Hey City Zen!

O antirracismo não é extremo oposto do racismo, mas a maioria das suas vertentes em vez de desconstruirem, perpetuam as bases do racismo colonialista num ciclo Nietzschiano deprimente. Os movimentos antiracistas normalmente usam as mesmas categorias herdadas do colonialismo para definir pessoas. Podem até vestir essas mesmas categorias na linguagem da política identitária, mas não as destroem, antes pelo contrário. Por exemplo, o conceito de "pessoa racializada" não é mais do que o conceito racista e colonialista de alguém que não é branco puro (um conceito muito nefasto especialmente no colonialismo britânico e holandês, mas não só.) Um verdadeiro antirracismo iria contra a própria noção de raça, deixando para trás de uma vez por todas conceitos colonialistas como Africa ser negra e a Europa ser branca, africanos serem negros, europeus brancos, ou haverem pessoas brancas e outras "racializadas/manchadas". Esses conceitos não existiam nas épocas clássicas e medievais. Está na altura de nos libertar-mos dos nacionalismos e racismos que só apareceram com o nascimento de estados modernos. Para este debate é importante não esquecer que conceito de raça é social, quase nada biológico. Por isso, por um lado é muitíssimo importante porque a nossa vida é social, mas por outro lado, em última análise, é uma escolha individual e social continuar a usar e focar a luta pela igualdade de todos no conceito de raça---especialmente baseada na re-etiquetagem das divisões racistas criadas pelo colonialismo.

P.S. Meu nome é Gal! Viva o tropicalismo, verdadeira antropofagia de libertação, onde todas as raças são devoradas até à irrelevancia. Bullworth said it best.

Labels: #política, #Race

After watching the above video from Trevor Noah, I had to disagree with him and actually be sad about the perpetuation of outdated racial categories. Trevor did take the players' Frenchness away by claiming that Africa (alone) won the World Cup. On a larger point, he really seems to be stuck on viewing everything from the prism of race---which makes sense for someone who grew up in the Apartheid regime. But race, in both Africa and Europe, is much more complex than what he paints. The idea that there is an "African race", as in "African-American" is ultimately a racist category that 19th century Europeans (indeed, including the French) pushed on the African continent and the slaves they brought to the Americas. Genetically, there is more racial diversity in Africa than in all the rest of the World combined. Same for language. It is truly reductive, and in my view racist, to lump all of Africa's diversity into a single race---that is precisely what European racists do. A rejection of that way of thinking is actually closer to the ambassador's point, than Noah's who seems to want to perpetuate the 19th century race dichotomy. BTW, I was born in Africa from people who were born in Africa, and though I am seemingly white, my genes are undoubtedly a combination of many races---a reason for that is partially explained in this BBC video (also shown below). I remember going to Apartheid Johannesburg as a kid and hating how at the airport people from my plane were directed to different lines depending on their external appearance. Trevor Noah's joke about the French World Cup team is, in effect, putting people from the same country in different lines. A better rejection of Apartheid would be to erase those categories altogether.



P.S. I do understand that in some contexts, like the US, the outdated racial categories of the 19th century still play a nefarious role. People who look African are demonstrably still treated worse than European-looking people. Because of that, in the US context, I agree that is still important to debate civil rights with the category of "African-American". But the goal should be to make that category (and other racial ones) less and less relevant towards a citizenship defined on individual freedom and collective commonwealth, as the French at least attempt to do.

Labels: #Africa, #France, #Race, #USA

The categories of identity politics are exactly the same as those of racism and sexism, just turned upside down on the scale of intentions. What is truly revolutionary is to erase these categories. The rock revolution of Presley, the Beatles and the Stones was all about blending race. The revolutionary blast of the New York Dolls and Glam Rock was about blending gender. Bowie, of course, did it all, which was continued by (post-Young Americans) Disco and all of his 80s children, including Prince, as well as all electronic music that derived (interestingly, Rock became a reactionary white affair, a bit like Jazz before it).

We're all individuals. "I've got a face, not just my race". Too bad academics and most political parties don't seem to accept that revolution and breakout of these categories.The point is that Identity Politics, rather than working to erase the categories of racism/sexism/homophobia, worked to enhance them, albeit with good intentions. The problem is that those linguistic categories have maintained and indeed enhanced the discourse of racism/sexism/homophobia itself---the good intentions of Identity Politics are a bit like how Graham Greene describes the good intentions of Alden Pyle, the Quiet American: "Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm". If civil rights had instead fought to erase the categories themselves (which many people like Gore Vidal for years have suggested), focusing on individual- rather than group-freedoms, we would not have created monsters like Trump. That is my opinion, anyway. Perpetuating these categories offers no solutions, simply entrenches distinctions among groups of (diverse) people.

Labels: #Bowie, #Disco, #Gender, #House, #IdentityPolitics, #Music, #Prince, #Race