

Nearly eight percent of the population here is foreign born, and in 50 years the number will triple to 23%, according to a projection by Catholic charity Caritas.

To help pay the pensions of an ageing population and to ensure long-term growth, Italy needs to integrate its immigrant population into the workforce, economists say.

Anti-immigrant sentiment
But high unemployment, especially among non-student young people, has fuelled anti-immigrant sentiment among the Italian mostly-white population.

Italy’s one-million strong Afro-Italian community, a fifth all legal immigrants, got a high-profile representative last April when African-born Cecile Kyenge became the country’s first black minister.

It did not take long before she was likened to an orangutan by a well-known politician and had bananas thrown at her at a public meeting.

Cécile Kyenge. (Pic: AFP)
Italy’s Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge. (Pic: AFP)

Politics
Many white Italians view the Afro-Italian community and other immigrants as cheap labour or petty criminals – partly because many work as domestic help and farm labourers or sell counterfeit goods in the streets of big cities.

Moreover, children born to immigrants do not automatically receive citizenship even if they are born on Italian soil, attend Italian schools and spend their whole lives in Italy. They must wait until they turn 18 to apply.

Though Italy was a colonial power in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries and migrants have come to Italy for decades, the country has mainly served as a transit route for the rest of Europe and so remains an overwhelmingly white country.

Over the past two decades, another factor has thwarted attempts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive immigration policy: the anti-immigration Northern League, once a key ally of Silvio Berlusconi’s former coalition governments.

Backed up by TV images of overcrowded boats being rescued off Italian shores, Northern League politicians portray migrants as invaders coming to steal jobs – rhetoric that neglects Italy’s history as a country of immigrants to North and South America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was high-ranking Northern League member Roberto Calderoli who likened to Kyenge to an orangutan last year.

Members of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova, or New Force, party were suspected by police of throwing bananas at her during a public round table on immigration. It denied responsibility.

The party also left mannequins covered in fake blood outside a Rome administrative office, urging her to resign because “immigration is the genocide of peoples”.

Kyenge seems to have taken it all in her stride, never losing her calm in public and sticking with her goal of making it easier for immigrants’ children to gain citizenship.

Only last month did the 49-year-old she reveal that she too had been a “badante”, or house servant, for six years to pay her way through university, saying it had been one of the most difficult times in her life.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a tribal chief with 38 children and four wives, she ended up an eye surgeon until she became a lawmaker and minister earlier this year.

“I’m not coloured, I’m black,” she told Reuters in an interview in her office in central Rome, rejecting the phrase “di colore” or “coloured”, which many think is the politically correct Italian term for blacks.

“It’s the proper term because it forces everyone to face the reality of a multi-ethnic Italy.”

‘Boiled elephant knees’
Italy’s immigration policies are ill-equipped to deal with the thousands of immigrants who show up – with scant identification and on rickety boats – on its southern shores.

Rules dating to 2009 and Berlusconi’s then conservative government make entering without proper documentation a crime, requiring officials to report clandestine migrants.

As a result, those who survive often treacherous journeys – at least 366 Ethiopian migrants drowned while crossing to Italy in October – often linger for months in makeshift immigration centres and then disappear withinItaly or eleswhere in Europe.

During the first 11 months of this year, 40,244 illegal migrants reached Italy by boat, almost four times as many as a year earlier, according to Save the Children.

The number living in Italy is not known with any precision, but the OECD has estimated that, alongside the 5-million legal immigrants, there could be as many as 750 000 illegal ones.

One of the community’s oldest cultural initiatives is the “African October” festival inaugurated 11 years ago in the northern city of Parma and now celebrated in Rome and Milan, showcasing African artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers.

“The meeting between Africa and Italy is very important,” says festival founder Cleophas Adrien Dioma, who was born in Burkina Faso. “Culture is born out of such encounters.”

Komla-Ebri, who came to Italy in 1974, is a doctor in a hospital north of Milan and writes in his free time. This year his book Imbarazzismi – an Italian neologism merging the words “embarrassed” and “racism” – was printed by Edizioni SUI, a publisher owned by an Eritrean-born Italian.

In the book, Komla-Ebri writes about when his white Italian wife took a walk in the park and a stranger complimented her for adopting two “African orphans”, or the time her friends ask her what he eats, “no doubt with the chilling thought of a menu of smoked snake or boiled elephant knees”.

“My irony is a defence mechanism,” he said.

The anecdotes capture the often naive quality of racism in Italy, infamously exemplified by Berlusconi’s 2008 remark – made in jest, he said – that the newly elected Barack Obama, was “young, handsome and suntanned”.

Yimer (36) harvested grapes in the south and later handed out fliers to university students in Rome until he took a video production class offered to immigrants by a non-profit group.

His fifth documentary film – released this month – is about three Senagalese men recovering from racist attacks.

Entitled Va Pensiero, after the chorus of an opera by Giuseppe Verdi about an immigrant’s nostalgia for home, the film follows the men as they try to come to terms with the hate and violence they endured.

The first man was stabbed and left for dead by a skinhead at a bus stop in Milan. Passersby ignored him for more than an hour. The other two were randomly shot by a radical right-wing thug who hunted down and murdered two other Senagalese men on the streets of Florence in 2011, and then committed suicide.

At an early screening of the film for possible distributors, the reaction was that of having been “punched in the gut”, according to one representative of the state-owned TV network, who suggested softening the tone.

Yimer and his Italian partners on the film, who have founded an association to collect the testimony of immigrants called the “Archive of Migrant Memories”, stood their ground.

“I’ve experienced a lot of prejudice,” he said, “and I see a worrying trend in Italy where racism is becoming more ideological.”

Steve Scherer for Reuters