Against Ignoring Race: The Zanj Revolution as Black Slave Revolt

By Derek Ide

Numerous controversies exist surrounding one of the most historic uprisings in the pre-modern world. The Thawrat al-Zanj was a mass uprising in the area surrounding Basra against the Abbasid Caliphate from 869 to 883.[1] The Zanj revolt has been variously described as a "typical class war" and "proletarian movement based on a coherent politico-religious doctrine,"[2] a "state run by bandits," [3] a "semi-barbarian movement,"[4] and a "terrible revolt" which "sowed the seeds of Lower Mesopotamia's ruin." [5] Eventually, the Abbasids brutally crushed the rebellion, particularly after the leader of the Saffarid uprising in Persia declined a formal alliance with theSahib al-Zanj, Ali ibn Muhammad. [6] Despite prodigious bloodshed, the revolutionaries who revolted against their former masters, landlords, and the general class of Arab ruling elites were driven by a deeply-rooted egalitarianism, officially articulated by Ali ibn Muhammad, who at times borrowed from Kharijite slogans. There were certainly material and ideological limits to the revolution, limits that adherents of modernity's universal humanistic claims may find unsavory. One in particular was the unwillingness or inability to abolish slavery as an institution but instead to reverse the position of slave and slave-master. Yet, in spite of limited primary source material, enough evidence exists to understand the Zanj revolution as primarily a slave revolt first, and a racialized one at that. This neo-traditionalist analysis positions the former slave class in a vanguard role, even if other classes eventually joined the revolt.

There are a few distinct criteria that can be established in order to confirm that the Zanj revolution was a slave rebellion led by black slaves. First, we must trace the etymological lineage of the word "Zanj," a word of considerable disputation. Second, we must establish that the rulers of Abbasid Iraq did indeed utilize black slave labor, particularly in the marshy areas around Basra. Finally, we must establish that Ali ibn Muhammad specifically organized the black Zanj as the primary motor to lead the revolt against the Abbasid caliphate. After addressing these three variables, the second task of this essay will be to review existing literature on the topic, primarily split between those who assert the black slave character of the revolt and those who obscure or deny it. For the sake of simplicity, the labels "traditionalist" (or neo-traditionalist) will be used for the former while the term "revisionist" will be used for the latter. Despite the claims of revisionist historians who attempt to obscure the racialized nature of the revolt, [7] the Zanj revolution was certainly about slavery, even if its goals were not to abolish slavery as an institution but simply reverse the role of slave and slave master.

The Etymology and Use of the Word "Zanj"

There are several theses on the origin of the word Zanj. The one common denominator is that it is not an Arabic word in origin, but that its tri-consonant structure (z-n-j) allowed it to be easily adapted. At least one scholar asserts it is of Ethiopian origin, connected with " zenega" (to prattle, stammer, to barbarize). Another group of scholars claim it is of Persian origin, claiming zang/zangi is used to denote "Negro." [8] Others still claim it is Greek, coming from "zingis," although this is less likely. The more heated area of contestation focuses on the interpretation of the word and how contemporaries of the Zanj revolt employed it. In general, however, Popovic asserts that to talk about a "land of the Zanj," as it has sometimes been employed, to denote a general territory south of Abyssinia and along the Eastern coast of Africa, is misleading. This is due to the fact that the term "Zanj" include "blacks from numerous peoples bought or seized in all ports of call all along the coast." [9]

It is evident from both contemporaneous Arab commentators, as well as those who lived in the wake of the Zanj revolt, that racial tropes were regular elements of Arab thought. For instance, Arab cosmographer and geographer Kazouini attributes "fetid odor, limited intelligence, extreme exuberance, [and] cannibalistic customs" to the Zanj. [10] Masudi likewise notes the Zanj are of "smelly skin, excessive petulance, sparse eyebrows, [and] highly developed sexual organs." [11] Fourteenth century Arab writer Al-Bakoui notes the Zanj are characterized by their "odor, their quicknes ot anger, their lack of intellect, their habit of eating one another and their enemies." Finally, Arab geographer al-Kindi argues that the hot climate in the land of the Zanj causes the brain to lose "its balance, and the soul can no longer exert its complete action on it; the swell of perceptions and the absence of any act of intelligence are the result."[12] French translator L. M. Devic that amongst Arab authors of the Middle Ages, such commentaries were ordinary. The Zanj are variously: evil, "surpass brute animals in their unfitness and perverse natures," are "so hideous and so ugly," idolaters, etc.[13] It should be noted, however, that exceptions to such characterizations exist. For instance, centuries later Ibn Khaldun chastises Masudi, Galen, and al-Kindi for asserting that the Zanj character is dominated by a "weakness of the brain," which for Ibn Khaldun was a "worthless" explanation that "proves nothing." [14]

In 1976, M.A. Shaban argued that a distinction between the term sudan and zanj was integral to understanding the revolt around Basra. As he explains, this terminology was "not used at random; they were meant to define certain groups of mankind." The Zanj were from East Africa and extending into Central Africa, while the sudan indicated the Western Sudan of today to the shores of the Atlantic. [15] According to Shaban, the governor of Egypt Ibn Tulun enlisted tens of thousands of "negroid" Sudanese to fight against the Zanj, in order to capture certain port cities and restore lucrative trade routes that had been severed because of the uprising.[16] However, this binary etymological distinction is complicated when Shaban discusses the Qaramita revolt after the crushing of the Zanj. For instance, he suggests that the Qaramat first appeared to describe a "group who had supported the Zanj revolt, the reference being to the Qarmatiyyun and to Nubians who could hardly speak Arabic." [17] He notes that the geographer Maqdisi associates these two people with the Sudan. Shaban argues that the Qaramita were "remnants of the Zanj revolts who… were ready to take part in any revolt." [18]

In her 1986 work "Toward a Definition of the Term Zanj," Marina Tolmacheva makes a compelling and cohesive argument undermining the thesis that "Zanj" is etymologically associated only with a specific portion of the East African coast.[19] In many ways, she borrows from Talhami, who argues that there is an "overemphasis" on Arab commercial interactions with East Africa in the early Abbasid era, and that "the assumption that 'Abbasid writers used Zanj to mean specifically the East African coast, and that therefore the people they called Zanj originated in a specific part of that region, is completely unjustified."[20] Tolmacheva posits a new argument:

I would like to suggest that the history of the term Zanj, and the growth of its geographic and racial scope, may be more closely connected with the history of commercial ties between Africa, Arabia and the Persian Gulf than with political-military expansions, whether of Rome, Persia or the Islamic caliphate. Continually under certain constraints of navigation and temporarily focused under the Sassanids on the Red Sea area, these ties were eventually restored to include the East African coast. In this process the word formerly used to describe negroid slaves exported from north-east Africa may have developed a new connotation for peoples of the coast well past Cape Guardafui .[21]

Thus, while possibly weakening the idea that the slaves working in the marshy areas of Baghdad were specifically Southeast African in origin only, this reinforces the notion that these were likely black slaves from other areas of Africa.

The Class Economy of Basra in the Latter Half of the Ninth Century

The Zanj Revolt primarily occurred in what is modern day Iraq and a section of Iran (Khuzistan). Two regions in particular, Batiha and Maysan in lower Iraq's canal region, are of particular importance. [22] As Alexandre Popovic notes, this importance can be attributed to the "nature of their soil," which were largely marshy flatland areas that are regularly flooded with mud.[23] Swamp reeds and growths permeated the wide but shallow canals crossed the area. Only small, flat boats could navigate these canals, making navigation in al-Batiha extraordinarily difficult (and often a perfect hideaway for brigands and rebels of all sorts).[24] Lower Iraq's "Canal Region," especially the Nahr Abd al-Khasib where the Zanj capital of al-Mukhtara ("The Chosen") was established, facilitated guerrilla activity and acted as the base from which the rebels could launch raids.[25] While the reeds and rushes that naturally adorned the area were put to many uses by local inhabitants, the agrarian population also grew melons, onions, rice, barley, corn, and other grains. Yet, as al-Tabari noted, swarms of mosquitoes were a scourge on the population and malaria was an omnipresent threat.[26]

Prior to Umayyad governor al-Hajjaj and his successors, the Arabs of Iraq (either Bedouins or merchants) showed little care for land reclamation projects. The Abbasid Caliphs augmented the land revival projects, which were carried out by overseers (wakil) and freemen (mawla) who had been granted the land as rewards. As Popovic notes, four points are of significant interest: 1) the existence of "dead lands" around Basra, 2) the possibility of "acquiring these lands," 3) the presence in Basra of people with substantial capital, and 4) the presence of slave laborers to transform the land.[27]

The date of arrival for black slaves to Iraq from the East Coast of Africa is contested. One scholar, F. Al-Samir, suggests 720 as the date for Muslim trade outposts in East Africa. If, as it is believed, black slaves were captured, bought, or obtained from subject states on the coast as tribute, it can be surmised that slaves proliferated in Iraqi society after this date. Some scholars, such as Charles Pellat claim an earlier but indeterminate date of origin, noting that Arab historians reported general "Zanj revolts" (not the Zanj revolt of Basra) as early as 689-90 and 694-5. [28] As Jere L. Bacharach explains:

It was not unusual to find references to African slaves in Iraq without any warning of when and how they got there or what happened to them after the specific event was recorded; for example, a revolt of African Zanj slaves in Basra in 76/695 or the appearance of 4,000 Zanj military slaves in Mosul in I33/75I. Therefore, the silence in the Arabic chronicles on the numbers and activities of African military slaves in Iraq from 210/825 to the Zanj rebellion (255/869-271/883) may reflect their absence or, more likely, their relative unimportance in the eyes of the chroniclers. [29]

By the Abbasid era, as Bacharach argues, the "Muslim military reflected an organizational pattern more familiar to the pre-Islamic Fertile Crescent than to the Arabia of Muhammad." [30] Imported military slaves, notable Turkish cavalrymen and African infantry, were used by Arab rulers to control large swaths of territory. Africans were generally considered inferior to Turks due to a circular logic (infantry inferior to cavalry, Africans associated with the former and Turks with the latter) that was self-reinforcing. The kind of racialized and occupational inferiority assigned by Arab rulers and writers to Africans in a military context was grafted onto slaves utilized for extractive labor as well.

According to Tabari, the future rebels were employed as laborers ( kassahin) to prepare the land in lower Iraqi so that the area around Shatt al-Arab could be cultivated. The arduous objective was removing the top crust from the surface, transfer it by mule, and pile it in large heaps. These laborers were recruited from among black slaves, camped in groups of 500 to 5,000, [31] and forced to survive off handfuls of flour, semolina, and dates. In general, only the wealthy had access to such lands and could afford to purchase and exploit such large quantities of slaves. Al-Tabari suggests around 15,000 slaves were employed in such a manner. [32] Louis Massignon's description of Basra's "intense crisis" during this period is apt:

Basra was destined to furnish the first example of the destructive social crisis of the city in Islam, when social restraints were broken, when usury, indirect taxes, government borrowing were rampant, and the opposition was exasperated by the luxury of the wealthy… expensive clothes and jewelry, African ivory, pearls from the Gulf, precious wood from India made a mockery of the working proletariat's misery on the plantations. Canonically, the lands of Basra were "amwat" ("dead lands"), under their original crust of unproductive natron or sebakh, "revived" by the coolie labor of the Zanj… who were refused their claim to freedom following their conversion… in Basra it ended in a fight to the death between the privileged elite of the City that wanted everything for itself, and the starved proletariat of the plantations and sand-filled oases who pounced on the City to destroy it. Babel, which was alive as long as it was a place where the exogamous exchange of values and language was carried on, became Sodom, and burned. [33]

Yet for all the hyperbole regarding the "burning" and "destruction" caused by the Zanj, there is remarkably little information regarding the actual internal organization of the revolutionary state. It is also likely that the "destructive" nature of the event has been overemphasized by Arab commentators who were driven by a severe disdain for the black rebels.

Black Slaves as Revolutionaries under Ali ibn Muhammad

Information on Ali ibn Muhammad is quite scarce. The book of Ali ibn Muhammad's foremost biographer, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Sahl's Kitab Akhbar Sahib al-Zanj, which Tabari relies on for biographical information, has been lost to us. [34] It is likely that the Sahib al-Zanj was born in a village outside of Tehran, although he was probably of Arab descent. [35] His maternal grandfather had been a Kharijite involved in the struggle against the 10 th Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, and had fled to al-Rayy outside of Tehran as an exile. [36] Ali ibn Muhammad spent some time as a court poet in Samarra, where he also taught writing, grammar, and astronomy.[37] In 863-4 he left Samarra for Bahrain, where he claimed to be a descendent of Ali.[38] In the Bahraini village of Al-Hajar, Ali ibn Muhammad attempts to galvanize a following, which he partially succeeds in doing. After acrimonious clashes between his supporters and detractors, he leaves al-Hajar and ended up in al-Ahsa (modern day Saudi Arabia), where he convinced certain tribes of his prophethood and collected taxes in his own name. Already he was mobilizing against the Abbasid caliphate. After some wayward clashes in the desert, where he loses many of his supporter, he decides to make his way to Basra. His attempts to organize there are quickly smashed by the ruling tribes, his supporters are jailed, and he is sent fleeing to Baghdad.

After a year, Ali ibn Muhammad snuck back into Basra, pretending to be a wealthy merchant who was selling land in the area. One of his first recruits was a man named Rayhan ibn Salih, who was a worker that transported flour from Basra for distribution to the Zanj slaves. Through Rayhan, Ali ibn Muhammad was able to begin organizing amongst the Zanj. [39] In the month of Ramadan, 869, Ali ibn Muhammad proclaimed the revolt. He began intercepting groups of slaves on their way to the worksites, bound the slave drivers, and compelled the slaves to join his uprising. Within days he had organized hundreds of slaves. Ali ibn Muhammad promised improved conditions, wealth, and to never deceive or fail the newly emancipated slaves. He condemned the former slaveholders, ordered the slaves to beat their former masters, and after a period of physical vengeance the former masters were allowed to leave after an oath of secrecy regarding the rebels' location. One of the former owners escaped and warned the overseer of a "large camp" where reportedly 15,000 slaves were employed. [40] Still, as others have noted, success brought more success: "there is no doubt that the blacks were quickly aided by poor peasants, Bedouins always eager to pillage… and finally, even black deserters from the Caliph's army." [41] Most scholars, including Popovic, Lewis, Cahen, and Noldeke assert that it is likely poor peasants joined the Zanj revolutionaries.

Popovic's reading of Tabari's narrative, in line with the traditionalist scholars, is one of a battle between slave and slavemaster. As he explains, "one after the other, successive detachments sent out by the 'people of Basra' were defeated and freed slaves swelled the ranks of the insurgents." [42] At one juncture, according to Tabari, the Abbasid general Rumays offered Ali ibn Muhammad five dinars for each slave returned and promised him free passage out of the territory. In response, Ali ibn Muhammad assembled the Zanj, and through an interpreter (as many of the slaves did not speak Arabic), swore that none would ever be returned to their former master. In one particularly moving line, Ali ibn Muhammad proclaims: "May some of you remain with me and kill me if you feel that I am betraying you." [43] As late as February, 881, two years from total defeat, Ali ibn Muhammad refused an absolute pardon and great rewards in exchange for capitulation. [44] It was clear that Ali ibn Muhammad's sincerity to the cause of Zanj liberation was genuine. We find another measure of his class and racial egalitarianism in the fact that of his two daughters, one was married to Sulayman ibn Jami'a, a black slave and measurer of grain from Hajar. [45] At one juncture, Hamdan Qarmat approaches Ali ibn Muhammad in order to negotiate an alliance. From Tabari's account, Qarmat purportedly met the "prince of the blacks" but decided they could "never agree" and refused to concretize any alliance.[46]

The task of outlining the internal organization of the Zanj state under Ali ibn Muhammad is a difficult task for two reasons. First, Arab chroniclers were significantly more interested in the minutiae of the battles between Abbasid generals and Zanj rebels. Second, the writers generally considered the Zanj enemies of religion and law, and as such any descriptions handed down are generally pejorative in nature. Either way, it is hardly accurate to describe Zanj social relations, as some earlier writers have, as "communistic" in nature. [47] It is far more likely that the social order was reversed, not abolished. One anecdotal passage from Al-Masudi is of importance in this regard. Masudi, who despises the Zanj, explains that their "insolence" was so great that at one point they "auctioned off the women of the Hasan, the Husayn, and the Abbas families, descendants of Hashem, of Quraysh and of the most noble Arab families… Each black owned ten, twenty, and even thirty of these women, who served them as concubines and performed humble tasks for their wives."[48] Thus, Masudi's consternation is in large part derived from his racial sensibilities. For him, it is inconceivable that blacks could hold noble Arab women as concubines, even though black women were regularly forced into concubinage by Arab masters.

