0:00:02.029,0:00:05.733
As individuals, our racial identity is so intimately inscribed

0:00:05.733,0:00:07.609
into the ways that we see and experience the world,

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and other people in it,

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that it's often taken as a natural and unchanging fact of life

0:00:12.104,0:00:13.665
Race is a social construction,

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meaning that the stigmas and divisions associated with it

0:00:16.602,0:00:18.460
are born out of political and cultural,

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rather than purely biological factors.

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But it's also a material reality

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– one that plays a central role in shaping the ways

0:00:25.073,0:00:27.474
that power operates in a specific society.

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Given the current wave of racist

0:00:28.864,0:00:30.912
and nationalist reaction sweeping the globe,

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it is important that anarchists

0:00:32.452,0:00:34.578
develop a shared understanding of race,

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and the role that it plays in constructing

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and reinforcing oppressive hierarchies.

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So... what is race, exactly,

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and what do anarchists have against it?

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Well, a broad definition would be to say

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that it's a particular type of caste system,

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or a way of classifying people into rigid social hierarchies,

0:00:49.116,0:00:50.660
based on perceived ancestry

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and intimately associated with notions of nationalism,

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citizenship and class.

0:00:54.751,0:00:56.949
Most commonly associated with the global system

0:00:56.949,0:01:00.046
of European colonial dominance known as White Supremacy,

0:01:00.046,0:01:01.934
race has other close parallels,

0:01:01.934,0:01:03.735
such as India's varna system,

0:01:03.735,0:01:05.765
the ethnic constructions of Hutu and Tutsi

0:01:05.765,0:01:07.247
in Rwanda and Burundi,

0:01:07.247,0:01:08.960
and even religious sectarian divides

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such as those found between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland

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or Sunnis and Shia in several Middle Eastern countries.

0:01:14.521,0:01:18.001
But while race can, and does assume a variety of different forms

0:01:18.001,0:01:20.594
based on local demographic and political factors,

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it has always been, and remains to this day,

0:01:22.960,0:01:24.650
a cross-class alliance

0:01:24.650,0:01:26.490
– a way of binding the ruling class

0:01:26.490,0:01:28.461
and a segment of the exploited classes

0:01:28.461,0:01:30.281
through a compact of shared identity,

0:01:30.281,0:01:33.448
in order to project force against those who fall outside of it.

0:01:33.448,0:01:34.749
Or to put it simply,

0:01:34.749,0:01:37.017
it's a way that states manipulate large groups of people

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into believing that they have more in common with their rulers

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than with the fellow ranks of the oppressed.

0:01:41.920,0:01:44.346
An early precursor of modern concepts of race

0:01:44.346,0:01:46.348
lies in the idea of the barbarian,

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which was developed independently by the rulers

0:01:48.253,0:01:50.253
of a diverse number of early states,

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ranging from the Shang Dynasty in ancient China,

0:01:52.791,0:01:54.759
to the Greek and Roman Empires of Eurasia,

0:01:54.759,0:01:56.319
and Aztec and Inca Empires

0:01:56.319,0:01:58.305
of modern-day Central and South America.

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By dehumanizing different ethnic groups

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outside their borders as barbarians,

0:02:01.922,0:02:03.983
rulers were able to mobilize armies

0:02:03.983,0:02:06.790
and rationalize the enslavement of captured populations.

0:02:06.790,0:02:07.685
Centuries later,

0:02:07.685,0:02:10.227
the rise and spread of powerful monotheistic religions

0:02:10.227,0:02:12.834
added a new dimension to the construction of race,

0:02:12.834,0:02:15.134
as the ideological conception of the barbarian

0:02:15.134,0:02:16.039
was given new weight

0:02:16.039,0:02:18.983
by the introduction of the notions of “pagan” or “infidel”.

0:02:18.983,0:02:21.754
Religious dictates calling for the forced conversion of non-believers

0:02:21.754,0:02:23.694
sanctified new wars of conquest,

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waged by the armies of Christianity and Islam.

0:02:26.576,0:02:28.523
Fearing the expansionary rise of Islam

0:02:28.523,0:02:30.348
which by the 11th Century had spread

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deep into the heart of European Christendom,

0:02:32.578,0:02:33.798
the Catholic Church teamed up

0:02:33.798,0:02:36.193
with feudal elites to launch the Crusades,

0:02:36.193,0:02:38.929
a series of holy wars spanning nearly four hundred years

0:02:38.929,0:02:42.598
and planting the seeds of ethnic, national and sectarian rivalries

0:02:42.598,0:02:44.024
that continue to this day.

0:02:44.024,0:02:46.131
In the final years of the Reconquest of Spain,

0:02:46.131,0:02:48.392
the Catholic Church ramped up popular sentiments

0:02:48.392,0:02:50.795
of anti semitism and Christian hysteria

0:02:50.795,0:02:53.251
by launching the Spanish Inquisition

0:02:53.251,0:02:56.250
– a bloody purge and forced conversion of Muslims and Jews

0:02:56.250,0:02:59.345
that provided a horrific new laboratory for the development of race

0:02:59.345,0:03:02.545
as an internal system of division and social control.

