WHITE PROFESSOR SCHOOLED ON RACIST AMERICA

Here’s American Black writer James Baldwin explaining why he fled to France in the 1940s. Put simply, there was a ‘danger of death to negros’ in the U.S. and he had to get out.

He’s on a 1968 episode of the Dick Cavett Show, and had just been asked by a White Yale professor: ‘Why must we always concentrate on colour, when there are other ways of connecting men?’

Baldwin quickly exposes the out-of-touch academic. And reels off the list of realities facing Blacks. From the segregated congregations of the Christian church, to the real estate lobby that kept him ‘in the ghetto.’

Baldwin arrived in Paris with just $40 in his pocket. But he didn’t care. France was able to release him from the ‘social terror’ he’d experienced in the United States.

Continued….. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published in 1953, and it made Time magazine’s top 100 list.

Baldwin died in 1987, and is remembered for his civil rights activism as well as his writing. And, of course, passionate interviews like this.

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FRANCE’S 170-YEAR OCCUPATION OF KANAKY

The struggle against colonialism is intensifying worldwide. This video by Congolese journalist Maud-Salomé EKILA BOFUNDA (@ekilaaa) the spokeperson of the organisation @urgencespanafricanistes and @afriqueresurrection goes into the history of the indigenous Kanak people, who are confronting violent French settler colonialism and an effort to seize their lands.

What the French call ‘New Caledonia,’ aka the islands of Kanaky, an archipelago not far from Australia, has been inhabited by Pacific Islanders since around 1000 BCE. The French seized the islands in 1853 and made it an ‘overseas territory’ in 1956. Today, the French and their settlers on the island are trying to consolidate and solidify their power at the expense of the Kanak people once again.

Continued…. The goal is to eliminate the the Noumea Agreement of 1998, which grants Kanak people some level of political control over their ancestral homelands. In doing so, settlers born in France who migrated to Kanaky would be allowed to participate in local elections. For decades, the strategy on the part of the French to crush the power of the Kanak people has been to encourage more and more mass French settlement on the islands.

Many Kanak, including very well organised sectors of the population, understand that their only true pathway to liberation is through full independence from France and an end to all colonial ties and relations.

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WHY WEST BACKS ISRAEL DESPITE HORRIFIC RECORD

For more than seven months, massacre upon massacre in the Gaza Strip has been livestreamed to the world. Be it Palestinian parents begging for justice by holding up their children’s dead bodies or Israeli soldiers playing with women’s lingerie after they raid Palestinian homes, the world has seen the true face of Zioni*m. However, the West has remained Israel’s friend.

As pro-Palestine activist Fiona Lali of the UK’s Revolutionary Communist Party points out, Israel is crucial to upholding Western imperialism. It is an unsinkable aircraft carrier, a Western outpost in West Asia used to destabilise the resource-rich region.

Instead of clamping down on Israel’s military onslaught that has k*lled more than 36,000 Palestinians, the West has poured resources into Israel. That has included UN vetoes against ceasefires, refusing to recognise a Palestinian state, shipping weapons, and sending tens of billions of dollars since 7 October.

Here are two pictures centuries apart showing the same thing, the exploitation of Africans.

On the left is an 18th-century illustration of a crammed slave ship. It sparked shock and outrage after anti-slave campaigner, Thomas Clarkson (1760 - 1846), posted it all over England. Around 10-12 million captured Africans were sent across the Atlantic by European slave traders between the 16th and 19th centuries.

On the right is a modern electric car, with Africans laid out in a similar pattern along its chassis. The message being, Africans - particularly those in the Democratic Republic of Congo - are still exploited to mine minerals needed for Western high-tech goods. The drawing was sent by a reader to author Siddharth Kara who’s highlighted the abuse in his book: Red Cobalt - How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. It’s worth a read. And we think these pictures summarise what’s happening perfectly.

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HOW ‘WHITENESS’ WAS INVENTED TO JUSTIFY SLAVERY

In this video, storyteller Garrison Hayes (@garrisonh) - who specialises in race history - sets the record straight on how the idea of ‘Whiteness’ came to be. Before the 17th century, nobody identified as White. But it was gradually adopted for political reasons - to justify supposed superiority and thereby slavery. This gave ‘philosophical cover’ for European crimes in Africa. Does it still do that today?

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MANO BROWN: BRAZIL OWES BLACK PEOPLE

In this 2007 clip, @manobrown, lead lyricist of Brazilian rap group Racionais MC’s, applauded Brazilian educational quotas for Black people and added that Brazil, the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery on paper in 1888, owes more to our kith and kin.

Brazil’s affirmative action policy requires every federal university to reserve at least half of the seats for students from marginalised groups. Out of that amount, about half of the seats go solely to Black, mixed and Indigenous people. The other half go to low-income public-school students.