The Divide Between Traditional and Revisionist Historians

For a long time the Zanj revolt was understood as a classic slave revolt. Both al-Tabari, an influential Persian contemporary of the Zanj episode, and al Mas'udi, an Arab historian and geographer born not long after the crushing of the Zanj, speak at length about the role of black slaves in the revolution.[49] Both scholars regularly asserted their disdain for what are variously described as Zanj, Sudan, 'abid, ghulam, or khawal.[50] As early as 1892, Theodore Nöldeke described the uprising as a "negro insurrection."[51] Much of the contemporary mid-20th century scholarship in Arabic confirms this thesis.[52] Marshall Hodgson, writing in the 1950s in his monumental magnum opus The Venture of Islam, describes the Zanj revolt as such: "the Negro slaves, called 'Zanj,' many of whom were used for labour in the marshy areas at the mouth of the Tigris, had risen in 869 under a Khariji leader and set up their own state, which tried to turn the tables on the former masters, enslaving the former slave-owners." [53] Zakariyau Oseni, in his more recent work "The Revolt of Black Slaves in Iraq Under the 'Abbasid Administration 869-883 CE," explicitly situates himself as a modern writer sympathetic to the Zanj. He writes that the primary agents were "Black slaves whose race, more than any other, had suffered the atrocities and humiliation inherent in that ancient institution throughout the course of known history."[54] More recently, Alexandre Popovic has asserted a "neo-traditionalist" analysis in his The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9 th Century , an English translation of the work he carried out mostly in the 1970s. This approach stands in stark juxtaposition to a more recent wave of scholarship that has attempted to obfuscate the role of race in the Zanj revolution.

One of the earliest revisionist accounts of the Zanj revolt appeared in 1977. Ghada Talhami's "The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered" does not strictly discount the role of race or black slaves in the revolt, but attempts to complicate the narrative by including the role of other social classes. Her account is fairly nuanced, moreso than other revisionist scholars like M. A. Shaban for instance, when she asserts that: "The slaves were merely one among several oppressed classes who participated in the rebellion, which was not an attack on the institution of slavery but on social inequality… If one group contributed more than others to the success of this drawn-out revolt, it was not the black slaves but the Bedouins from the surrounding region, who provisioned the fighters throughout the insurrection."[55] Her sub-thesis is that no major slave trade existed with the East African coast of Zanzibar during the ninth century (or else scholars would have noted it) and thus, it is unlikely that this was primarily a black slave revolt. [56] Although there are legitimate critiques of Talhami's approach, a rather absurd revisionist narrative is constructed by M. A. Shaban, who denies that the Zanj revolt was a slave revolt at all, and instead proclaims that it was a revolt primarily of Arabs and some East Africans. Slaves, he asserts, would have lacked the resources to challenge the Abbasid government for such an extended period of time. [57] Although they do so in distinct ways, in general these arguments tend to conceal the role that racially-based slavery played in fomenting the Zanj revolt.

One of the most prominent revisionist historians is M.A. Shaban, who counterpoises his analysis with Noldeke by asserting that the Zanj rebellion is "one of the most misunderstood episodes in Islamic history." [58] The notion that the Zanj episode represented a "slave revolt" has been "slavishly regurgitated by modern scholars" who were tempted by the "romantic idea of a slave revolt in a slave-ridden society" and could not be bothered with the "cumbersome task" of "wading through the considerable amount of valuable material" which would suggest a different narrative. [59] Shaban begins by noting correctly that the Zanj revolt occurred in conjunction with other serious forms of dissension in the Abbasid Empire. It was one of many revolts against the central government, including the prominent Saffarid rebellion as well as the Shia of Tabaristan, amongst others.

For him, however, the Zanj was not a slave revolt. It was a "Zanj, i.e. a Negro, revolt."[60] Shaban argues that equating Negro with Zanj is a nineteenth-century racial trope not applicable to ninth century Arabia. Salves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a "figment of the imagination." For Shaban, a "few runaway slaves who joined the rebels" does not make a slave revolt. [61] Instead, the Zanj was an "Arab-Negro alliance" that represented Free East Africans who had made their home in the region alongside Arabs of the Persian Gulf. For Shaban, the fact that even "Jews were among the supports of the revolt" is proof that it was not slave revolt. [62] In a passage that perhaps most betrays his highly elitist conception of the incapacity of slaves to act as historical agents of change, Shaban argues:

If more proof is needed that it was not a slave revolt, it is to be found in the fact that it had a highly organized army and navy which vigorously resisted the whole weight of the central government for almost fifteen years. Moreover, it must have had huge resources that allowed it to build no less than six impregnable towns in which there were arsenals for the manufacture of weapons and battleships… Significantly the revolt had the backing of a certain group of merchants who persevered with their support on the very end. [63]

For Shaban the "bone of contention" was African trade with the Persian Gulf, not slavery.[64] The expansion of trade and the demand for African goods "stimulated the setting-up and growth of East African colonies in all the trade centers of the Gulf."[65] A high rate of taxation, as high as 20%, on imported goods imposed by the central government under Muwaffiq encouraged revolt by these East African merchants.[66] It was this combination of wealth and manpower that allowed the Zanj revolt to occur.

Whereas Shaban argues that in "the Islamic world slaves were mostly employed in domestic housework and of course as concubines," Alexandre Popovic acknowledges this fact but explains this is precisely the importance of the Zanj episode. [67] Popovic's thesis is that the Zanj revolt is significant because it "suppressed the unique attempt to transform domestic slavery into colonial slavery." [68] For him, it is clear that "the conditions of the Zanj slaves in Iraq were wretched, and there were two uprisings before the great revolt." [69] Yet, Popovic also sees in Ali ibn Muhammad nothing more than an "ambitious, totally unprincipled man."[70] As for his ideology, Popovic asserts that he had a "tendency to embrace difference doctrines" as a "powerful political tool." This allowed him to borrow variously from Shiite, Kharijite, and Azrakite tendencies. [71] Thus, in Popovic's final analysis, the Zanj revolt was "in part a social revolt, but it was not, as some have said, a true (modern) social revolution with a definite plan."[72] The revolt's most important consequence, other than its geopolitical assistance to other movements,[73] is that it forced the abandonment of Lower Iraq's barren lands, leading to a disappearance of the large slave work sites and their concomitant misery.

Conclusion

To conclude, the Zanj revolution was a slave rebellion led Ali ibn Muhammad, who rallied black slaves for the purpose of revolution. The etymological lineage of the word "Zanj," even if it does not denote black slaves of specifically East African origin, was used as a catchall for blacks more generally. Furthermore, the rulers of Abbasid Iraq did indeed utilize black slave labor. In particular, the ruling classes of Basra utilized them for transforming the "dead" lands of the marshes into agricultural land. Traditionalist and revisionist scholars differ over whether or not they view the revolt as racialized, and in particular whether the Zanj revolution was actually driven by black slaves. However, upon review of the evidence, the Zanj rebellion was certainly a racialized slave revolt, in which the Arab slave masters were subjugated by former slaves. In this sense it was not a modern social revolution, where the social structure was abolished and replaced with something totally new. Instead, the social order was inversed. The Zanj revolt, despite failing, was successful in warning Arab rulers against transitioning slavery from primarily domestic servitude to chattel slavery (in the way that Philip Cutin's "plantation complex" did first in the Mediterranean, then in the Canary Islands and finally the Caribbean and South America). [74] Slavery was not abolished, but the Zanj were no longer the ones who would be enslaved at the hands of Arab overlords.

Bibliography

Bacharach, Jere. "African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869-955) and Egypt (868- 1171)." International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 13 (1981).

Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Furlonge, Nigel D. "Revisiting the Zanj and Re-Visioning Revolt: Complexities of the Zanj Conflict (868-883 AD)," Negro History Bulletin (Vol 62, No. 4, 1999), 9-10.

Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam, Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol. 1: The Classical Age of Islam. University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Nöldeke, Theodor. "A Servile War in the East," in Sketches from Eastern History, (Beirut: Khayats, 1963, originally printed in 1892).

Oseni, Zakariyau I. "The Revolt of Black Slaves in Iraq under the Abbasid Administration in 869-883 C.E.," Hamdard Islamicus (1989).

Popovic, Alexandre. T he Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century. Markus Weiner Publishers, 2011.

Shaban, M.A. Islamic History: A New Interpretation, Vol 2: A.D. 750-1055 (A.H. 132-448) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Silkaitis, Emily Martha. "Modern Takes on Motivations Behind the Zanj Rebellion," Lights: The Messa Journal (Spring 2012, Issue 3, Vol. 1).

Talhami, Ghada Hashem. "The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered," The International Journal of African Historical Studies (Vol. 10, No. 3, 1977).

Trimingham, Spencer. "The Arab Geographers and the East African Coast," H.N. Chittick and Robert I. Rotberg, eds., East Africa and the Orient (New York, 1975), 116-117, n. 4.

Tolmacheva, Marina. "Toward a Definition of the Term Zanj," Journal of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, 21:1 (1986).

Notes

[1] The first period, from 869-79, was characterized by the Abbasid Caliphate's inability to crush the revolt, partially because its attention was diverted to other pressing challenges. The second period, from 879-83, when the empire could address the revolt with its full coercive powers, was one of slow decline but terminal defeat for the Zanj. As Popovic argues, "In spite of Ya'qub b. Layth's rejection of Ali b. Muhammad's proposal for an alliance, there is no question about the Saffarid contribution to the Zanj cause… it was only when the Saffarid question was settled that al-Muwaffiq was able to undertake the large-scale operations that would eventually crush the revolt," See Alexandre Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2011), 1. Furthermore, the Tulunid issue forced the Abbasid's to remove one of their best generals, Musa b. Buga, from the Zanj front and place him in Syria.

[2] Charles Pellat, quoted in Popovic, 2.

[3] C. Brockelmann, quoted in Ibid., 3.

[4] Bernard Lewis, quoted in Ibid., 3.

[5] G. Marcais, quoted in Ibid., 3.

[6] There is considering divergence on this question. M.A. Shaban laments that it "is a sad comment on research in Islamic history that, in spite of the proximity of the territories where these two movements took place, no attempt has been made to examine their relationship… It is a curious fact that the two movements never made any attempts to ally themselves against their common enemy, the central government, and instead actually fought each other." M.A Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation, Vol 2: A.D. 750-1055 (A.H. 132-448) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 99.

[7] There is an entire intellectual lineage that attempts to surreptitiously avoid racialization in the Islamic world, particularly in the pre-colonial era. When racialization, and anti-black racism in particular, is addressed, it is usually done so as a colonial legacy, one that the British or French or some imperial power imposed upon the Muslim world. Although it is certainly true that colonial administrators and imperial powers augmented and exacerbated racial hierarchies, especially given the rigid racial categories in European society, it is hardly honest to dismiss claims of racialization in the Islamic world with a host of rhetorical tropes ("one of the sahaba, Bilal, was black," "Islam does not recognize race," etc.).

[8] Popovic, 15.

[9] Ibid., 16.

[10] Ibid., 16.

[11] Ibid., 17.

[12] Ibid., 17.

[13] Ibid., 18.

[14] Ibid., 18.

[15] Other terms, like Nubian, Habasha (Abyssinians), and Beja were also in use. Shaban, 110.

[16] It is important to note that Ibn Tulun sent this contingent of black soldiers to suppress the Zanj not on the orders of Muwaffiq, with whom Tulun was in competition over resources, but in order to augment Egypt's treasury. The leader of the expedition, who Shaban identifies as one Lu'lu, eventually switched sides and began working for Muwaffiq against the interests of Ibn Tulun. See Shaban, 133.

[17] Shaban, 130.

[18] Ibid., 130.

[19] See Tolmacheva, 105. "This paper addresses itself to the use of the word Zanj in relation to black people of East Africa in their domicile. The Zanj slaves of the Caliphate and the so-called Zanj of the Western Sudan! remain therefore outside its scope. This approach implies a basic distinction in cognitive perspective, to be repeatedly referred to later: specifically, that in the Caliphate the wordZanjusually refers to slaves and consequently sets the people called Zanj in a separate socioeconomic category, entailing connotations of dependence and inferiority." Marina Tolmacheva, "Toward a Definition of the Term Zanj," Journal of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, (Vol. 21, No. 1, 1986), 105.

[20] Ghada Hashem Talhami, "The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered," The International Journal of African Historical Studies (Vol. 10, No. 3, 1977), 461.

[21] Tolmacheva, 112. Emphasis added.

[22] The Batiha Marshlands extend roughly from Kufa to Basra. Al-Mukhtarah, Ali ibn Muhammad's established fortress-city for the Zanj, was located east of Basra. At one point, the Zanj reached as far north as Jarjaraya, just southeast of Baghdad.

[23] Popovic, 10.

[24] Ibn Battuta mentions this region as a "forest of reeds surrounded by water" where "bandits of the sect of Ali" often "fortify themselves in these swamps and defend themselves against pursuers." Quoted in Popovic, 11.

[25] Popovic, 12.

[26] Ibid., 11.

[27] Ibid., 12-3. The first three contentions are generally accepted. On the fourth, the idea that a large slave market existed in East Africa where Arabs could purchase black slaves, is contested. This will be addressed later.

[28] Ibid., 20.1

[29] Jere L. Bacharach, "African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869-955) and Egypt (868-1171)," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 13 (1981), 473. One of the reasons African slavers were "deemed unimportant" was due to the fact that they were not "directly involved in the power struggles consuming the Baghdad court," 474.

[30] Bacharach, 489.

[31] Likely an exaggerated figure.

[32] Popovic, 24.

[33] Louis Massignon, quoted in Popovic, 24-5.

[34] Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Sahl (known as Shaylama), was one of Ali ibn Muhammad's supporters that had been pardoned after the crushing of the revolt. As such, in an effort to exonerate himself, his work is full of invective against his former leader and accuses him of the worst transgressions, which Tabari regularly exploits. Shaylama himself is eventually arrested for conspiring against the Caliph while in Baghdad. The stories of his execution differ. One explains he was "skewered on a long iron rod which penetrated him from his anus to his mouth; he was kept like this over a huge fire until he died." Another claims he was tied between three spears, placed above a fire and "turned and roasted like a chicken" before being tied to the gallows between the "two bridges in the eastern quarter of Baghdad." Popovic, 124. Tabari, Masudi, Ibn al-Nadim, and Ibn al-Jawzi all rely upon his work.

[35] Popovic argues that his birth place is what leads many authors to mistake him for Persian, 33, 41.

[36] Popovic, 34. Based on Tabari's telling.

[37] Ali ibn Muhammad was, according to Tabari, "eloquent, a superior mind, and a natural poet." One of his pieces that received significant attention read as follows:

It is a humiliating situation (to be forced) to live in frugality, accepting it all the while…

If the fire becomes lessened because of too many logs,

its progress will depend on their separation

If a saber remains in its sheath, another

Saber will be victorious on the day of combat

[38] Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Fadl ibn al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah ibn al-Abbas ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib.

[39] Popovic, 39-40.

[40] Ibid., 41. Tabari's figures are certainly inflated, but the general idea remains the same.

[41] Ibid., 137.

[42] Ibid., 45.

[43] Ibid., 48.

[44] Nigel D. Furlonge explains that on at least three separate occasions Ali ibn Muhammad refused to betray the Zanj. Nigel D. Furlonge, "Revisiting the Zanj and Re-Visioning Revolt: Complexities of the Zanj Conflict (868-883 AD)," Negro History Bulletin (Vol 62, No. 4, 1999), 7-14. Also see Popovic, 103.

[45] Popovic, 123.

[46] Ibid., 81-2.

[47] M. Gaudegroy-Demombyne writes, for instance, that the "principles that could best assure its authority over the black masses are those that we have seen repeated by all the Iranian agitators since Mazdak: wives and property in common." See Popovic, 129-30.

[48] Popovic, 132-3.

[49] For an explication of how various modern authors employ both al-Tabari and Mas'udi, see Emily Martha Silkaitis, "Modern Takes on Motivations Behind the Zanj Rebellion," Lights: The Messa Journal (Spring 2012, Issue 3, Vol. 1). Popovic notes that Ibn Al-Athir and Ibn Abd al-Hadid also provide some minor details about the Zanj revolt, but mostly drawn from al-Tabari and al-Masudi.

[50] For a delineation of these terms see Nigel D. Furlonge, "Revisiting the Zanj and Re-Visioning Revolt: Complexities of the Zanj Conflict (868-883 AD)," Negro History Bulletin (Vol 62, No. 4, 1999), 9-10. Furlonge describes each term as such: Zanj (denoting a slave from East Africa), Sudan (free African), 'abid (generic slave), ghulam (attendant or guard), khawal (generic slave).

[51] Theodor Nöldeke, "A Servile War in the East," in Sketches from Eastern History, (Beirut: Khayats, 1963, originally printed in 1892), 149-153.

