Nov 16

Nov 16 Anti-Blackness and Colonization: There is No Decolonization Without Uplifting Black Lives

Cover art by Whitney Sparks

As a black woman of Turtle Island I am asking EVERYONE to STOP speaking of “Decolonization” without explicitly naming and confronting Anti-blackness. Anti-blackness is deeply, unshakably inherent to colonization — as much as land theft, rape, genocide, white supremacy, hierarchy.

“In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist — we must be antiracist.” — Angela Davis

What Does it Mean to be Anti-racist?

It means taking the following actions:

1. DECOLONIZING ONE’S PERSONAL & HOME LIFE

2. RECOGNIZING ONE’S OWN PRIVILEGE

3. DISRUPTING ANTI-BLACKNESS EVERYWHERE

In action, the praxis of being anti-racist is a lifelong process and unending series of practices, experiments upon oneself, developmental exercises, personal risks, education, labor, exchanges, pauses, etc. The actual steps are as diverse as they are multitudinous. For example, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention:

4. UNLEARNING THE GENDER BINARY and

5. RESPECTING ( SUPPORTING, LISTENING TO) WOMXN+ / femmes, feminine energies, beings, bodies, words, spaces, practices, and actions.

Anti-racism in the United States and/or on Turtle Island necessarily, critically, crucially involves the above acts (I’d argue that they are in fact globally required), in addition to explicitly carrying out the following:

1. Acknowledgment of Native Indigenous land sovereignty and our presence on un-ceded territories, inheritors of settler colonialism. This involves learning and self-education on the Indigenous people native to the land where you reside — locally and continentally. Find out their names, to begin. Listen to, defer to, respect and pay Indigenous people. This is a lesson applicable worldwide.

2. Acknowledgment of the enslavement of Black ancestors and everything that has entailed and enabled against people of the African Diaspora and their descendants in the Americas/ Turtle Island, and Black people worldwide. The peculiarly cruel racism experienced by Black people, especially in the US, but also globally is among the worst and most noxious forms of violent white supremacy that ever existed. This cannot be said or emphasized enough.

Along with the genocide of, and land theft from, Native Americans, this vicious, violent, anti-Black, white supremacy is both the origin and the basis of the hegemonic, hyper-capitalist white supremacy that is destroying our planet (from the ground up) and deliberately destabilizing communities and cultures of color around the world.

The US war power that so many decry, lament, and protest, righteously and passionately — was and still is developed, tested, strengthened, and emboldened by oppressing, enslaving, and dehumanizing Black people, of African descent, over and over and over again (worldwide).

Your job as an aspiring anti-racist accomplice (whether white or non-black people of color, but especially if you are white presenting) to begin is to educate yourself on Black history, via the voices of black people living and dead, of all genders and walks of life, and very importantly to pay reparations to black people.

You can start by paying the black people and organizations who educate you about our history. You may also pay reparations directly to any Black American who accepts. I recommend setting aside a regular recurring amount of money in your budget for this purpose. If you feel lost on where to start giving I cannot recommend the FB group “Reparations: Requests & Offerings” highly enough.