redlightpolitics: [snip my previous post on the topic]
Hi Flavia,
Thanks for the input. I have read several of your pieces before and have always appreciated your input and perspective. There are two important points which I would like to add that may not have been clear from my post.
Firstly, the definition of “fulcrum” I personally use is couched in the work of Scot Nakagawa on white supremacy in America titled “Antiblackness is the Fulcrum“
The specific definition which he uses in the piece and which I use as well is as follows:
A fulcrum is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the support about which a lever turns” or, alternatively, “one that supplies capability for action.” In other words, if you want to move something, you need a pry bar and some leverage, and what gives you leverage is the fulcrum – that thing you use so the pry bar works like a see-saw.
The racial arrangement in the U.S. is ever changing. There is no “bottom.” Different groups have more ability to affect others at different times because our roles are not fixed. But, while there’s no bottom, there is something like a binary in that white people exist on one side of these dynamics – the side with force and intention. The way they mostly assert that force and intention is through the fulcrum of anti-black racism.
Nakagawa then goes on to list just a few of the countless reasons (slavery as the historical basis of our economy, fear of black people driving national politics, the U.S. Constitution being written by black slave owners, the prison industrial complex, etc.) for why this is the case grounded in American history and brutal present day reality. “While there’s no bottom…The way [white people] assert that force and intension is through the fulcrum of antiblack racism”
I am aware that the slave trade and African diaspora included Sweden (where I have family being part Swedish myself) and many other European countries that most people don’t think of when they think of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Most Americans don’t even know that New Sweden existed and that Sweden also had a colonial presence in the present-day US. You’re right in saying that this is basic knowledge because it is exactly that.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade and blackness were the foundation upon which whiteness was conceived in Europe, and this was not limited just to countries that were directly involved in this trade. This is a phenomenon that has been described by some scholars as “blackness without blacks” (coined by Neil MacMaster), and you’re right in saying that historically antiblackness played the key role in shaping conceptions of whiteness across the continent.
But when I use the word “fulcrum” it is not to describe how the larger concept of whiteness came to be (which is, of course, rooted in antiblackness), but the pivot point around which “[white people] mostly assert that force and intention” in local racial dynamics fixed temporally and geographically today.
This clearly varies tremendously from country to country in Europe based on local context and imperial histories, with antiblackness looming larger in some countries than others (e.g. the racist glorification of slavery in the Dutch “Zwarte Piet” celebrations, as you know personally and painfully being Dutch yourself). But there is also the specter of “invading” Moroccans and Turks (which you’ve written about), antisemitism and antiziganism are rampant and on the rise, and racialized Islamophobia and the burqa in particular loom large in and radically shape local politics. Scandinavia has also been indelibly shaped by the systematic disenfranchisement, sterilization and ethnic cleansing of Saami people. And then there is xenoracism, ethnonationalism and the decentering of whiteness discourse from the American context as well on top of all of this.
Where is the pivot point in all of these local racial dynamics shaped by these diverse strains of history? Where does white supremacy exert its primary force in all of these local European contexts and is that force always centered on antiblackness like it is in the US? It clearly varies from country to country, but I would say not necessarily at all, even though historically the roots of white supremacy in many of these countries were laid in antiblackness. Does this devalue antiblackness and the virulence of it, though? Not at all given that the fulcrum doesn’t delineate a “bottom” in racial dynamics and history. But despite this important shared history, can we say that antiblackness looms larger in local racial dynamics in Bulgaria than antiziganism? How about the Czech Republic where antiziganism is at the center of the agenda for far-right political groups?
We may potentially diverge in this definition or in the way we cast that history, but I hope that clarifies my perspective.
And on your second point, work on Europe is of course being produced by prolific European POC writers like yourself. My post was primarily directed at US bloggers writing about Europe themselves and just getting it completely wrong. This is egregiously done again and again when a good number of these bloggers write about light-skinned Roma people and light-skinned Jews, especially, who are not seen as white in Europe. They make light of the Holocaust, pogroms, sterilizations, forced evictions and more faced by Jews and Roma people for centuries in Europe and exclusively quote scholars like Frantz Fanon who, despite other amazing, critical scholarly work they’ve done, reduce those struggles to a “little family quarrel.” And it’s just like, when in modern history have (even very light-skinned) Jews and Roma people EVER been seen as white or “part of the family” in Europe without trying to hide their heritage? When has family ever relentlessly persecuted, raped and killed you for centuries even if your family converted from Judaism generations ago?
It is all of that which prompted my response. It was not meant as an erasure of the work being done by European POC like yourself, and for that I apologize, but it was meant to challenge US bloggers to think carefully about local context in Europe before jumping to their own conclusions based on our own.
Thanks again for adding on,
BiA
I knew exactly what you meant about “the fulcrum of white supremacy” and the context of the expression which is why I am in agreement with Nakagawa and I do believe the same definition applies to Europe. Especially in so far as how all “racial categories” have been granted (and continue to be granted) humanity depending on their proximity to Blackness.