[52] For a brief overview of the historiography in Arabic, see Popovic, 4. Abdul Karim Khalifa's unpublished thesis on the Zanj is dedicated to "all the oppressed in their struggles against their exploiters." Also see Faysal al-Samir's doctoral thesis, Thawrat al-Zanj (University of Cairo and published in Baghdad). Of interest here is also Ahmed S. Olabi's work, available in French, La revolte des Zanj et son chef Ali b. Muhammad (Beirut, 1961).

[53] Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Vol. 1: The Classical Age of Islam (University of Chicago Press, 1974), 487-8.

[54] Zakariyau I. Oseni, "The Revolt of Black Slaves in Iraq under the Abbasid Administration in 869-883

C.E.," Hamdard Islamicus (1989), 65.

[55] Ghada Hashem Talhami, "The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered," The International Journal of African Historical Studies (Vol. 10, No. 3, 1977), 455.

[56] This is a rather duplicitous and shortsighted claim that will be addressed later.

[57] Shaban, M.A. Islamic History: A New Interpretation, Vol 2: A.D. 750-1055 (A.H. 132-448) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. This certainly must be news to the Haitian revolutionaries, or Spartacus.

[58] Shaban, 100.

[59] Shaban, 101.

[60] Shaban, 101.

[61] Ibid., 101.

[62] Ibid., 102.

[63] Ibid., 102.

[64] Ibid., 102.

[65] Ibid., 107.

[66] Shaban notes that this rate of taxation is not confirmed, but can be extrapolated from studying the taxation regimen imposed upon Egypt. It is questionable whether or not the same taxation rates were applied to the Arabian peninsula as to Egypt, where more a more formal and established administrative-extractive apparatus already existed. Shaban, 108.

[67] Shaban, 101.

[68] Popovic, 3.

[69] Ibid., 22.

[70] Ibid., 151.

[71] To claim to be an Alid was important for securing religious sympathy, while the egalitarian preaching of the Kharijites was a useful rally cry to organize black slaves.

[72] Popovic, 153.

[73] As Popovic notes, the Zanj certainly facilitated the rise of the Tulunids in Egypt, the Saffarid movement, and even some of Byzantium's military undertakings. Furthermore, some of the followers of the Qaramita appear to have made their debut amongst the Zanj. See 153.

[74] For more on this phenomenon see Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Between Infoshops and Insurrection: U.S. Anarchism, Movement Building, and the Racial Order

By Joel Olson

This now classic essay by the late Joel Olson (1967-2012) reflects on the state of US anarchist milieu from the 1990's through the 2000's. Olson was a long time anarchist writer, organizer, political theorist and veteran of both Love & Rage Anarchist Federation and the anarchist influenced Bring the Ruckus organization. A major focus of his writing and work was a focus on the central role of race and white supremacy in shaping the US political order (See Abolition Of White Democracy ).

Since the publishing of this piece in 2009 much of the left, anarchist movement included, and the political landscape on which they stand has been reshaped by events such as Occupy, the Ferguson uprising, the Bernie Sanders campaign and more recently by election of Trump. One important and positive development worth noting that relate to the arguments raised by Olson is the widespread adoption of abolitionist politics on the left, which often explicitly references the struggle against slavery and the period of reconstruction which followed.

Here are the key takeaways of the article that remain relevant lessons for the left and anarchism today:

Critiques of power that conflate all structures and oppression as equal on moral grounds lack an understanding of how particular structures and oppressions shape and function in each society.

Our approach to revolutionary change requires a strategy of how to get to revolution and this starts with understanding the conditions and history of the US - specifically the central roles of race, white supremacy and colonialism.

Two mistakes made by the anarchist movement of 2000's (and still by many in the present) are a focus on insular spaces and projects oriented towards other activists and the narrow focus on street rebellions and spontaneous upheaval without seeing these within a larger context of movements and building power.

"Social movements are central to radical change" and without a strategy to build them, revolutionary change is not possible.

Anarchism has always had a hard time dealing with race. In its classical era from the time of Proudhon in the 1840s to Goldman in the 1930s, it sought to inspire the working class to rise up against the church, the state, and capitalism. This focus on "god, government, and gold" was revolutionary, but it didn't quite know how to confront the racial order in the United States. Most U.S. anarchist organizations and activists opposed racism in principle, but they tended to assume that it was a byproduct of class exploitation. That is, they thought that racism was a tool the bosses used to divide the working class, a tool that would disappear once capitalism was abolished. They appealed for racial unity against the bosses but they never analyzed white supremacy as a relatively autonomous form of power in its own right.

Unfortunately, contemporary anarchism (which dates roughly from Bookchin to Zerzan) has not done much better. It has expanded the classical era's critique of class domination to a critique of hierarchy and all forms of oppression, including race. Yet with a few exceptions, the contemporary American anarchist scene still has not analyzed race as a form of power in its own right, or as a potential source of solidarity. As a consequence, anarchism remains a largely white ideology in the U.S.

Despite this troublesome tradition, I argue that anarchist theory has the intellectual resources to develop a powerful theory of racial oppression as well as strategies to fight it, but first it must confront two obstacles placed in front of it by the contemporary American anarchist scene. First, it must overcome an analysis of white supremacy that understands racism as but one "hierarchy" among others. Racial oppression is not simply one of many forms of domination; it has played a central role in the development of capitalism in the United States. As a result, struggles against racial oppression have a strategic centrality that other struggles lack.

Second, it must reject the current U.S. anarchist scene's "infoshops or insurrection" approach to politics and instead focus on movement building. Organizing working class movements, which was so central to the classical anarchist tradition, has given way to creating "autonomous zones" like infoshops, art spaces, affinity groups, and collectives on the one hand, and glorifying protests, riots, and sabotage on the other. But in the infoshops and insurrection approaches, the vital work of building movements falls through the middle.

In a class society, politics is fundamentally a struggle for hegemony, or a struggle to define what Antonio Gramsci calls the "common sense" of a society. In the United States, white supremacy has been the central means of maintaining capitalism as "common sense." Building mass movements against the racial order, then, is the way in which a new hegemony, an "anarchist common sense," can be created. But in building that common sense, I argue that contemporary American anarchism should look less toward Europe and more toward the struggles of peoples of color in their own back yard for historical lessons and inspiration.

Hierarchy, Hegemony, and White Supremacy

The intellectual framework of most of contemporary American anarchism rests on a critique of hierarchy. Murray Bookchin, perhaps the most important theorist of the concept, defines hierarchy as "a complex system of command and obedience in which elites enjoy varying degrees of control over their subordinates" ( Bookchin 1982, 4). Capitalism, organized religion, and the state are important forms of hierarchy, but the concept includes other relations of domination such as of "the young by the old, of women by men, of one ethnic group by another, of 'masses' by bureaucrats, … of countryside by town, and in a more subtle psychological sense, of body by mind, of spirit by a shallow instrumental rationality, and of nature by society and technology" (4). Hierarchy pervades our social relations and reaches into our psyche, thereby "percolating into virtually every realm of experience" (63). The critique of hierarchy, Bookchin argues, is more expansive and radical than the Marxist critique of capitalism or the classical anarchist critique of the state because it "poses the need to alter every thread of the social fabric, including the way we experience reality, before we can truly live in harmony with each other and with the natural world" (Bookchin 1986, 22-23).

This analysis of hierarchy broadened contemporary anarchism into a critique of all forms of oppression, including capitalism, the state, organized religion, patriarchy, heterosexism, anthropocentrism, racism, and more. The political task of contemporary anarchism, then, is to attack all forms of oppression, not just a "main" one like capitalism or the state, because without an attack on hierarchy itself, other forms of oppression will not necessarily wither away after the "main" one has been destroyed. [1]

This critique of what is sometimes called "class reductionism" is powerful, for while patriarchy is surely connected to capitalism, for example, it can hardly be reduced to it. Despite this advantage, however, the anarchist critique of all forms of oppression fails to distinguish among those forms of oppression that have been more significant than others to the structuring of U.S. society. In other words, the critique of hierarchy in general lacks the ability to explain how various forms of hierarchy are themselves hierarchically organized. It correctly insists that no one form of oppression is morally "worse" than another. But this does not mean that all forms of oppression play an equal role in shaping the social structure. The American state, for example, was not built on animal cruelty or child abuse, however pervasive and heinous these forms of domination are. Rather, as I will argue below, it was built on white supremacy, which has shaped nearly every other form of oppression in the United States, including class, gender, religion, and the state (and animal cruelty and child abuse). Understanding white supremacy should therefore be central to any American anarchist theory, and developing political programs to fight it should be a central component of anarchist strategy, even if racism is not morally "more evil" than another forms of oppression.

The critique of hierarchy, in other words, confuses a moral condemnation of all forms of oppression with a political and strategic analysis of how power functions in the United States. It resists the notion that in certain historical contexts, certain forms of hierarchy play a more central role in shaping society than do others. It assumes that because all forms of oppression are evil and interconnected that fighting any form of oppression will have the same revolutionary impact. For this reason, it assumes that there is no more need to fight racial discrimination than, say, vivisection, since both are equally evil and interconnected forms of domination.

But as the great theorist W.E.B. Du Bois shows in his classic Black Reconstruction , the primary reason for the failure of the development of a significant anti-capitalist movement in the United States is white supremacy. Rather than uniting with Black workers to overthrow the ruling class and build a new society, as classical anarchist and communist theory predicts, white workers throughout American history have chosen to side with capital. Through a tacit but nonetheless real agreement, the white working class ensures the continuous and relatively undisturbed accumulation of capital by policing the rest of the working class rather than uniting with it. In exchange, white workers receive racial privileges, largely paid for by capitalists and guaranteed by the democratic political system. Du Bois calls these privileges "the public and psychological wages" of whiteness:

"It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them." (Pp. 700-701)

At the time of the publication of Black Reconstruction in 1935, these "wages" included the right to vote, exclusive access to the best jobs, an expectation of higher wages and better benefits, the capacity to sit on juries, the right to enjoy public accommodations, and the right to consider oneself the equal of any other. Today they include, in part, the right to the lowest mortgage rates, the right to decent treatment by the police, the right to feel relatively immune from criminal prosecution, the right to assumes one's success is due entirely to one's own effort, the right to declare that institutionalized racial discrimination is over, and the right to be a full citizen in a liberal democratic state. These wages undermine class-consciousness among those who receive them because they create an interest in and expectation of favored treatment within the capitalist system rather than outside of it.

The racial order in the United States, then, is essentially a cross-class alliance between capital and one section of the working class. (I make this argument in detail in my book The Abolition of White Democracy). The group that makes up this alliance is defined as "white." It acts like a club: its members enjoy certain privileges, so that the poorest, most wretched members share, in certain respects, a status higher than that of the most esteemed persons excluded from it (Ignatiev and Garvey 1996). Membership in the white "club" is dynamic and determined by existing membership. Richard Wright once said, "Negroes are Negroes because they are treated like Negroes" (Wright 1957, 148). Similarly, whites are whites because they are treated like whites. The treatment one receives in a racial order defines one's race rather than the other way around: you are not privileged because you are white; you are white because you are privileged. Slaves and their descendants have typically been the antithesis of this club, but various other groups have occupied the subordinate position in the racial binary, including Native Americans, Latinos/as, Chinese Americans, and others. Some, such as Irish and Jewish immigrants, started out in the subordinate category but over time successfully became white (Ignatiev 1995, Brodkin 1999). Others, such as Mexican American elites in California in the nineteenth century, started out as white but lost their superior status and were thrown into the not-white group (Almaguer 1994).

This system of racial oppression has been central to the maintenance of capitalist hegemony in the United States. If, as Marx and Engels argue in The Communist Manifesto, capitalism tends to bring workers together by teaching them how to cooperate, and if this cooperation has revolutionary tendencies ("what the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are its own gravediggers"), then capitalists need to break up the very cooperation that their system of production creates. [2] Now, different societies have developed different ways of disrupting class solidarity, often by giving advantage to one set of workers over others. Perhaps in Turkey it's through the subordination of the Kurds, perhaps in Saudi Arabia it's through the subordination of women, perhaps in Bolivia it's through the subordination of the indigenous population, perhaps in Western Europe it's through social democracy. In the United States, it has been through the racial order. The wages of whiteness have undermined the solidarity that the working class otherwise develops daily in its activities. It has fundamentally shaped other hierarchies, such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion, refracting them through its prism. In so doing, it has contributed to making capitalism seem like "common sense," even to many workers (particularly white ones) who stumble under its burdens.

The racial order, then, is not merely one form of hierarchy among others. It is a form of hierarchy that shapes and organizes the others in order to ensure capitalist accumulation. Morally, it is not more evil than other forms of domination, but politically it has played a more central role in organizing American society. Strategically speaking, then, one would think that it would be a central target of American anarchist analysis and strategy. Curiously, though, this has not been the case.

Between Infoshops and Insurrection

It is surprising how little thought the contemporary American anarchist scene has given to strategy. Broadly speaking, it upholds two loose models that it presents as strategies and repeats over and over with little self-reflection or criticism. I call these models infoshops and insurrection.

An infoshop is a space where people can learn about radical ideas, where radicals can meet other radicals, and where political work (such as meetings, public forums, fundraisers, etc.) can get done. In the infoshop strategy, infoshops and other "autonomous zones" model the free society. Building "free spaces" inspires others to spontaneously create their own, spreading "counterinstitutions" throughout society to the point where they become so numerous that they overwhelm the powers that be. The very creation of anarchist free spaces has revolutionary implications, their proponents argue, because it can lead to the "organic" (i.e. spontaneous, undirected, nonhierarchical) spreading of such spaces throughout society in a way that eventually challenges the state.

An insurrection is the armed uprising of the people. According to the insurrection strategy, anarchists acting in affinity groups or other small informal organizations can engage in actions that encourage spontaneous uprisings in various sectors of society. As localized insurrections grow and spread, they combine into a full-scale revolution that overthrows the state and capital and makes possible the creation of a free society. [3]

Infoshops serve very important functions and any movement needs such spaces. Likewise, insurrection is a focal event in any revolution, for it turns the patient organizing of the movement and the boiling anger of the people into an explosive confrontation with the state. The problem is when infoshops and insurrection get taken as revolutionary strategies in themselves rather than as part of a broader revolutionary movement. In the infoshops model, autonomous spaces become the movement rather than serving it. In the insurrection model, spontaneous upheaval replaces the movement by equating insurrection with revolution rather than seeing it as but one part of the revolutionary process. The infoshops and insurrection models, in other words, both misunderstand the process of social transformation. Radical change may be initiated by spontaneous revolts that are supported by subterranean free spaces, but these revolts are almost always the product of movement building.

Social movements are central to radical change. The classical anarchists understood this, for they were very concerned to build working class movements, such as Bakunin's participation in the International Working Men's Association, Berkman and Goldman's support for striking workers, Lucy Parson's work in the International Working People's Association, and the Wobblies' call for "One Big Union." To be sure, they also built free spaces and engaged in "propaganda by the deed," but these were not their sole or even dominant activities. They did them in order to build the anarchist movement, not as a substitute for movement building.

Yet surprisingly much of the contemporary anarchist scene has abandoned movement building. In fact, the infoshops and insurrection models both seem to be designed, in part, to avoid the slow, difficult, but absolutely necessary work of building mass movements. Indeed, anarchist publications like Green Anarchy are explicit about this, deriding movement building as inherently authoritarian.

A revolution is not an infoshop, or an insurrection, or creating a temporary autonomous zone, or engaging in sabotage; it cannot be so easy, so "organic," so absent of political struggle. A revolution is an actual historical event whereby one class overthrows another and (in the anarchist ideal) thereby makes it possible to abolish all forms of oppression. Such revolutions are the product of mass movements: a large group of people organized in struggle against the state and/or other institutions of power to achieve their ends. When movements become powerful enough, when they sufficiently weaken elites, and when fortune is on their side, they lead to an insurrection, and then perhaps a revolution. Yet in much of the anarchist scene today, building free spaces and/or creating disorder are regarded as the movement itself rather than components of one. Neither the infoshops nor insurrection models build movements that can express the organized power of the working class. Thus, the necessary, difficult, slow, and inspiring process of building movements falls through the cracks between sabotage and the autonomous zone.

The strategy of building autonomous zones or engaging in direct action with small affinity groups that are divorced from social movements assumes that radicals can start the revolution. But revolutionaries don't make revolutions. Millions of ordinary and oppressed people do. Anarchist theory and practice today provides little sense of how these people are going to be part of the process, other than to create their own "free spaces" or to spontaneously join the festivals of upheaval. Ironically, then, the infoshops and insurrection approaches lead many anarchists to take an elitist approach to politics, one in which anarchists "show the way" for the people to follow, never realizing that throughout history, revolutionaries (including anarchists) have always been trying to catch up to the people, not the other way around.

