WE CAN FREE OUR MINDS OURSELVES

ROGER MCKENZIE CONSCIOUSNESS

MOST DISCUSSIONS about racism usually centre on what we can and should be doing to fight against it in a physical sense or to educate the aggressors.

There is nothing wrong in any of those things but all too often the mental strain that racism imposes on black people – either in its most subtle or in its most blatant forms are skirted.

One of the ways that black people have fought the mental impact of racism is by building and then demonstrating our black pride and consciousness.

Steve Biko in South Africa and Frantz Fanon from Martinique are most easily identified with the black consciousness outside of the seemingly default United States centric view.

Black consciousness is ‘an attitude of mind’ or ‘way of life’ of black people who believed in their potential and value as people of African descent who needed to work together.

This is an entirely revolutionary view when one considers that for hundreds of years black people have been told how worthless and, indeed, how sub-human we are.

To break the mould that has been created for us to reach even the potential for unity is astonishing. Steve Biko argued that ‘the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor [was] the mind of the oppressed.’

The work of black activists has always been to go beyond defending ourselves against the daily onslaught of racists or campaigning for improved social and economic conditions but to change the black mindset.

Once we reach an understanding of our ability to look inward for our personal liberation then revolution becomes possible.

In his writings Biko said that colonialism, missionaries, and apartheid had made the black man ‘a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.’

It is vital that we understand that this does not just apply to the apartheid South Africa, Jim Crow racism in the US or to the colonial era.

This is a process that continues to this day.

So the self liberation of black people that must still take place is more than just about the clothes we wear, such as dashikis, or the hair styles we choose, like afros or dreadlocks.

It’s about coming to the realisation that we have a black radical tradition of resistance to racism that goes way beyond the superstars who are always readily remembered on these occasions.

It’s a radical tradition that comes from our internal and collective strength to endure and fight against enslavement, colonialism and the colour bar.

Once we are conscious of this rich heritage we have a chance of bringing about not only revolutionary change in ourselves but the possibility of building the unity necessary to end the rotten capitalist system that promotes the notion of black inferiority and sets black and white against each other for the sake of profit.

Steve Cushion REPARATIONS

TRADE UNIONS in London and the South

East have set up Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement Steering Group.

In the 400 years of the ‘Atlantic slave trade’, 12 to 15 million Africans were enslaved and transported by force to the Americas and the Caribbean. Between one and two million died in the crossing and millions more people in Africa also died because of raids, wars and on the way to the coast for sale to European traffickers.

Once in the Americas, these enslaved labourers were forced to work in labour camps where the conditions were so harsh that most only lived for about seven years before the accumulation of fatigue, whipping and hunger sent them to an early grave. The attrition rate in a Caribbean plantation was worse than the Battle of the Somme. The UN World Conference Against Racism 2001 recognised this as a crime against humanity.

Profits from British trafficking and the unpaid labour of enslaved workers contributed significantly to the accumulation of capital in England, which financed the Industrial Revolution and, conversely, contributed to the underdevelopment of member states of the Caribbean Community. These profits went, directly or indirectly, to the manufacturers and other suppliers of the trafficking, to the shipping industry, into the construction of infrastructure such as canals and railways, but above all to the financial services industry. Many of today's banks and insurance companies can be traced back directly to concerns that had their first growth through their financing of trafficking and enslavement. It would therefore seem reasonable that these modern corporations should refund the unpaid wages from which their predecessors profited so handsomely.

Racism, which was used as a justification for enslavement, has infected British society. The racism of the police, the unemployment figures for young Black people, the endless discrimination and petty humiliations of everyday life, the Windrush scandal: all these factors and more have their origins in the invention of racism to explain the wealth and power that the British ruling class gained from enslavement.

The call for Reparations for enslavement appeals in a broader sense to the "correcting of a wrong". This means implementing measures of compensation at different levels in the form of collective investments that would address structural racism and the legacy of colonialism. Besides financial transfers, claims for Reparations demand support for historical and commemorative activities, the erection of memorials, returning artefacts, removing statues of enslavers and similar measures that would contribute to decolonising the history of enslavement and its legacies. STEVE