Let me give you an example: you mention antiziganism as “divergent from” antiblackness rather than “being rooted in” antiblackness. First, there’s the etymology of the slur “gypsy” which comes from the 16th century assumption of Roma people “coming from Egypt”. “mid 16th cent.: originally gipcyan, short for Egyptian (because Gypsies were popularly supposed to have come from Egypt).” Incidentally, Kale, the Romani word for “black”, is used as a self-designation by some groups of Romani people (notably those in Spain where if you listen to some flamenco lyrics they speak of “la raza cale” about themselves).
Then there is the actual genealogy of antiziganism, this being the first recorded expulsion:
Prince Vlad Dracul of Wallachia transports some 12,000 people who are described as ‘looking like Egyptians’ from Bulgaria for forced labour.
Following this, there’s the first anti-Romani legislation recorded: the British Egyptians Act of 1530. In the act, the English Parliament coded into law the expulsion of the “outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians”.
Keep in mind that all of this was taking place in the 1500s, pre Orientalist discourses following the actual British colonization of Egypt. This coding of Roma as Egyptians was taking place at a time when “Africa” was already constructed as the “source of chattel slavery” by the Portuguese and Spanish. Unsurprisingly (or perhaps I should say “consistently”), in 1538, the Portuguese expelled their Roma populations to Brazil where they got a sort of “promotion” from undesirable group in Portugal to active participants as middlemen in the Brazilian slave trade (if you can read Portuguese, Rodrigo Corrêa Teixeira documents this “upward mobility” in a paper archived here).
One could say that all of the above is “ancient history” and it doesn’t necessarily mean that nowadays antiziganism still rests on anti blackness. Except when we see news like this, from July 2012: Killing Time: The Lethal Force of Anti-Roma Racism
Earlier this year in April, in the neighbouring Czech Republic in the town of Chotěbuz, a Roma man was killed, shot in the head with a crossbow. The assailant claimed the victim was one of three men intent on committing a robbery, that he had been aiming at their feet. The victim’s cousin alleged that he shouted, “You black whores, I’ll kill you,” before deliberately taking aim and firing.
You ask
Does this devalue antiblackness and the virulence of it, though? Not at all given that the fulcrum doesn’t delineate a “bottom” in racial dynamics and history. But despite this important shared history, can we say that antiblackness looms larger in local racial dynamics in Bulgaria than antiziganism? How about the Czech Republic where antiziganism is at the center of the agenda for far-right political groups?
My point is precisely that antiziganism is historically rooted and still to this day associated with antiblackness. This doesn’t mean that in every instance of antiziganism the bigots are operating from an antiblack “methodology”. It’s that the driving ideology that motivates them (even if the perpetrators are historically ignorant) is rooted in it. Certainly there are Roma people (Irish travelers come to mind) like the ones whose photos you posted in your original piece that generated this discussion who do not “look” Black but one does not necessarily need to be phenotypically Black to be associated with Blackness (in the sense of how racism operates by assigning “proximity” and granting or denying humanity based on it).
Now to your second point about US centrism in discussions, I have a couple of points to make. First, I take issue with your framing of the Holocaust discussion you linked to. People having conversations among themselves (no matter how vehemently one might disagree with either the opinions or even the topic) is not the same as US centrism or “US anything”. We all use social media differently. You seem to use Tumblr mostly as a publishing platform. I could see a book deal coming in your future based on the amount of content you create and the research you do. Of course I do not know if that is your intention but the approach you take to content creation cannot be compared to that of a group of people who use the same platform in a radically different way. You write for an audience (as I do, this is not an accusation). They write for themselves and each other. So, I do take issue with your pinpointing to people who, again, I insist, might be expressing ideas that could even be factually wrong and using them as “examples” of anything. People of Color having discussions with each other, using social media to explore either their heritage or shared history are not here to become examples of how “they oppress us”. I see plenty of stuff I disagree with on a daily basis but I always evaluate it vis a vis the institutional power those who express the ideas have. Are they just regular folks trying to make sense of their lives or do they have platforms that are used as media reference? If the former, it is not my place to “correct” them. Mostly because they never came asking for my “opinion” to begin with (and why should they? when this is a discussion they are having trying to make sense of their own lives).
On a closing note about African Americans/ Black people discussing the Holocaust in relation to antiblackness: historians have been discussing this very same topic for a good while. And if you were tempted to believe it’s some “biased” institution behind these discussions, I would invite you to think again. Here’s a BBC feature documentary analyzing the genocide of the Herero people in Namibia as the founding moment in German history that gave birth to the methodology employed in the Holocaust. And here’s an article explaining the gist of it and how this German genocide in a period known as “The Second Reich” “inspired” Hitler’s plans for racial purity.
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