Movement Building and the Racial Order

Which brings us back to the racial order. The abandonment of movement building by the bulk of the contemporary American anarchist scene has led it to ignore the most important and radical political tradition in the United States: the Black freedom movements against slavery, segregation, and other forms of racial oppression.

The intellectual tradition of American anarchism has always looked more toward Europe(and sometimes Mexico) than the United States. American anarchists know more about the Paris Commune, the Kronstadt rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Paris 1968, the German Autonomen, and the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas than they do about the abolitionist movement, Reconstruction, the Sharecroppers Union, the civil rights movement, or the Black/Brown/Red power movements. It's not that American anarchists and history are ignored-Haymarket, Berkman, Parsons, de Cleyre, Goldman, Bookchin, and Zerzan all have their place in the anarchist pantheon-but these persons and events are curiously detached from an understanding of the social conditions that produced them, especially the racial order that has dominated U.S. history. (One consequence of this European focus, I suspect, is that it has contributed to the predominantly white demographic of the contemporary anarchist scene.)

The ignorance of Black freedom movements is so profound that even anarchistic tendencies within them get ignored. Nat Turner led a slave uprising in 1831 that killed over fifty whites and struck terror throughout the South; it should clearly count as one of the most important insurrections in American history. Historians often describe William Lloyd Garrison, a leader of the abolitionist movement, as a "Christian Anarchist" (e.g. Perry 1973), yet he is almost never included in anarchist-produced histories. The Black-led Reconstruction government in South Carolina from 1868-1874, which Du Bois dubbed the "South Carolina Commune," did far more toward building socialism than the Paris Commune in 1871 ever did. Ella Baker's anti-authoritarian critique of Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged young civil rights workers to create their own autonomous and directly democratic organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), arguably the most important direct action civil rights group. Further, the racial consciousness produced by these struggles has often been broader, radical, and international than the consciousness produced by other U.S. struggles, even if it describes itself as "nationalist" (See Robin Kelley's great book Freedom Dreams for more on this). Yet these persons and events curiously form no part of the anarchist scene's historical tradition. [4]

In sum, the Black freedom struggles have been the most revolutionary tradition in American history yet the anarchist scene is all but unaware of it. I suggest that there is more to learn about anarchism in the U.S. from Harriet Tubman, Abby Kelley, Nate Shaw, Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Forman, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur than from Proudhoun, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Berkman or Goldman. There is more to learn from abolitionism than Haymarket, more from Reconstruction than the Spanish Civil War, more from the current social conditions of Black America than the global South. To see this, however, requires modifying the critique of hierarchy so that it can explain how forms of domination are themselves organized. It requires abandoning the infoshops and insurrection models for a commitment to building movements. It requires looking to Mississippi and New Orleans more than Russia or Paris.

This is not to say that American anarchism has been completely silent on race. The anarchist critique of white supremacy began in the 1980s and '90s, with the work of Black anarchists such as Kuwasi Balagoon and Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, the journal Race Traitor (which was sympathetic to the anarchist scene and did much to develop it intellectually regarding race), and anarchist organizations such as Love and Rage, Black Autonomy, Anarchist People of Color, and the anarchist-influenced Bring the Ruckus. Not coincidentally, these organizations also tend or tended to emphasize movement building rather than infoshops or insurrection. It is this tradition that influences my analysis here. But it is hardly a dominant perspective in the anarchist scene today.

After the Berlin Wall

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many anarchists were confident that anarchism would fill the void left by state communism and once again become the dominant ideological challenge to liberalism like it was before the Russian Revolution. This confidence, even exuberance, was on display throughout the U.S. anarchist scene in publications such as Anarchy, Fifth Estate, and Profane Existence; in the creation of new organizations such as the Network of Anarchist Collectives; and in the burst of anarchist infoshops opening up in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, D.C., New York, and elsewhere.

It was an exciting time. Yet anarchism never filled the void. It never captured the hearts and minds of ordinary people. A similar optimism followed the uprising in Seattle in 1999. Anarchists again confidently predicted the emergence of a new, powerful movement. Yet once again, it didn't happen. Today anarchism in the U.S. is in about the same place it was in 1989: a static ideology and a loose scene of largely white twenty-somethings, kept together by occasional gatherings, short-lived collectives, the underground music scene, and a handful of magazines and websites.

What went wrong in 1989 and 1999? Why hasn't anarchism filled the void left by the collapse of communism? Why hasn't anarchism grown as a movement and a philosophy? Most of the answer, no doubt, lies in the fact that anarchists grossly underestimated the power of capitalism and liberalism. All socialist ideologies lost popularity with the fall of the Soviet Union, since there no longer seemed to be a viable, "actually existing" alternative to capitalism. Capitalism and liberalism appeared invincible and the world system seemed to be at "the end of history." September 11, 2001, brought a new antagonist to global capital - religious fundamentalism - but it hardly represents a libertarian alternative. World events, in other words, smothered libertarian socialism between neoliberalism and fundamentalism.

But part of the problem, I have suggested, lies with anarchism itself. The failure to develop a theory of U.S. history that recognizes the centrality of racial oppression, combined with a related failure to concentrate on building mass movements, has contributed to anarchism's continued marginalization.

But what if this was to change? What if American anarchists went from building infoshops and plotting insurrections to building movements, particularly movements against the racial order? (They could still build free spaces and encourage insurrection, of course, but these efforts would be part of a broader strategy rather than strategies in themselves.) What if anarchists, instead of concentrating on creating "autonomous zones" on the U.S.-Mexico border, as some have tried to do, worked to build movements in resistance to anti-immigrant laws?

What if anarchists, instead of planning (largely ineffective) clandestine direct actions with small affinity groups, worked to build movements against the police, who are at the forefront of maintaining the color line? What if anarchists, in addition to supporting jailed comrades, worked with family members of incarcerated people to organize against prisons? What if anarchists stopped settling for autonomous zones and furtive direct actions and focused on undermining the cross-class alliance and on changing the "common sense" of this society?

The scene might just build a movement.

If you enjoyed this article we recommend these pieces discussing dual power and social movement strategy: " Active Revolution: Organizing, Base Building and Dual Power " and " Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism "

This version of Olson's republished essay, including editor's notes and footnotes, is credited to Black Rose Anarchist Federation .

Works Cited

Almaguer, T. (1994) Racial Fault Lines: The historical origins of white supremacy in California, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bookchin, M. (1982) The Ecology of Freedom: The emergence and dissolution of hierarchy , Palo Alto: Cheshire.
--- (1986) The Modern Crisis, Philadelphia: New Society.

Brodkin, K. (1999) How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Du Bois, W.E.B. (1992) Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 , New York: Atheneum.

Forman, J. (1985) The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks , New York: International.

Ignatiev, N. (1995) How the Irish Became White, New York: Routledge.

Ignatiev, N. and J. Garvey (1996) Race Traitor, New York: Routledge. (online journal content here)

Lowndes, Joe (1995) ' The life of an anarchist labor organizer ,' Free Society, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1994.

Kelley, R. (2002) Freedom Dreams: the Black Radical Tradition , Boston: Beacon.

Olson, J. (2004) The Abolition of White Democracy , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Perry, L. (1973) Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the government of God in antislavery thought, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Roediger, D. (1986) 'Strange Legacies: The Black International and Black America,' in Roediger, D. and F. Rosemont (eds.), Haymarket Scrapbook, Chicago: Kerr.

Thomas, P. (1980) Karl Marx and the Anarchists , London: Routledge.

Wright, R. (1957) White Man, Listen! Garden City: Doubleday.

Footnotes

The footnotes for this article have been updated with current links where available -Ed.

1. The critique of hierarchy and "all forms of oppression" is so pervasive in North American anarchist thought that a supporting quote here hardly seems adequate. These two examples are representative: 1) "We actively struggle against all forms of oppression and domination, including patriarchy, racism, anthropocentrism and heterosexism. We recognize and actively work against these systems of oppression that co-exist with capitalism, as well as against the ecocide of the planet" from " Principles of the Anti-Capitalist Network of Montreal ," 2007; and 2) "We stand against all forms of oppression: imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, fascism, heterosexism/homophobia/transphobia and the domination of human over human & human over all living things including mother earth" from Mission Statement, Revolutionary Autonomous Communities , Los Angeles, 2007. This perspective is also evident in the definitions of anarchism provided in numerous Anarchist FAQ sites. For examples, see "An Anarchist FAQ Page, version 12.2," [Cited version no longer available, more current version available here . -Ed]; " Anarchist Communism: An Introduction ," Anarchist FAQ ," and "Anarchy" at the Green Anarchist Info Shop [Text no longer available. -Ed].

2. For those who believe that the Manifesto is not an appropriately "anarchist" source to cite here, I remind them that Bakunin translated the Manifesto into Russian and worked on a translation of Capital. For more on the complicated relationship between anarchism and Marx see Paul Thomas's interesting book, Karl Marx and the Anarchists .

3. For examples of insurrectionary anarchism, see the magazines Willful Disobedience and Killing King Abacus .

4. Lucy Parsons and the Black Panthers tend to be the main links between Black struggles and American anarchists' historical sense. Parsons, a militant anarchist organizer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and possibly a former slave, is a problematic connection to the Black tradition because although she fought lynching and racial discrimination, she was not part of the Black community and often denied her Black identity. (She was married to a white man, Albert Parsons, so this denial may in part have been to evade anti-miscegenation laws. See Lowndes 1995 and Roediger 1986.)

Many anarchists fetishize the Panthers because they seem to fit both the infoshops and insurrection models (i.e. men and women with guns serving breakfast to Black children), but this position tends to idealize the Panthers rather than critically evaluate and integrate their experience into the anarchist tradition.

DeRay Mckesson's Misguided Case for Hope

By Devyn Springer and Zellie Imani

There are two histories which have always battled each other, publicly and loudly: domination's history-the history of the class in position to dominate the masses-and the people's history, which is the history of colonized and oppressed peoples struggling and triumphing from the ground up. Between these two histories, narrative and autobiographical writings have been a key tool in correctively challenging the historical narratives placed onto oppressed and colonized people, from the era-defining writing found in Malcolm X's autobiography, to the consciousness-shaping contours of Assata Shakur's Assata. And still, one must wonder if such a definitive, important piece of autobiographical writing has come from our generation yet, or if any attempts have been made. However, as we move into a new generation characterized by celebrity activists steeped in social media rather than intellectual study, it seems domination's recent history finds a comfortable bedfellow in the work of some high-profile activists, including activist DeRay Mckesson's On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope.

Who Is DeRay Mckesson?

In an incredibly short time, DeRay Mckesson - in his branded blue vest - has become almost synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement for many outside observers.

Mckesson is, as Mychal Denzel Smith recently put it , a frustrating figure. To people on almost all places on the political spectrum, aside from the liberal center, he is controversial. On the left he's often described as a "neoliberal" whose entanglement with celebrities and Hollywood signify a covert love affair with capitalism, and whose oversimplification of inequalities seems to be designed to cater to white liberals. In addition, those on the left have critiqued Mckesson's practice of consistently perching himself above the Ferguson Uprising, contrary to the wishes of Ferguson residents . For those on the right, DeRay's very existence as a Black, gay activist speaking against police violence has opened him up to the violence of racist trolls, harassment and ad hominem diatribes.

In the thick aftermath of the Ferguson uprising, Mckesson and other celebrity activists like Shaun King and Johnetta Elzie became online beacons who shared images, videos and articles related to protests taking place around the country. As their followings grew, organizers around the country waited for something; a manifesto, a plan, a political framework, a radical beginning. Years later, upon the announcement of the publication of On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, many believed this would be it - an etching of futures imagined.

The False Dichotomy of Reform vs. Revolution

Black resistance has occurred at every stage in American history. Liberty, the right to act according to one's own will, was denied to Black people, and the conditions Black people suffered from the state during the periods of slavery and its afterlife have developed radical tendencies within our community. As C.L.R. James said, "What Negro, particularly below the Mason-Dixon line, believes that the bourgeois state is a state above all classes, serving the needs of all the people? They may not formulate their belief in Marxist terms, but their experience drives them to reject this shibboleth [principle] of bourgeois democracy." Ultimately, the Black Experience is one which constitutes an ongoing struggle by Black people to both ideologically and physically challenge and free themselves from exploitation and domination. The goal of many social struggles is freedom, but, for McKesson, the "goal of protest" is simply "progress."

In his collection of essays, McKesson limits the radical capacity of protest by merely defining it as an activity that "creates space that would otherwise not exist, and forces conversations and topics into the public sphere that have been long ignored." But protest, or more accurately direct action, is more than that. Direct action can refer to various forms of activities that people themselves decide upon and through which they organize themselves against injustice and oppression. They are processes of self-empowerment and self-liberation. Through direct actions individuals collectively seek to end, or at the very least, reduce harm inflicted by oppression and exploitation. For example, what W.E.B Du Bois described as a "general strike against slavery" was not an attempt to create space for further national debate on the humanity of enslaved Africans, but an extraordinary attempt by enslaved Africans to be actors in their own liberation. The Harlem rent strikes of 1934, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Mississippi Summer Project were not about forcing conversations, but forcing concessions and transformations of society.

Unfortunately, McKesson consistently both romanticizes and ill-defines protest. By narrowly reducing direct action to "protest" and divorcing it from its rich legacy of revolutionary theory and tactics, he boldly makes assertions that are at odds with both history and reality.

In the essay, "Taking the Truth Everywhere," Mckesson confuses criticisms of reformism with criticisms of reforms. He first claims his more radical opponents "decry reform as a weakening of the spirit of protest." He then goes on to say, "A radicalism that at its heart is about dismantling the status quo in favor of an unimagined 'better future' is not in fact radicalism but a cold detachment from reality itself."

However, the struggle around immediate issues and reforms is not the same as reformism. Within both the Marxist and broad anarchist traditions are views that stress the necessity of creating popular movements built through struggles around reforms: concrete changes in policy and practices that improve people's lives and mitigate harm. Reforms that are won from below can not only improve popular conditions, but also strengthen radical mass movements by developing confidence and building capacity among individuals and political organizations. Nineteenth-century Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta said, "We shall carry out all possible reforms in the spirit in which an army advances ever forwards by snatching the enemy-occupied territory in its path." Revolution isn't a spontaneous event. It's a process of self-realization, self-organization and self-liberation through education, community building and direct action. The pursuit of incremental reforms absolutely has a place in radical activism.

Not only does he seem to intentionally misunderstand the concepts of protest and "radicalism," Mckesson also seeks to utterly delegitimize the entire idea of revolution or revolutionary action. By painting an image of the left that sets up a false dichotomy between leftist organizing and reforms, he makes the opposite of reformism seem idealistic, unrealistic, sophomoric. The distinction he misses, however, is simple: to support immediate reforms is not the same as being reformist.

In the recent nationwide prison strike, for example, the most vocal and ardent supporters of the strike were prison abolitionists such as ourselves who are against the notion that prisons can be reformed in a way that would turn them into a positive force. Instead, we struggle to win what abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls non-reformist reforms - reforms that produce "systemic changes that do not extend the life or breadth of deadly forces such as prisons."

As abolitionists, we also understand the need to meet the immediate needs of those facing the brunt of violence from the prison machinery, and thus we support each demand from the prison strike organizers while knowing we must continue to build momentum toward its abolition.

The Choreography of Racism Is Structural, Not Just Interpersonal

The book, which is a collection of mostly brief essays composed into chapters, covers a wide range of subjects in a surprisingly narrow scope, with personal experience rather than researched analysis guiding each topic. Throughout its entirety, glaringly oversimplified and intentionally reductive descriptions are put forth on several key topics.

"I understood whiteness before I had the language to describe it," Mckesson states early into the book. However, most of what follows shows the opposite. He describes whiteness as an "idea made flesh", and confers that the lifeblood of this "idea" is situated within a power dynamic. Moreover, even while mentioning the idea of whiteness being sustained by "manipulating systems and structures," Mckesson promotes a notion that whiteness, and thus race, are mostly a relation of individual problems and choices.

This "understanding" of whiteness leads to Mckesson reducing the entirety of whiteness to one main point: white privilege. Whiteness, for Mckesson, is a set of mostly interpersonal privileges manifest in communities that sets white people as "the norm" and others as deviation from that norm. Using an analogy of purchasing rulers for a middle school classroom to describe how whiteness "perpetuates harm," Mckesson illustrates a story of two sets of kids in the same classroom: those who had defective rulers, and those who had the correct ones. From there, he moves on to portray racial economic or social gaps as a case of happenstance or accidental defectiveness rather than intentional alignment of oppressive structures. This analogy, one of many throughout the book, simply falls flat, and we're shown a fatally flawed understanding of whiteness as something that is personal and possibly even coincidental, not structural or oppressive.