Racionais MC’s began in São Paulo in the early 1990s, galvanising a politically charged hip-hop movement that swept the South American country.

Continued…. Their music sparked greater social consciousness and mobilisation of adolescents and young adults in the favelas (slums), ‘quebradas’ (ghettoes), and other working-class city and rural communities, all of which helped to propel Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva to his first presidential victory in 2002. Three previous presidential runs for Lula (1989, 1994 and 1998) proved unsuccessful. In 2020, Campinas State University, one of Brazil’s most prestigious educational institutions, included Racionais MC’s’ seminal album, ‘Surviving in Hell’ (1997), in its readings for students preparing to take the school’s entrance exam. ‘Surviving in Hell,’ like other hip-hop albums, dispelled Brazil’s creation myth and the narrative of ‘racial democracy.’

Do you think Brazil owes our people more than higher education quotas? If so, what do you suggest?

Beyond that, how can we on the continent and in the diaspora establish direct people-to-people ties to gain greater understanding to become self-determining people?

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MADARAKA: KENYA TAKES BACK POWER

‘Madaraka’ is Swahili for power - and on this day, Kenyans took theirs back from the colonial regime. Self-governance was a key milestone on the difficult road to independence. African Stream’s Wambura Mwai looks back at the drama that lead up to it. Happy Madakara Day!

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SOUTH AFRICA HEADED FOR COALITION GOVERNMENT

Results from the 29 May South Africa polls indicate that the country is headed for its first-ever coalition government. This follows the failure by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to reach the 50 percent mark required to form government.
With nearly all the votes counted, the ANC has just slightly over 40 percent of the vote, followed by the white-led Democratic Alliance (DA) with 24 per cent. In third is the six months old Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) party with 14.8 per cent. Finishing up the top four is Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with 9.3 per cent. Final results are expected by Sunday night.

Continued….. The results have confirmed many pre-election polls that had predicted a major drop in support for the ruling party, and the possibility of a coalition government. The ANC has however remained tight-lipped about potential partners. The MK which is led by former ANC and South African president Jacob Zuma has ruled out going into a coalition with the ANC. The two other main parties, the DA and EFF are yet to address the issue.

The results also point to two-thirds of the country’s industrial regions falling under opposition control. The ANC looks set to lose KwaZulu Natal province to MK, while the DA is expected to retain Western Cape.

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OTD IN 1963: KENYA ATTAINS ‘SELF-RULE’

On 1st June, Kenyans celebrate attaining self-governance from the British in 1963, one year before gaining independence. 61 years later, the question of what independence really means is as poignant as ever in the face of deeply entrenched neoliberal capitalism. While claiming sovereignty on paper, Kenya remains firmly shackled - its economy managed by the IMF, its military by the Pentagon, and its politics a mirror image of America’s, down to being dominated by two parties that serve the interests of a minority elite.

Renowned author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, currently in exile, is one of many Kenyans unhappy about the recent visit to the US by Kenya’s president, William Ruto. In particular, the image of Ruto sitting on Joe Biden’s chair riled him - as it did many Africans.

Continued….. Capitalising on a disengaged public struggling just to survive, he’s pushing head - at Washington’s behest - with a Kenyan police deployment to Haiti, a mission with one possible casualty already, and one ruled unconstitutional by Kenya’s top court. Thiong’o has penned an open letter to the president, letting him know how Kenyans feel, and that history will judge him harshly. Here is an extract:

“I saw you seated on a chair, grinning, while Biden stood behind you, his face beaming with satisfaction. Why not? He had just announced that you had signed off our beloved Kenya to make it a non-member ally of NATO. In other words, you had agreed to become NATO’s errand boy in America’s struggle with Russia and China for access to the resources of the continent.”

Happy Madaraka Day, Kenyans!

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FIERCE AND FORMIDABLE AMY GARVEY

Amy Jacques Garvey was a formidable figure in the Black liberation movement - and her impact extended far beyond her role as the wife of Pan-African figurehead Marcus Garvey. She was an astute journalist, editor and activist, and played a pivotal role in shaping the intellectual and ideological framework of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Her incisive writings provided an important platform for anti-colonial and feminist discourse, advocating fiercely for the rights and empowerment of Black people globally. Amy Jacques Garvey will be remembered as a great architect of Pan-Africanism and a powerful voice for gender equality within the movement.

African Stream’s Wambura Mwai relates her impressive story.

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EGYPT’S FIRST REVOLUTIONARY PRESIDENT

Unlike Gamal Abd El Nasser, little is known about his comrade and Egypt’s first President Mohammed Naguib. Here’s a look into his life, his role in Egypt’s revolution against British colonialism and his contributions to Egyptian history more widely.

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