The most basic look into the works of David Roediger, W.E.B Du Bois, bell hooks, Theodore W. Allen and Nell Irvin Painter, as well as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin (names that appear in any serious inquiry into whiteness studies), will elucidate the many flaws with understanding whiteness in these terms. Whiteness is not just an idea, nor is it the phenomenal response to a set of choices; it's a construct rooted in the legacies of Western colonization, chattel slavery and capitalism. If those are the sets of choices Mckesson vaguely refers to when he says that "white people benefit from a set of choices in the past that still have an impact today," then the lack of mention of what those "choices" actually were, is wildly belittling. Moreover, speaking of such grand and oppressive structures such as chattel slavery and colonization in terms of "choices" reduces the harm of these things to the level of personal guilt and eclipses the fact that these were not chosen options but rather the bases our entire current capitalist state is built on. Above all else, whiteness is a relation to the means of production - the mechanisms, land, capital and resources to produce goods - and a more distant proximity to state violence. As intellectual Theodore W. Allen put it, whiteness is a "ruling class social control formation," not just a "privilege." Why are these terms all missing from his text?

In one of the more lucidly misguided moments of the text, Mckesson bases his definitions of racism and white supremacy on this (mis)understanding of whiteness. He states that racism is "rooted in whiteness," while rejecting the notion that class interests could play a chief role in racism's roots.

To assert that racism is rooted in whiteness is to completely misunderstand both the beginning and current reasons of racism. As Mckesson previously states, whiteness is situated within a power dynamic. Under capitalism, what is the actual "power" of that dynamic? Capital. Racism is not "rooted in whiteness." It is rooted in exploitation and domination, which are predicated on capital. As historian Walter Rodney put it, "it was economics that determined that Europe should invest in Africa and control the continent's raw materials and labor. It was racism which confirmed the decision that the form of control should be direct colonial rule."

Troublingly, Mckesson flat-out denies the instance of "self-interest or economics" as being foundational to white supremacy or racism. He states:

"There was a time when I believed that racism was rooted in self-interest or economics-the notion that white supremacy emerged as a set of ideas to codify practices rooted in profit. I now believe that the foundation of white supremacy rests in a preoccupation with dominance at the expense of others, and that the self-interest and economics are a result, not a reason or cause. I believe this because of the way that white supremacy still proliferates in contexts where there is no self-interest other than the maintenance of power."

Mckesson attempts to define the large ideas of racism and whiteness without interrogating the decades of work that has been done in this field. Discussing structures of oppression without mentioning their roots in capitalism-while simultaneously mentioning "power dynamics" and perpetually unnamed "systems"-is both bewildering and dishonorable.

First is the notion that racism and white supremacy act independent of class, which is simply untrue. To mention the maintenance of "power" under capitalism is to mention class; to mention a claim to domination is to mention class interests. The places where Mckesson engages with terms like "economics," "self-interest" and "power" could be instances of insight, but instead intentional vagueness takes place. He never names what racism's "power" actually is under capitalism, which is to own property, to own capital, to exploit workers, to dispose of or "disappear" those deemed as surplus laborers, and to define and name violence. As revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon once put it, racism's power is in its ability to achieve "a perfect harmony of economic relations and ideology."

Second, the omissions in the approach to these passages on race and racism are glaring. The truth is that there exists a wealth of work that Mckesson never cites, engages, or even challenges. While reading, one wonders why the crucial works of so many activists, authors, scholars and thinkers who've struggled in this field of work over the years have been completely disregarded by Mckesson.

So why, then, is Mckesson fixated on the notion that racism is a purely individual set of choices rather than an intentional division of class and tool of social control? Racism is a potent means of codifying the interests of white capital, and white people are "preoccupied with dominance" because dominance carries social and financial benefits. However, the wages of whiteness are that, even when it defies the class interests of the ones seeking to uphold it, it will still be maintained; white people will vote and act against their own class interests for the sake of maintaining whiteness, as seen in the last presidential election.

Hope for What?

The most frustrating part of the book may be the constant pithy messages of hope and liberation. Not that hope is a bad thing, and that optimism of the will, as Antonio Gramsci once stated, shouldn't be the founding blocks of our political organizing. What does become apparent throughout the entire book, though, is that Mckesson doesn't quite know what he's "hoping" for, if anything at all. "The case for hope" remains a vague, aimless case that he never articulates beyond self-aggrandizing Instagram-caption-friendly lines.

Hope, as a vehicle for change, as an organizing tool, as a rallying cry and connecting force, is only as powerful as it is defined and aimed. Some are organizing for socialism, others specifically for a living wage, prison abolition, ending US imperialism, free education or health care, environmental justice, and so forth. So, what is it that Mckesson's "case for hope" is aiming toward?

In the chapter, "The Problem of Police," a well-written and standout chapter in the book, we're given a detailed look into Mckesson and others' work chronicling instances of police violence into a national database, and we're shown the massive faults of our policing system, from body cameras to a lack of a database for recording instances of police violence or a mandatory process for reporting them. Still, the essay ends with a message on "making different choices" and no mention of abolition, or even any relevant reforms to the policing system Mckesson spent the previous pages dissecting.

Is this the future of our movements? Naming problems without creating solutions and calling for hope, but a hope that is empty - void of optimism, of the will to do, to change? Maybe Mckesson doesn't name what he is "hoping" for because he's afraid it will alienate some portion of his massive-and growing-following. Maybe what he is hoping for is too radical for many, or too reformist for many others. Either way, if this book was meant to outline the "other side of freedom" as the name entails, it misses the mark by a long shot.

This article was originally published at Truthout . Reprinted with permission.

Colin Kaepernick, the Black Panthers, and Fred Hampton

By Simon Wood

"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In the 2016 preseason American football games of the San Francisco 49ers, quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to sit rather than stand for the US national anthem. In an interview, he explained his stance:

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

He later chose to kneel instead of sit, explaining that this change was to express more respect for past and present US military service members.

A year on the controversy has exploded, dominating news agendas and social media feeds. There is a hashtag [#takeaknee] and numerous opinion pieces, expressing sympathy and condemnation in broad measure, have achieved broad circulation. US President Trump has joined the fray, expressing the standard view from the right that the actions of Kaepernick are disrespectful and unpatriotic. This has in turn served to trigger the 'liberal left' in a way that decades of inequality, police violence against black people and mass carnage abroad has never quite managed.

Indeed the coronation of Donald Trump has been a stroke of genius for the US and global ruling classes. His unparalleled boorishness and ineptitude has been the perfect distraction for a generation force-fed decades of identity politics, people who see war and class oppression as abstract concepts to be frowned on and soberly discussed while foaming at the mouth over, say, the various classifications of gender, in those moments when they are not victims of all the other distractions on offer.

The chances of any serious movement arising to topple the financial elites and their collaborators under these circumstances are zero. 'Trump out!' goes the slogan, with the sloganeers all too happy to see this particular puppet replaced with another Obama, the man who personally ordered numerous drone strikes in full knowledge of the fact that 90% of the victims were civilians, some toddlers and infants.

Whatever Kaepernick's and his followers' good intentions, they must be aware that any movement that gains popularity and has potentially revolutionary appeal will be either subverted and rendered harmless by the state apparatus, or - if or when that fails - mercilessly crushed. That second stage has not been reached here, and it will not, as all the signs are there of a major media operation to re-direct and dilute the mass of outrage away from the true target, namely class oppression and the system that enables it - capitalism. By giving support and condemnation, the media subverts the anger of the people and crafts the debate on its terms. Black versus white, the people versus Trump, freedom of speech - whatever. What it absolutely must not ever mention or encourage understanding of is the reality that this injustice stems directly from oppression by the ruling classes. Just keep the people arguing among themselves. Divide and rule.

This is a class issue, and to understand that requires class awareness, the very concept identity politics was deployed to destroy. The one single thing that petrifies the looting warmongers in control of the world's 'democratic' institutions is a mass awakening of class awareness, from which follows the ability to discern between truth and fraud, fact and misdirection, reality and illusion - in other words, the only means to tackle the disease. If you listen carefully, as the right bang on and on about respecting the flag and the left argue among themselves, demanding some kind of vague 'justice' for the victims of police violence, on a quiet night you can hear the ruling classes laughing over champagne in their ivory towers. You may also hear the sound of Fred Hampton rolling fitfully in his grave.

Fred Hampton was the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. He understood that revolutionary change was the only answer to the long, deep injustice suffered by the oppressed. In a speech at Northern Illinois University in November 1969, he expressed this in his own inimitable manner:

You know a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. And the people that have those hang-ups are opportunists, and cowards, and individualists and everything that's anything but revolutionary. And they use these things as an excuse to justify and to alibi and to bonify their lack of participation in the real revolutionary struggle. So they say, "Well, I can't dig the Panther Party because the Panthers they are engrossed with dealing with oppressor country radicals, or white people, or hunkies, or what have you. They said these are some of the excuses that I use to negate really why I am not in the struggle."

We got a lot of answers for those people. First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, and Lenin, and Che Guevara end Mao Tse-Tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. It was one class--the oppressed--those other class--the oppressor. And it's got to be a universal fact. Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know that as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution.

[...]

If we never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that when you, the by-product, what comes off of racism, that capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to take money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means that capitalism had to, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a by-product of that.

Anybody that doesn't admit that is showing through their non-admittance and their non-participation in the struggle that all they are, are people who fail to make a commitment; and the only thing that they have going for them is the education that they receive in these institutions-education enough to teach them some alibis and teach them that you've gotta be black, and you've gotta change you name. And that's crazy.

[...]

And a lot of people think now that their hands are getting dirty. We call them ideological servants of United States fascism. And that's what they are, because they serve fascism by doing nothing about it until the law goes over and then they apologize for it, they get apologetic. But we say it's the same press that we'll look at and believe and think is bona fide; the same press that talked us into believing that we was somebody when in fact we were nobody.

I don't think there's anything more important. I think that what Malcolm says is important. Now think back. Those students were laughing at Malcolm. Can you dig it? They were laughing at Malcolm. Why? Regis Debray, he says the revolutionaries are in the future. That militants and pork chops and all these people, radical students, are in the present, and that most of the rest of the people try to remain in the past. That's why when somebody comes that's in the future of a lot of us can't understand him. And the same thing that you don't understand Huey P. Newton now, you didn't understand Malcolm when he was living. But we know that when Malcolm left, the well almost ran dry. You don't miss the water til the well runs dry, and it almost ran dry.

[Excerpts selected for relevance]

A month later, Hampton was murdered by the police on the orders of the FBI. A short examination of the circumstances leading to his death are relevant as they provide an object lesson of citizen actions the state is concerned about, as well as those that the state is not, and also the lengths to which the state will go to destroy potential threats to power.

While Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as an effective leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI. Hence, the bureau began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and similar radical coalitions forged by Hampton in Chicago as a frightening steppingstone toward the creation of such a revolutionary body that could, in its strength, cause a radical change in the U.S. government.

The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967. Hampton's mother's phone was tapped in February 1968, and Hampton was placed on the Bureau's "Agitator Index" as a "key militant leader" by May. In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office recruited an individual named William O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and a monthly stipend, O'Neal apparently agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard. In 1969, the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation of the BPP revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying that the career prospects of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".

By means of anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their power base in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to forestall the realization of the Rainbow Coalition but nevertheless it was formed with an alliance of the Young Patriots and Young Lords. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel investigate the Rainbow Coalition and "destroy what the [BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".

Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other radical groups, which provoked multiple murders in cities throughout the country. On May 26, 1969, Hampton was successfully prosecuted in a case related to a theft in 1967 of $71 worth of Good Humor Bars in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years but managed to obtain an appeal bond, and was released in August. On July 16, there was an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department, which left one BPP member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges. In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their first child (Fred Hampton Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" stockpile of arms was being stored there and drew them a map of the layout of the apartment. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the Party's Central Committee. Shortly thereafter, he was to assume the position of Chief of Staff and major spokesman.

Here we observe several tactics of division and subversion such as infiltration, sowing distrust, publication of controversial materials under false pretenses, even the instigation of violence and so on.

Once Hoover - seeing Hampton and the Black Panthers as a major threat - had ordered an intensified FBI campaign to destroy them by any means necessary, a sequence of events eventually led to a raid on the apartment where Hampton often stayed in Chicago. On the evening of December 3rd, 1969, the FBI informant O'Neal slipped a sleeping agent into Hampton's drink to ensure he would sleep through a raid planned for that night. Unable to awaken when the raid occurred, Hampton was wounded in the shoulder as he lay next to his heavily pregnant fiancé. Black Panther Harold Bell reported that he heard the following exchange:

"That's Fred Hampton."

"Is he dead? Bring him out."

"He's barely alive."

"He'll make it."

Two shots were heard, later discovered to have been fired point blank into Hampton's head. According to Johnson, one officer then said: "He's good and dead now."

Demanding social justice is a fine thing, one that raises a person above the many who have been so deeply indoctrinated that they care only for the things they are programmed to be concerned about. The propaganda apparatus is well prepared for such outrage, however, and successfully plays billions of people for fools again and again, ensuring that any and all protest organisations never attain a revolutionary aspect and actually start taking direct strategic actions against their oppressors. A concerned citizen or activist must be smart, aware of all the tricks of misdirection that are employed to ensure essential harmlessness from all possible threats. Being impervious to these methods is a necessary, key step toward freedom and progress. And therefore justice.

The Kaepernick issue is one such case. Yes, it is about social injustice and freedom of speech, but all this stems from the overriding issue - as Hampton explained so clearly - of class. Make it about that, strive to organize and/or join marches and other direct actions on as large a scale as possible to bring down the mass-murdering war apparatus of the Pentagon and the CIA and the financial networks that simultaneously fuel and profit from them. Forget the personalities (like the pathetic Trump) and focus only on the system that permits such evil and incompetence, the system that threatens all our lives.

This was originally published on Simon's blog. Simon is available on Twitter @simonwood11

Trump's Muslim Ban is a Declaration of Perpetual War

By Amir Khafagy

After months of anticipation, the Supreme Court has finally made their decision on Trump v. Hawaii, better known as the Muslim ban. In a close 5-4 ruling the court has ruled to uphold Trump's ban. The decision has outraged many, yet the decision was expected given the court's conservative majority. Plastered all over my Facebook feed I'm bombarded with invites to protests and rallies that will achieve nothing but satisfy the collective catharsis. Say No to Trump's Muslim Ban, the invites enthusiastically read. Thousands have already taken to the streets in nationwide days of action to show solidarity with Muslims and in defiance of the court's decision. During a rally in Foley Square in Manhattan, Democratic politicians and nonprofit leaders took to the stage to lambast Trump. New York City Council Member, Carlos Manchaca, addressed a crowd which seemed to be comprised of mostly white non-Muslims by stating to roaring applause that Trump "doesn't represent New York and American values."

As a Muslim and an Arab American, one would think I would be the first to jump on the bandwagon of resistance to such an abhorrent policy. You would also think that I would be grateful to see so many non-Muslim liberals pledging to stand up for me and other Muslims. However, I can't seem to stomach any of it. Maybe because those who are in opposition of the ban are opposed to it for the wrong reasons. Politicians like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren pledge to defend Muslims in America, yet their support for military budgets that bomb, main, and kill Muslims abroad go unchallenged. Everyone is quick to react, but few are critically thinking. Trump's travel ban isn't a Muslim ban at all; it's a hit list. If it was truly a Muslim ban, meaning every majority-Muslim country was on the list, I would feel quite differently. But that doesn't seem to be the case. What is the case is the fact that every country on Trump's list is a country that the United States is currently at war with.

Let me first briefly explain what the travel ban is. On January 27, 2017, Trump signed the first travel ban, Executive Order 13769. In addition of blocking Syrian refugee's entry into the United States indefinitely and suspending U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, it also barred nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country. Immediately after the executive order was announced, liberal activists around the country sprang into actions. Rallies were held at JFK airport to support the travelers who were being turned away at customs. Upwards of over 700 travelers were detained, and nearly 60,000 visas were revoked. After numerous legal challenges and the public outcry, the Trump admiration grudgingly revoked the order, replacing with a modified and rebranded Executive Order 13780. The new travel ban was a much more diversified list that restricts travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Trump called the new travel ban the "watered-down, politically-correct version." Again, activists protested the plan and again the administration modified the list, this time only removing Chad. Soon after the third version of the travel ban went into effect, the state of Hawaii sued the administration, arguing that the ban was racially and religiously discriminatory because it specifically targets Muslims.

Hawaii's argument isn't wrong, per se. As far as that's concerned, I do agree to an extent that the ban is a bigotry policy that is intended to pander to Trump's Islamophobic and racist base. What I don't agree with is the simplistic view of the travel ban that ignores the relationship between it and America's imperial foreign policy. For instance, none of America's middle eastern allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, made the list, even though all the 9/11 hijackers were nationals of those two countries. Those two oppressive and dictatorial regimes are firmly nestled in America's pocket by being the recipients of massive amounts of military aid. It's not just happenstance that the travel ban aligns with American overt or covert regime-change operations abroad. Are we quick to forget that America has been conducting drone strikes in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen? Or the fact that American boots are on the ground in those countries? Additionally, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran are subjected to crippling economic sanctions and their governments are being constantly undermined by American intelligence services. If anything, those countries should have a travel ban in place against us.

What really makes the so-called "Muslim ban" dangerous is that it taps into the fear of Muslims, an irrational fear that is so pervasive in our culture, to further legitimize American imperialism. It's worth noting that retired four-star general, Wesley Clark, has remarked that the State Department and Pentagon have planned since 2001 to "take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." With the exception of Lebanon and the removal of Sudan and Iraq, Trump's travel ban list is identical to the Pentagon's "kill list." So, it should be safe to assume that the travel ban has more to do with justifying war than it does with banning Muslims. Thus, the ban serves as a de facto declaration of perpetual war, sanctioned by the highest court of the land. After all, if we aren't afraid of Muslims, how can we be persuaded to fight them indefinitely?

Most of the criticism of the ban from Democrats is mute when it comes to attacking America's foreign policy. It focuses on the politics of identity rather than the politics of the reality. The Democrats want us to focus our outrage on Trump and the racist Republicans instead of understanding that the Democrats are just as complicit in their bipartisan support for the military industrial complex. Just last year, Trump signed into law a whopping $700-billion military budget with overwhelming, bipartisan support. Interestingly enough, the budget stipulated increased military spending for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The Democrats have no problem bombing Muslims, they only take issue with banning them.

Which reminds me, this whole paternal obsession with refugees is also misguided. During one of the protests I attended, I noticed a woman holding up a sign that read, "We Love Refugees." During the rally, another politician stood at the podium and declared, "We welcome the refugees fleeing their war-torn countries." Maybe it's just me, but I found this whole love affair with refugees to be quite morbid. I couldn't help but think if we weren't busy bombing and destabilizing their countries, there wouldn't be a refugee crisis in the first place. But, of course, no one made mention of that. As always, liberals in attendance were quick to diagnose the symptom but failed to acknowledge the disease. In this case, the disease is, as Martin Luther King, Hr. put it so eloquently so many years ago, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

Why Black People Need Maoism in 2018

By Carine Williams

When they hear Maoism, many people think of China, Peru, and the Philippines. They picture peasants "surrounding the cities from the countryside." This is, of course, understandable, but a mistake. Maoism is not simply "everything that Mao did," or "everything that happened in China between 1949 and now." I have spent a great deal of my time writing working to dispel these sorts of myths, some peddled in an unprincipled fashion by anti-Maoists. Maoism is a living, breathing science. By science we mean something with universal principles that can be taken and applied by all who have a material interest in making revolution. In the United States, this is Black people, or the New Afrikan nation.

It was not by accident that the original Black Panther Party (BPP) developed close relations with the revolutionary leadership of the People's Republic of China. Huey didn't go to China to play; he went to study and learn things that could be applied back home. Of course, he eventually degenerated in political line and practice, taking a right opportunist course along with Bobby Seale (always a centrist) and Elaine Brown (who guided the party, in his absence, into a mainstream political force that led into the arms of the Democratic Party). This opportunism in the highest expression of revolutionary sentiment, practice, and force in this country to date needs to be studied and ruthlessly criticized, yet we should be careful. We must place things in their historical context and ensure that we are able to divide one into two, meaning see the beneficial as well as the negative aspects of a thing but also realize that one aspect must be primary.

The BPP was destroyed by a combination of factors: lack of a really scientific method of analysis and cohesive program of political education, failure to promote and apply the Marxist-Leninist principle of Democratic Centralism (debate inside the party, formation of a political line through this debate, and the upholding of this decision by all party members and organs), and a culture of liberalism that ended with comrades fighting comrades, thus opening the door for external factors (the FBI and other LE agencies) to play havoc and get cadre railroaded into prison and killed. We must study and learn all of these lessons, because when we develop another organization with the prestige, mass base, and power that the Panthers had, and we will, they will come for us all again.

So, why do we need Maoism? Because we are against the most brutal, bloody, and vicious empire known to humankind. This country is looting and enslaving our class siblings all over the world. To overturn this order of things, to smash it and rebuild it in the interests of the revolutionary proletariat of the entire world, we must apply the synthesis of 200 years of systematic, organized class struggle, which is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism: the continuity of the revolutionary project that was Marxism-Leninism, with a rupture from the dogmatism and revisionism. Maoists do not uphold "Actually Existing Socialism" because a scientific analysis rooted in the principles laid down by the revolutionary movements and projects that gave us Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao would demonstrate that stealing food from Filipino fisherfolk, like the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been doing, is 100% non-Marxist. This is in disagreement with many Marxist-Leninist organizations today, which uphold these things and other imperialist depredations carried out under the faded red banner of China.

The Maoist argument is that Marxist-Leninist terrain has been spent, and the 21st century must learn from Maoism. "You haven't seized state power yet!" others cry. Indeed, and there has never been a truly Maoist party that has initiated armed struggle in the imperialist metro poles. This doesn't mean that Maoist principles cannot be applied to these countries, this means that we must be ever more creative in our application and ever more disciplined in our party-building efforts. Party building in the USA requires the careful and thorough cultivation of a mass base. Tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people must depend on and follow this party and participate in mass organizations before it can even begin to call itself a vanguard. This is what many who came out of the New Communist Movement of the mid-late 1970s failed to realize. The days of endless squabbling sects that fight over "mass bases" of a handful of other activists must be put to an end, and we must have a truly mass perspective.

There is optimism in the spread of For the People (FTP) organizations and the development of the Organizing Committee for a Maoist Communist Party (MCP-OC) which has a more mass orientation and places primacy on the development of a class analysis and political line in the USA that is based in painstaking investigation and rooted in the aspirations and struggles of the most oppressed, along with a record of seeking to develop international solidarity and prison work. This, I believe, is the best hope for New Afrikan Maoists in the United States and I wholeheartedly encourage Black comrades to develop FTP-type organizations in their own communities under OC guidance. Even if this isn't done, at the very least studies in Maoism, studies in Maoist revolutions, and studies in Maoist theory are beneficial. After and during these studies, think about how it can be applied on your block and in your community.

Learn about and be like Fred Hampton. Time is up for spinning our wheels; we must get together, unite on a principled and unshakeable basis, and mount a formidable resistance against decades and centuries-old oppression based in capitalism and white supremacy. I also encourage support and donation to the Hampton Institute as an invaluable resource in promoting revolutionary ideology and practice in the finest Marxist tradition.

From Microaggressions to Legalized Lynching: Weaponizing Police Against Black People

By Cherise Charleswell

Thanks to social media's ability to help news headlines (and those stories that don't even make it out through mainstream media) go viral, Black people and other people of color are beginning to receive some vindication. For many years, our testimonies about our lived experiences with micoaggressions and overt racism have often been dismissed. Yes - too many, we were simply playing "the race card."

We are told that we are being overly sensitive, that white privilege doesn't exist, that we should simply just comply, and oh yes - President Barack Obama's election was proof enough that we now live in a post-racial society. Never mind the fact that the election of 45 was the result of a "white lash," which actually proves that the United States, almost two decades into the 21st century, is anything but post-racial. The deep-seated issues of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia continue to exist, and the election of a President whose entire campaign aligned with those attitudes has literally open the floodgates of hate.

However, those of us with melanin-rich skin know that 45 alone isn't to blame for the rise in hate crimes and white supremacy groups , nor is he solely responsible for the racist vitriol that we have openly seen on display since his election. His blatant (he has moved far past the use of "dog whistles") and continued racism, with stereotypical and hateful language that targets specific groups of people, is a sign or symptom of the prevalence of racism, and the United States has been sick for some time.

Black people and other non-Black People of Color (NBPOC) have spent many years pointing out that racist stereotypes, such as one that claims that we have a predisposition for criminal behavior, have translated to Black people constantly being viewed with suspicion and fear. These viewpoints, steeped in racism, have had dire consequences: From the false accusations launched against Emmet Till that led to his brutal murder, to the 1991 murder of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins and the 2012 murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, to the removal of a group of Black women on a Napa Valley wine train . There has been a need for white people/dominant society to police Black bodies, and this legacy continues. It is a legacy that is currently manifesting in a rash of publicized incidents, many of which have now gone viral, where white people are calling the police on Black people for simply existing.

These white people are following a long historical tradition of proactively criminalizing Black people. With each incident, they are able to turn mundane interactions into melodramas, and this is all due to their preconceived beliefs about how Black people behave, where they should be allowed access, how they talk, how they dress, and so on. As always, these incidents are initiated and escalated not by the actions of the Black person, but rather by the white person's prejudiced beliefs.

Something that particularly stands out with these calls is that they are overwhelmingly being made by White women, and this is again a continuation of a historical pattern of racism and white supremacy. It is the exact behavior that led to the aforementioned murder of Emmet Till and the lynching of many people of African descent in the United States. It is a notion that Black people/POC present a threat and danger.

All too often, the cruelties of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow, apartheid, and so on are attributed only to white men, letting white women off the hook. However, this tactic of tattling, calling law enforcement, and literally producing physical "white tears" is how white women have engaged in white supremacy for centuries. Worse yet is that this tactic is also utilized due to envy and the need to assert their position in the structure of global patriarchal white supremacy, stemming from slave-plantation dynamics. Forced rapes and sexual relationships between white men and women slaves on plantations often produced children - clear evidence of their infidelity, something the slaveowner's wife could not openly acknowledge. Therefore, many chose to utilize passive-aggressive tactics against the enslaved people on the plantation, including the enslaved mistress and her offspring. More than a century later, the same passive-aggressive tactics are now wielded in the workplace and just about every social setting. This form of white privilege is so powerful when wielded because it the power to direct lynchings and other forms of violence against Black bodies.

During the first half of 2018 there has been many instances of weaponizing the police to carry out "legal lynchings" initiated by white women's tears. A quick review of a few of these incidents include:

- An incident in New York where a former White House staffer was accused of breaking into his own apartment.

- The incident where Donnish Prendgast, daughter of Sharon Marley and granddaughter of Bob Marley, had the police called on her by a white woman, while checking out of an AirBnB in Rialto, California with three other filmmakers. She and her cohorts were stopped by at least seven police cars and a helicopter after the white woman who called claimed that they were "stealing stuff."

- An incident with a contractor in Memphis Tennessee where a White woman calls the police on a Black real estate investor inspecting a house next door.

- The infamous incident at a Starbucks in Philadelphia Pennsylvania that led to Starbucks closing thousands of stores for diversity training.

- The incident at Yale University where police were called after a Black Yale student fell asleep in the Common room, while trying to work on a paper. More about the caller and her history of racially-charged statements here .

- The Waffle House incident in Alabama that all began when a Black woman asked for a complimentary (which is standard in most dine-in restaurant) plastic utensil.

- The infamous case of BBQ Becky up in Oakland California who called the police on a family trying to have a Cook out at Lake Merrit.

- One carried out by White men against Black women at a golf course in Pennsylvania . Where police were called on the group of 5 because they were apparently golfing "too slow."

- And the most recent case of a white woman, now referred to as " Permit Patty ," threatening to call the police on a Black girl who was selling bottled water outside her apartment building.

Note that a number of these incidents occurred in States and cities that are considered to be more "liberal."

By the time BBQ Becky made yet another false and unwarranted call to the police we had become oversaturated with these stories, and Black people have had to lean on one of our traditional strategies for survival - Laugh Rather Than Cry - because the constant barrage of microaggressions and racism can take its toll. How this stress impacts the health outcomes of Black people and other minority groups is well documented (see here ) and is actually linked to health disparities . This is why laughter as a coping mechanism is necessary. This is something that Black Twitter carries out so well. And when it came to BBQ Becky, the proliferation of memes on social media ( see here) shows why Black Twitter remains undefeated when it comes to producing poignant, thought-provoking, honest, informative, and truthful commentary in a biting, sarcastic, blunt, humorous, and unapologetic manner.

However, after we laugh and cry, we truly need to consider how we will finally deal with this issue, because the problem is far more than implicit bias - which helps to reassure these white callers that the police will most likely side with them in interactions with Black people and other minority groups. It is as if they are certain of this outcome, and that is why they make these calls so quickly. Then there is the fact that minority communities have not had great interactions with law enforcement historically, and are thus less likely to call them for minor disputes, especially when a white person is the aggressor. Just consider the incident that occurred in a Santa Monica California parking lot. Santa Monica is a place which many are led to believe is liberal, "open-minded," "tolerant," etc. The incident involved was a parking lot dispute which quickly elevated when an White man hurled racial slurs against a Black woman, followed by physical violence, where he attempted to kick her.

Then there was an elderly white woman who attacked a pregnant Black US veteran . In both cases, despite being the actual victims, the Black person did not call law enforcement.

Why didn't they call?

Because, they knew that they would most likely be seen as the aggressor, not the victim. And this means that they could be arrested, assaulted, or even murdered.

That is just it - it is the threat of bodily harm and/or lethal force carried out by law enforcement that makes these calls so problematic and sinister (these callers have to know what they are doing!). Despite the consequences, which can include the state-sanctioned murder of Black people and other minority groups, white people continue to make these calls. Thus, it is not only a misuse of law enforcement, it is a matter of using white privilege - and weaponizing law enforcement to carry out "legal" lynchings.

Further, these calls make it difficult for Black people to exist, go on with our lives, and live carefree, simply because of the color of our skin. Even while minding our business, we are being criminalized. We can't barbecue, we can't golf, we can't sit at restaurants, we can't carry out our jobs in peace, we can't go golfing, and we can't even request utensils at a restaurant without a racist making an unjustified call to law enforcement.

It is time to "Strip the power of the White aggressor away"

Knowing that there are dire and legal consequences to these false/unwarranted calls. They need to be treated like a public-health problem. Research is needed, as well as interventions and changes in protocols, as well as policy/legislation.

1. Intermediate interventions that will act as a deterrent for these false calls should involve implementing fines or arrests/charges on these callers, due to misuse of the emergency call system and tax-payer funded law enforcement resources.

2. Changes in policy or protocols should be mandated for 911 operators who receive these calls. They should be trained to quickly assess the legitimacy of these calls - and whether there is an actual emergency occurring. Or whether there is just a racist/bigot on the other end of the phone. In the vast majority of these calls, there was no threat of danger that even mandated officers being deployed.

3. Responding officers need to also be held accountable for their role, particularly when it comes to false arrests and imprisonment, which is what occurred when two African American men were arrested and incarcerated after sitting at a Pennsylvania Starbucks restaurant, for a timespan of two minutes, while waiting for a colleague. Many witnesses came forth to attest to the fact that the men had done nothing wrong, yet they were still arrested by police. Many may argue that more training is needed for law enforcement, but they already receive extensive training. And no one should have to be trained to acknowledge other's humanity. So, a different approach is needed. Something more must be done to assist officers in choosing to use discernment if they respond to one of these calls. Alternative strategies can include: subjecting officers with personal fines, responding with lawsuits regarding false imprisonment against police officers and personally against arresting officers, formally defining these incidents as misconduct and making the necessary documentation on the arresting officers personnel file, etc.

In the end, one truly has to ask, is it really that hard to NOT be an asshole?

Here is a flow chart to assist you with determining when it is the appropriate time to call the police.

Try to Live and Let Live and realize that Black people and PoC have a right to exist. In closing, a message to BBQ Becky: instead of calling the police, all you had to do was ask for some food, and understand that we simply do not want to eat your potato salad.

Dismantle the Pipeline: A Review of Susan Anglada Bartley's "A Different Vision: A Revolution Against Racism in Public Education" (Luminare Press)

By David Gilbert

School was always a breeze for me. "Correct English" came naturally--it was the way people spoke at home. As for social studies, I was well-versed in the mythology of American democracy that masqueraded as "history." My parents instilled confidence that I could excel at science and math, which they saw as a career path for me. It was only in my college years--as I became intent on understanding why some people are obscenely rich while as many others are desperately poor--that I started to get into trouble.

Unusually well-educated for a New York State (NYS) prisoner--the average incoming inmate is at a 6th grade level--I've done a lot of work as a teacher's aide and a tutor. Early on I was struck by a conundrum: Many otherwise bright and brave guys just froze when it came to academic work. After many conversations I saw a frequent pattern: from early on in school they were treated as discipline problems, not as promising learners, and often humiliated and punished. Rather than accept a framework that made them feel stupid, they decided that school was b.s. And that they would prove their self-worth in the streets. In communities where decent manufacturing jobs fled but where the "War on Drugs" made them a lucrative trade, that seemed like the ready route to wealth and prestige. Before long, of course, that led to incarceration. Welcome to the school-to-prison pipeline. In NYS, Blacks and Latinos/as constitute 37% of the population and 72% of state prisoners.

Susan Anglada Bartley is a passionate anti-racist educator. Her new book, A Different Vision, looks at the school-to-prison pipeline as part of a fundamentally white supremacist education system. The various forms of exclusion are key--the ways students of color are told they are slow learners, are tracked away from college preparation courses, and are disproportionately subjected to harmful forms of discipline. The latter isn't just a product of cultural misunderstandings with white teachers; studies show that students of color are treated much more harshly for the same behaviors as whites. Once students are held out of the classroom, they're much more likely to fall behind on their work and then drop out. In the U.S. Black students are 3 times more likely than whites to be suspended or expelled, which foreshadows the 6 to 1 Black to white incarceration rate for males. Another school-to-prison pipeline has been built over the past 40 years, for the flow of dollars, as funding for incarceration has increased at twice the rate of that for education.

I cringed at A Different' Vision's description of how humilation is a standard technique for keeping students in line. As a teacher at Franklin High School (FHS) in Portland, Oregon, Anglada Bartley learned how to move away from that and toward engagement. She realized that especially as a white teacher, she had to earn the trust of her Black, Latino/a, Native American, and Asian students which she does in part by being willing to tell brief stories about her own life. She makes an effort to talk with students at eye level rather than down to them; she addresses issues individually rather than dressing students down in front of the class; she never writes them up for disciplinary punishment. More importantly, she's a big enough person to learn from her students and to acknowledge that.

To keep a class together without acting as a tyrant, a teacher needs a relevant and lively curriculum. To do so, a teacher has to learn about her students and their range of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds in order to create a culturally welcoming environment. While Anglada Bartley doesn't present a lot on curriculum in the sense of the subject matter, which would entail volumes in itself, she cites the best source of articles and references on that, Rethinking Schools Magazine. I would have liked to see her say more about the ways challenging white supremacy could also benefit many whites--when we can overcome clinging to privilege and pride of place--through more funding going to public education; wider availability of college; and a fuller, truer, richer understanding of history and culture.

Anglada Bartley knows her students can excel. In 2007, mentored and supported by an outstanding, Black principal, Dr. Charles Hopson, she created an Advanced Scholars Program (ASP) at her high school. The program encouraged students who might otherwise be tracked out to take the advanced placement courses so crucial to getting into succeeding at college; each student was provided a mentor. By 2016, ASP had 465 students, and every participant went on to higher education; seven of them became Gates Millennium Scholars; FHS overall, with more than 50% of students living in poverty, had a graduation rate within one point of the wealthiest school in the district.

After Anglada Bartley won all kinds of accolades and prestigious awards for this stunning success, the hostility of a new white administrator and some resentful teachers resulted in restrictions that undermined her work and led her to leave FHS. While A Different Vision has many useful examples of teaching methods, the other, essential dimension of the book involves the broader fight against white supremacy in education and in society at large. The needed changes can't happen when 82% of the teachers and 88% of the administrators are white for a population nove moving past 50% students of color. They can't happen when funding is so unequal and inadequate, when students of color have to worry about violence and incarceration, and when they face difficulty getting quality jobs. Given those realities, A Different Vision strongly advocates building active movements and coalitions from below involving the communities, parents, educators and students to challenge white supremacy and fight for quality education. That's the road to "a different vision"-- "One in which empowerment replaces humiliation, relationships replace control. One in which respect for humanity and our earth are central [...]" (223-4)

A Liberation Theology as Black as Malcolm X: The Uncompromising Vision of James Cone

By Ewuare X. Osayande

"If the church is to remain faithful to its Lord, it must make a decisive break with the structure of this society by launching a vehement attack on the evils of racism in all forms. It must become prophetic, demanding a radical change in the interlocking structures of this society." So begins what is one of the most controversial and consequential works of theology in the history of the United States. Black Theology and Black Power stands as a work of theological passion that sought to break the stronghold of white supremacy that lies at the foundation of the ivory towers of Christian thought. From this theological torrent would emerge an entire new canon of theological interpretation of the Christian message in the modern world.

A work wrought against the backdrop of Black rebellions across America in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. King, Cone's Black Theology and Black Power gave theological voice and justification for the rage that marked the Black liberation movement at that time. A new testament from one of our own. Who never denied us. Who never betrayed us to his last breath. As King himself said, "A riot is the language of the unheard," Cone's tome was a wake-up call that was received by a slumbering Christian church as a slap in the face. Cone channeled every ounce of anger and communal pain experienced by Black America and called for atonement on the part of a white Church establishment whose theology justified slavery, made peace with segregation and rendered Black people an aberration of God's creation. His challenge was clear. His charge unequivocal. Cone dared declare that "in twentieth-century America, Christ means Black Power."

As one would suspect, Dr. King loomed large in Cone's theology. But for Cone, it was Malcolm that made his theology Black. And Cone further stated that it was Malcolm's "angry voice that shook [him] out of [his] theological complacency." And like Malcolm, Cone had little patience for Black apologists for white liberal appeals for reconciliation. According to Cone, "black people cannot talk about the possibilities of reconciliation until full emancipation has become a reality for all black people." But Cone didn't stop there. He went on to offer a radical reinterpretation of reconciliation as an experience of Black people being reconciled to an acceptance of our Blackness as made in the image of God and a shedding of the shame that has been imposed on us by a racist society that would address us as "some grease-painted form of white humanity."

Cone's first articulation of Black theology was not without its holes, gaps and outright contradictions. But, unlike, the white theologians he challenged, Cone was open and receptive to the challenges of his peers and students as they helped him hone his theological outlook into one that would come to move beyond the strict confines of a Black nationalism that was male dominant, homophobic, classist and US-centered. The debates that followed would usher forth a host of Black and Third World theologies that, together, would be united in two volumes of works Cone co-edited with his long-time friend and comrade Gayraud Wilmore.

One of the most critical and prophetic essays collected within those pages that would aid in the development of Black Feminist and Womanist theologies was Jacequlyn Grant's "Black Theology and the Black Woman." She targeted the issue squarely, "In examining Black Theology it is necessary to make one of two assumptions: (1) either Black women have no place in the enterprise, or (2) Black men are capable of speaking for us. Both of these assumptions are false and need to be discarded." Later, she concluded, "The failure of the Black Church and Black Theology to proclaim explicitly the liberation of Black women indicates that they cannot claim to be agents of divine liberation. If the theology, like the church, has no word for Black women, its conception of liberation is inauthentic."

Cone came to terms with this prophetic indictment when, writing in the Preface to the 1989 Edition of the book, he confessed:

"An example of the weakness of the 1960s black freedom movement, as defined by Black Theology and Black Power, was its complete blindness to the problem of sexism, especially in the black church community. When I read the book today, I am embarrassed by its sexist language and patriarchal perspective. There is not even one reference to a woman in the whole book! With black women playing such a dominant role in the African American liberation struggle, past and present, how could I have been so blind?"

He went on to discuss his temptation to rid the 1989 edition of the book of its sexist language and add references to women that are missing in the original edit. He would leave it as it was stating that, "It is easy to change the language of oppression without changing the sociopolitical situation of its victims. I know existentially what this means from the vantage point of racism."

Cone's desire to change the sociopolitical situation was evident in his sustained commitment to being in conversation with other Black theologians invested in the project of developing a Black Theology that spoke to the aspirations of all Black people to be free, not only from white supremacy, but from the oppressions that plagued the Black community from within as well.

In addition to Black Feminist and Womanist theologies, Black queer theologies would also emerge during this period as a criticism of the entrenched forms of homophobia that remain embedded in many Black churches and Black communities. Speaking about the radical inclusivity of an "in-the-life" theology of liberation in the second volume of Black Theology: A Documented History, Elias Faraje-Jones clarifies that "an in-the-life theology of liberation would be one that grows out of the experiences, lives, and struggles against oppression and dehumanization of those in-the-life. It understands our struggle for liberation as being inextricably bound with those of oppressed peoples throughout the world, as we all struggle against racism, classism, imperialism, sexism, ableism, and all other forms of oppression. Such a theology also offers to other theologies a liberation from the strictures of homophobia/biphobia, as well as liberation from heterosexism which creates the climate for homophobia/biphobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual, and by its display of power and privilege."

These Black theologies are, in themselves, an expression of the undying will of Black people to be free by any means necessary. The very expression "Black Lives Matter" that has captured the imagination of organized Black struggle all over the world is - in itself - a theological statement that is as poignant and prophetic as any text written since Cone first penned Black Theology and Black Power. Written on the bodies of Black people marching in the streets, it is stating unequivocally that Black existence is sacred and complete and whole without need for apology or compromise in the face of a white supremacist assault that continues with renewed vigor and violence. It is the fundamental theological text written on the dark-hued faces of unarmed Black youth staring into the blue wall of violence. They come untutored in the Testaments. Yet, no Bible required to show what must be done. Here Cone's Black Theology is born anew in their defiance to injustice; their self-love and love for the living and the dead. With arms outstretched in a show of surrender. But not to the authority of this land. They walk in the valleys of death, fearing no evil. Unintimidated. Undaunted. Undeterred. As Gospel as it gets.

The promise of Black Liberation Theology lies in its potential to awaken churched Black people in the same way that Malcolm's rhetoric shook Cone out of his slumber to an awareness of the need for revolutionary struggle against the forces of white supremacy. The promise of Black Theology uncompromised by a Black church operating within the dogmatic confines of middle class aspirations or stuck within the ideological blinders of a Black intellectual class more concerned with dissertations and divinity degrees is the development of a theology that presents itself as a challenge to the very foundations of the system of capitalism that is profiting from and predicated upon the exploitation of Black people worldwide. If Black Liberation Theology is to have a future, it will be found here.

As the spiritual forebearers of Cone's Black Theology, Dr. King and Malcolm X both would come to this understanding in the final year of their lives. In his speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," King makes the clear the relationship of racism to the global structures of economic inequality:

"… the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Malcolm, for his part, also was in the process of making clear connection between racism and capitalism. In an interview conducted shortly before his death Malcolm says, "… all of the countries emerging today from under the shackles of colonialism are turning toward socialism. I don't think it's an accident. Most of the countries that were colonial powers were capitalist countries, and the last bulwark of capitalism today is America. It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can't have capitalism without racism."

Cone, himself, articulated the need for a deeper understanding of socialism, indicating his disbelief that capitalism could solve the problems Black people experience in the United States. At a seminar addressing "Religion, Socialism and the Black Experience" in 1980, Cone said the following, "Although the socialist tradition among Black church people is small, it is still present and we black theologians and historians should rediscover it in order to enhance our vision of liberation." He goes on to state, "The Black Church cannot simply continue to ignore socialism as an alternative social arrangement. We cannot continue to speak against racism without any reference to a radical change in the economic order. I do not think that racism can be eliminated as long as capitalism remains intact. It is now time for us to investigate socialism as an alternative to capitalism."

Cone is envisioning a Black Theology that is truly revolutionary in that it is committed to the restructuring of the very socioeconomic order that profits from the oppression that Black people have faced since those first Africans were sold as property on the shores of the colony of Virginia. Such a Black Theology is most necessary if it is to take seriously the work of Black liberation today.

Such a Black Theology can no longer be confined to the white-funded walls of academic conferences. It can no longer just write or preach about the problems of the poor. It can no longer be a Black Theology that, like white theology, appeases the Black poor with neoliberal acts of charity and affirms philanthropy and mission as the Gospel's answer. It must become a Black Theology that is responsive to and affirming of Black workers and the Black poor marching not just in the streets of Ferguson and Flint in the United States, but those in the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of Soweto. As Cone asserts in God of the Oppressed, "… who Jesus Christ is for us today is connected with the divine future as disclosed in the liberation fight of the poor. When connected with the person of Jesus, hope is not an intellectual idea; rather, it is the praxis of freedom in the oppressed community."

In the last years of his life, James Cone said it was the cry of Black blood that called out to him as he wrote Black Theology and Black Power. That cry of Black blood has only grown louder and more insistent in recent years as the bruised bodies of Civil Rights activists at the bully clubbed hands of a Bull Connor have been replaced with the bullet-ridden bodies of random Black people murdered by police across this nation. Like Malcolm before him, Cone's criticism was not only reserved for the white Christian church and white society at-large. That cry of Black blood urged him to call out the contradictions of a Black church that is all too often reluctant to defend the defenseless.

"The black church must ask about its function amid the rebellion of black people in America. Where does it stand? If it is to be relevant, it must no longer admonish its people to be 'nice' to white society. It cannot condemn the rioters. It must make an unqualified identification with the 'looters' and 'rioters,' recognizing that this stance leads to condemnation by the state as law-breakers. There is no place for 'nice Negroes' who are so distorted by white values that they regard laws as more sacred than human life. There is no place for those who deplore black violence and overlook the daily violence of whites."

That question posed fifty years ago has now become a condemnation of a Black Church establishment that has grown sinfully silent in the face of the wholesale state-sanctioned slaughter of Black youth. That condemnation is echoed in the sound of Black youth leading themselves in a confrontation with the American Empire. By the multitudes, in the streets across this nation and around the world, there is a generation of Black people that are the living, breathing embodiment of Cone's Black Liberation Theology who are saying with their feet what Malcolm made plain: "I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion."

The crisis of Black survival in a world run over by a white supremacist order, in a country led by the likes of an ungodly crypto-fascist capitalist, cannot be overstated. Such should become the challenge and inspiration for advancing a Black Liberation Theology that is wholly Black in all the expressions of our shared humanity and determination to be free. A Black Theology as uncompromisingly Black as Malcolm. A Black Theology as courageously Black as Fannie Lou. A Black Theology as Black in aspiration and articulation as the Black working class that gave birth to them both.

Ewuare X. Osayande is an activist, essayist and author of several books including 'Whose America?: New and Selected Poems' and 'Commemorating King: Speeches Honoring the Civil Rights Movement.' Learn more about his work at Osayande.org.

The Colonial Roots and Legacy of the Latinx/Hispanic Labels: A Historical Analysis

By Valerie Reynoso

An influx of immigrants throughout the decades as well as centuries of colonialism has resulted in a heterogeneous population in the US composed of different ethnic groups and races. This diversity among US residents has also sparked debate on whether or not the fastest-growing pan-ethnic group in the country, Hispanic/Latinx, is a race. In a larger context, the question that will be answered in this piece is how the labels Latinx/Hispanic are colonial, what are the roots, and how do their political implications differ in Latin America versus the US. Exploring the history and politics surrounding the labels is purposeful and of importance because readers will gain an anti-colonial perspective, and likely previously unknown knowledge, on the development of said terms and implications in the Americas. In a majority of published writing and especially those within the West, the terms Latinx/Hispanic are seldom acknowledged in regards to how they reinforce colonialism and how their socializations differ depending on what region of the world one is observing.

Given the lack of information provided on the pan-ethnic group Latinx/Hispanic, many persons in the US do not know much on the subject and have misinformed preconceptions based primarily on ethnic stereotypes and mainstream media portrayals of said group. Being provided with a detailed analysis of Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas, and the racial hierarchies that were established as a result of that in said regions, is necessary to deconstruct and decolonize these terms. In this paper I argue that in the US, Latinx/Hispanic is treated as a homogenous group and often times as a race, when it is not; and the roots of the terms as well as the developments of capitalism and Latin-European imperialism in what is now known as Latin America are proof as to why that is.

Using historical instances such as the codification of institutional racism in 15th-Century Spain, the idea of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) as a result of this, and the development of the casta system in the American colonies of the Iberian Peninsula, it will be proven that racism is a European conception and that the creation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic are informed by that through Iberian imperialism. Another idea that will be demonstrated is that the term Latin refers to those from the predominately Catholic countries where Latin-based languages originated and which colonized the Americas, where the non-white colonized subjects of these regions would then be referred to as Latin as well.

In regards to the chronological order of this paper, I will start off by discussing Iberian colonization of the Americas, focusing on Spanish imperialism, and how racism was first institutionally codified in Spain during the 15th Century, which was then followed by Spanish invasion and ravaging of the Americas and Africa. I will then follow with discussing the idea of limpieza de sangre and how this idea is based in white-supremacist ideology and was used as a tool to institutionalize anti-Black racism when the conquistadores invaded the Americas. Moreover, I will analyze the racial and class hierarchies established by the Iberian colonizers as well as the racial categories they created, which include the subsequent formation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic, what they mean, and the groups they include. Following this, I will examine the division of the North-American continent between the US and Mexico given the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which resulted in the US annexation of Aztlan territory, and how this act deepened apartheid conditions among the Americas which resultantly informed the ways in which the terms Latinx/Hispanic are constructed. I will conclude the paper by talking about how constructs of race differ in the US versus Latin America due to all the historical instances I mentioned above as well as opposing viewpoints and why they are ahistorical and factually incorrect.

Origins of Institutional Racism in 15th-Century Spain

The racist and imperialist circumstances that shaped the Latinx/Hispanic label cannot be deconstructed without first addressing the origins of Iberian colonization of the Americas, the institutionalization of racism in Spain, and how these built the racial hierarchies in Latin America that are still in place today. Along with chattel slavery of Africans, whose free and cheap forced labor would be used to construct the system of capitalism for the benefit of European Crowns, and which in part was used to codify racism, European imperialism was the other significant factor that was complicit in this. Moreover, racism was first institutionalized in Spain in 1449 by rebels in Toledo, Spain, who published an edict that became known as the first set of racially discriminatory laws. This edict, along with the Spanish classification and marginalization of Jews, paved the way for the development of anti-Black racism informed by the white-supremacist ideals of Eurocentric Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the origins of the idea of biological race with the popularization of Spanish limpieza de sangre.

Limpieza de sangre as an expression was popularized in the 16th Century; however, at the time it denoted the idea that blood was central to the formation of one's character since it circulates throughout the body. Limpieza attained its white-supremacist connotation in the mid-16th Century with blood purity restrictions being imposed in Spanish archdioceses and churches. Likewise, limpieza became a central tenant in the foundation of anti-Black racism with the birth of Iberian imperialism of the Americas, enslavement of Africans, and expansion of plantation agriculture beginning in the 1440s when Iberia became involved in the slave trade of Africans. In 1552, the Spanish Crown mandated that Iberian settlers in the Americas provide evidence of limpieza, so Spain could spread "purity" throughout its colonies while Portugal did the same in Brazil. In the American colonies of Iberia, limpieza served to indicate a lack of Black blood and of Jewish blood; however, it was mostly used as a colonial tool to enforce anti-Black racism through the justification of chattel slavery of Africans and the establishment of the racial casta system. Limpieza in the Americas was modeled from the Spanish system and used to systemically prohibit Black people from civil, religious, and many commercial occupations (Gorsky, Jeffrey).

Foundation of Spanish Casta System through Limpieza de Sangre

In The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race, Charles Hirschman explicates that the racist beliefs of the European settlers is evident in the systems founded in nations they colonized, such as their racial categorizations in censuses and racial identities through limpieza. White-supremacist ideologies and constructs of race became a new foundation in the societies of colonized peoples despite these ideas having originated in Western nations (Hirschman). Due to this, the formation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic are also informed by the white-supremacist institutions that are still intact in Latin America to this day. Along with anti-Black racism and racial stratification, limpieza also played a key role in the formation of the Spanish casta system that was used to racially categorize Iberians and their descendants, as well as the Black and Native peoples they colonized and exploited throughout the Americas. Casta means "lineage, breed or race" in numerous Iberian dialects and stems from the Latin "castus," which is a term that suggests the encouragement of "white racial purity."

Castas was an Iberian term used in the 17th-18th Centuries to label the multiracial people of their colonies. Casta ideology functioned simultaneously with the structure of grouping built upon assimilation and proximity to Hispanic culture, which differentiated gente de razón (people with rationale), which were Spaniards and colonized peoples who assimilated into their culture, and gente sin razón (people without rationale), which were Black and Native peoples who maintained their tribal affiliations and pre-colonial cultures independent from Iberia (Native Heritage Project, "Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications").

The Spanish Casta System

Las castas was a socioeconomic and racial classification system founded in the 18th Century in the Spanish colonies within the Americas and included 16 racial casta combinations. The multiracial offspring of the Iberian settlers who mated with or coerced the Native and African women in the Americas became known as castas. The casta system was influenced by the belief that the birth, skin color, racial and ethnic origins of a person determined their value and character and permeated every aspect of life in the Americas, not just socioeconomically speaking. The Spanish colonial state and Church demanded more taxes and tribute payments from the lower socioeconomic racial castas who were the Black and Native peoples not mixed with Iberian blood. The prime categories of the casta system were: Peninsulars, who were the Spaniard settlers who were born in the Iberian Peninsula and settled in the Americas; Criollos, who were the Spaniard descendants who were born in the Americas; Indios, who were the pure Amerindians; Negros, who were the pure African descendants; Mestizos, who were the Spanish and Native mixed people; Castizos, who were the Spanish and Native mixed peoples predominantly of Iberian ancestry and sometimes had enough proximity to whiteness to be racialized as criollo; Pardos, who were those of mixed Spanish, African, and Native descents; Zambos, who were of mixed African and Native descents; and Mulatos, who were of mixed African and Spanish descents (Native Heritage Project, "Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications"). People in the Americas who were colonized by Spain and Portugal existed prior to the creation of the terms Latinx/Hispanic. Their diverse cultures also existed and they were never socialized as a homogenous group in the Iberian colonies and still are not so.

Creation of the Terms Latinx/Hispanic

Latinx/Hispanic are terms of European origin that were then brought to the Americas through imperialist conquests and enforced on non-white populations by colonial means. The denomination Latin was created in Europe in the early 19th Century given the increase of romantic nationalism and racism which prompted Europeans to identify their countries with the languages they spoke. The concept of a Latin race initially referred to nations where Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc) originated or were spoken and where the populations were predominately Catholic. The nations and regions that would become known as Latin Europe are Portugal, Spain, Basque Country, Galicia, Catalunya, France and Italy, respectively.

Latin was spread as a label by French intellectuals in the 1830s in reference to those residing in former Iberian colonies in the Americas (Gobat, Michel). This was in part to legitimize French colonial aspirations in the region by persuading people from these regions that they are all members of the Latin race, regardless of whether or not they were European, and that they therefore had proximity to the French as well as a duty to combat US and British expansion in Latin America. In the years of tensions between the US and pre-Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo Mexico, Anglo-Saxons became the standard of whiteness in the US, and non-Anglo Europeans such as the Irish, Italians, and Spaniards were not racialized as white in the US at the time. Criollo elites affiliated the Hispanic race as those in the Americas who shared Iberian culture regardless of race, and Hispano-América was built against former Portuguese colony Brazil (Gobat).

Hispanic refers to cultures and people from Spain as well as people from former Spanish colonies who are identified as having a Spanish culture due to colonialism. Despite this, the cultures of Spanish-speaking Latin Americans are rather a blend of primarily Iberian, Amerindian, and African influences-as well as some Arab influence due to Moorish conquests of Spain during the 13th to 14th Centuries and establishment of Al-Andalus and the Umayaad Caliphate in the Iberian peninsula, stretching through North Africa and the Middle East. Likewise, not all people in what is now known as Latin America identify as having an Hispanic culture, such as Natives, who the colonizers would refer to as gente sin razón due to their continuation of their tribal affiliation and pre-colonial cultures with little Iberian influence, as well as Afro-descendants, such as many Afro-Colombians in regions like Choco, Colombia, who have primarily afro-centric cultures.

Historically White-Supremacist Standards of the Latinx/Hispanic Labels

Criollos and other white settlers in Latin America began to embrace their new identity as the Latin race, among the first to do so being the liberal, Parisian émigrés such as the Chilean Francisco Bilbao, who befriended 1848 French Revolution icon Félicité Robert de Lamennais. Lamennais encouraged Bilbao to advertise the unity of Latin Europe and South America; as a result, the idea of the Latin race rapidly dispersed throughout Latin America and Latin Europe. This concept reached Brazil by the early 1850s, especially seeing that the Brazilian elite yearned for Brazil to become the France of South America, as well as to associate themselves more with Spaniards and their American colonies (Gobat, Michel).

The Latin race was also socialized as an identity that non-white people could be part of if they spoke Spanish or Portuguese and were Catholic, or that they would be excluded all together from by those who associated Latin explicitly with whiteness. For instance, Juan Batista Alberdi was an Argentine intellectual who stated that anyone in the Americas who is not Latin or Anglo-Saxon of European descent only, is a barbarian. To him and others who agreed with him, the Latin race was one founded by and for Latin Europeans and their settler descendants only; one that Native and African descendants could never become part of, despite their forced assimilation into the culture. Alberdi was advocating for a political system in which the "inferior" Natives and mixed-race peoples of Argentina would be eliminated and the white Latin race would dominate in all its hegemony, such as what occurred in the Argentine genocide of the Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s.

These absolutist and white-supremacist views were not unique to Alberdi and other white Argentines who sided with him, as these ideas were common throughout Latin America among criollos and other European settlers (Gobat, Michel). The rise of manifest destiny in the US and strengthened desire of Anglo-Saxons to take over the non-Anglo and therefore, "inferior," races of the region led criollos to view themselves as the Latin race that was under US attack and had to resist US dominion over their colonies. Due to this, many criollo elites felt compelled to embrace the Latin race because they thought that by doing so they would receive help from France, the most powerful Latin power, in resisting US invasions of Latin America. During this time period, the Latin race was constructed against the Protestant Anglo-Saxon race of the US that posed a threat to the criollo elite of the former Iberian colonies; the Latin concept was one that denoted Iberian settlers who wanted to defend their conquered territories against other white settlers in North America (Gobat, Michel).

Latinx/Hispanic is homogenized in the US without any regard to the fact that it is not a race, but instead a colonial term that was built by and for Latin Europeans. It has historically excluded non-white colonial subjects of Latin Europeans, especially if they refuse to assimilate into the cultures of Latin Europeans and convert to Catholicism. Another common misconception is that Latinx/Hispanic people cannot be African simultaneously, which is also false given that a majority of enslaved Africans were taken to Latin America, not the US, and that Brazil has the largest population of Afro-descendants in the world outside of the African continent.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Its Influence on Latinx/Hispanic Constructs, and the Perpetuation of Indigenous Erasure

Along with the history of the development of the term, the notion of the Latin race is constructed against indigeneity as well as Blackness, which was reinforced with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo between the US and Mexico. The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo on February 2nd, 1848 at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Mexican government surrendered to the US on September 1847 following the demise of the Mexican capital, Mexico City, and defeat of the Mexican troops. Peace talks were mediated between chief clerk of the US State Department, Nicholas Trist, and General Winfield Scott-who concluded that Mexico should be treated as a defeated enemy.

Trist and Scott negotiated with a particular delegation of the fallen Mexican government represented primarily by Don Bernardo Couto, Don Miguel Atristain, and Don Luis Gonzaga Cuevas. Trist negotiated a treaty which stated that Mexico should cede to the US its Upper Californian and New Mexican territories, also known as Aztlan. This was also recognized as the Mexican Cession and consisted of what are now the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Mexico had given up territorial rights to Texas and identified the Rio Grande as the US-Mexico border (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo).

The division of North America via an imperialist treaty in which the US claimed Aztlan created the artificial border between the US and Mexico as well as a division between Natives in the US, whose colonizers were from England, and Natives below the US border, whose colonizers were from Spain. When entering the US by any means, Natives from below the US border are labeled Latin and therefore illegal foreigners in the country, due to their colonizers having been from Latin Europe rather than the UK. The Latin concept was designed to give non-white subjects of Iberian colonialism more proximity to whiteness; to label oppressed peoples of Latin America derivatives of Latin Europeans and Iberians, and therefore not indigenous to the lands they either inhabited prior to European settlement, or were forcefully taken from by Latin Europeans.

The Latin concept also gives criollos and other white settlers in the former Iberian colonies a false sense of indigeneity; that they are the original peoples of the region their conquistador ancestors labeled Latin America, that Spanish and Portuguese languages are native to the Americas, and that dialects of Native languages throughout the region are what is considered foreign. Non-white Latinx/Hispanic people are expected to assimilate into the white standard of the Latin race, especially considering that Latin Americans with lighter skin possess a disproportionate amount of wealth and political power in comparison to their non-white counterparts due to criollo inheritance from their Iberian, colonizing ancestors (Planas, Roque). Given the casta system, the closest one is to the criollo category or any derivative of that, the more one is able to reap material benefits from being racialized as closer to white.

Homogenization of Latinx/Hispanic People in the US Due to Different Constructs of Race in the US

In her article "For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture than Color," Mireya Navarro addresses the complexities of Latinx racial and ethnic identities, especially in regards to the US census. She explicates how the race classifications offered by the US census are not satisfactory to many Latin American descendants for numerous reasons; some of these reasons being that they are racialized differently in their home countries, that they are very multiracial and have difficulty drawing fine lines in terms of racial identity, or disconnections they may feel with their cultures if they did not grow up around other Latinx, or if they have a parent who is not of the heritage. On the other hand, Navarro also brings up a portion of Latinx who do not identify as such on the census and just put their race instead.

The US census contributes to the identity issues many Latinx/Hispanic people experience because constructs of race and socio-racial categorizations are different in Latin America than in the US. This has created debates in the US regarding whether or not Latinx/Hispanic should officially be considered a race since Fronteras Desk reported that 37 percent of Latinx/Hispanic participants marked that they were "some other race" (Planas, Roque). Despite this, categorizing Latinx/Hispanic would not change the socioeconomic and racial disparities that exist among the pan-ethnic group and the region they come from even if they are homogenized as a single group in the US. In addition to this, racializing Latinx/Hispanic would lump colonized peoples with their Iberian colonizers, which erases the history of Iberian colonialism and ravaging of the Americas and Africa as well as the need for reparations to be given to Native and African descendants who are systemically disenfranchised as a result of the capitalist system that was forced upon them by Latin Europeans.

The Pew Research Center reported that a growing portion of the Latinx/Hispanic population in the US is identifying as white and it is assumed that similar to the Italian and Irish, Latinx/Hispanic could be the next group in the US to become racialized as white. It is also argued that Latinx/Hispanic people chose the white category on government forms that told them the pan-ethnic group is not a race (Liu, Eric). The issue with the assumptions based on the Pew Research Center is that Latinx/Hispanic is not a race and that criollos are white settlers from Spain and Portugal; in other words, Europeans just like British descendants in the US are. Therefore, Criollos labeling themselves as white on documents is not stemming from a desire to be white, but rather from the fact that they are racially white. In contrast to criollos, non-white Latinx/Hispanic people categorizing themselves as white on US government documents may more often be due to Latin-European imperialism and the desirability to be white, which stems from the white-supremacist, capitalist system and las castas that was inflicted upon them.

In 2016, a US appeals court ruled that the pan-ethnic group Latinx/Hispanic is a race under US federal anti-discrimination laws. This was stated after a white man named Christopher Barrella was rejected from a position of police chief in Long Island so the position could be given to a white Hispanic man named Miguel Bermudez instead. Barrella filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in 2012 (Iafolla, Robert), further complicating an already complex and misunderstood history. The issue with US anti-discrimination laws classifying Latinx/Hispanic as a racial category is that it is not a race; members of that group will be racialized and experience discriminations, or lack of, differently as a result of their races. A Latinx/Hispanic of African descent will experience anti-Black racism in legal systems due to them being Black even though they are from a country that was colonized by Iberia. On the other hand, Spaniards directly from Spain are considered Hispanic on the US census, which would imply that the US anti-discriminatory laws would be racializing them as non-white people, which is false because they are white Europeans.

As much as US legal systems and their US-centric understanding of the Latinx/Hispanic pan-ethnicity try to homogenize the group, these efforts will fall apart due to the fact that it is ultimately not a race and not all members of the group are colonized peoples.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the terms Latinx/Hispanic have colonial origins and have been historically used to subjugate peoples who were colonized by Latin Europeans and to force them to assimilate into Latin European cultures. Because of the racial casta system that formed from the colonization of the Americas, whiteness became the standard for Latinx/Hispanic, and those who are not Iberians are obligated to do what they can to gain proximity to whiteness and become as close to criollos as possible. US society doesn't understand this complex history. And as long as the US attempts to homogenize diverse peoples from the Americas through the Latinx/Hispanic label, it will be confronted with contradictions that are exposed when people of that pan-ethnic group experience discriminations based on their races rather than on the fallacy that is the colonial term.

References

Gobat, Michel. "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race." The American Historical Review, vol. 118, no. 5, 1 Dec. 2013, pp. 1345-1375. Oxford Academic.

Gorsky, Jeffrey. How Racism Was First Officially Codified in 15 th-Century Spain. Atlas Obscura, 22 Dec. 2016.

Hirschman, Charles. "The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race." Population and Development Review, vol. 30, no. 3, Sept. 2004, p. 395. JSTOR.

Iafolla, Robert. 'Hispanic' Is a Race under U.S. Anti-Bias Laws, Court Rules. Reuters, 16 Feb. 2016.

Las Castas - Spanish Racial Classifications. Native Heritage Project, 15 June 2013.

Liu, Eric. Why Are Hispanics Identifying as White? CNN, 30 May 2014.

Navarro, Mireya. For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color. The New York Times , 13 Jan. 2012.

Planas, Roque. "Latino Is Not A Race, Despite The Census Debate." Huffington Post, 17 Jan. 2013.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.