0:03:02.545,0:03:05.265
The Spanish Reconquest was completed in 1492,

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and was followed in quick succession by

0:03:06.972,0:03:10.296
Christopher Columbus' accidental invasion of the Americas.

0:03:10.296,0:03:12.377
Believing the so-called “discovery” of the New World

0:03:12.377,0:03:16.002
to be sign of divine providence after their holy victory against Islam,

0:03:16.002,0:03:18.346
Spain launched the colonization of the Americas

0:03:18.346,0:03:20.077
with a brutal religious fervour,

0:03:20.077,0:03:22.508
waging a genocidal campaign of extermination

0:03:22.508,0:03:24.537
against the continents' original inhabitants,

0:03:24.537,0:03:26.328
alongside mass forced conversions

0:03:26.328,0:03:28.795
carried out by Jesuit and Franciscan priests.

0:03:28.795,0:03:29.959
In the decades that followed,

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Spain was joined in its pillage of the Americas

0:03:32.210,0:03:35.179
by Portuguese, Dutch, and French colonialists.

0:03:35.179,0:03:37.322
They were soon faced with a labour shortage, however,

0:03:37.322,0:03:39.957
after working many Indigenous slaves to death

0:03:39.957,0:03:43.557
and killing millions of others through diseases like smallpox.

0:03:43.557,0:03:46.008
So, beginning in the early 16th century,

0:03:46.008,0:03:49.187
Portuguese merchants established the transatlantic slave trade,

0:03:49.187,0:03:51.970
a grotesque process of racial dehumanization

0:03:51.970,0:03:54.802
whereby millions of people were kidnapped from West Africa

0:03:54.802,0:03:58.085
and shipped across the ocean to slave-trading posts in the Caribbean

0:03:58.085,0:04:00.430
and Portuguese plantations in Brazil.

0:04:00.430,0:04:02.277
Britain joined the fray in 1607

0:04:02.277,0:04:05.560
and quickly set to work expanding the transatlantic slave trade,

0:04:05.560,0:04:07.935
establishing the vast southern Plantation system

0:04:07.935,0:04:10.065
and kick-starting a process of unprecedented

0:04:10.065,0:04:11.643
mass European migration.

0:04:11.643,0:04:14.028
Within Britain's thirteen American colonies,

0:04:14.028,0:04:16.145
a new pact of racial supremacy was forged

0:04:16.145,0:04:18.680
between settlers of mixed European descent,

0:04:18.680,0:04:21.106
based on their shared experiences of killing Natives

0:04:21.106,0:04:23.266
and subjugating Africans.

0:04:23.266,0:04:25.832
This new system, white supremacy,

0:04:25.832,0:04:28.421
provided all white men with a share of the spoils

0:04:28.421,0:04:31.129
stolen through genocidal territorial conquest

0:04:31.129,0:04:33.525
and an economy built on slave labour.

0:04:33.525,0:04:35.431
It also happened to make a small number

0:04:35.431,0:04:38.024
of those white men unimaginably rich,

0:04:38.024,0:04:40.790
setting the stage for the rise of capitalism.

0:04:40.790,0:04:44.123
Despite ongoing controversy regarding her own racial identity,

0:04:44.123,0:04:46.051
one of the most comprehensive descriptions

0:04:46.051,0:04:48.501
of how white supremacy functions in the United States

0:04:48.501,0:04:50.083
was written by Andrea Smith,

0:04:50.083,0:04:52.593
who identified its three supporting pillars as:

0:04:52.593,0:04:54.307
Slavery/Capitalism,

0:04:54.307,0:04:56.043
Genocide/Colonialism

0:04:56.043,0:04:57.707
and Orientalism/War.

0:04:57.707,0:05:01.485
The first pillar, Slavery, rests on the commodification of Black bodies,

0:05:01.485,0:05:04.860
and to their need to be controlled through force and imprisonment.

0:05:04.860,0:05:08.500
The second pillar, Genocide, rests on the need for Indigenous nations

0:05:08.500,0:05:11.699
to disappear or assimilate into settler society,

0:05:11.699,0:05:14.394
in order to justify white people's claims to the lands

0:05:14.394,0:05:15.763
that they currently occupy.

0:05:15.763,0:05:17.836
The final pillar, Orientalism,

0:05:17.836,0:05:20.316
based on earlier conceptions of the barbarian,

0:05:20.316,0:05:22.435
conjures up the image of outside forces

0:05:22.435,0:05:24.757
seeking to infiltrate and destroy society,

0:05:24.757,0:05:26.979
whether they take the form of Islamic terrorists,

0:05:26.979,0:05:28.488
hostile foreign states,

0:05:28.488,0:05:31.131
or simply the spectre of “illegal immigrants” in general.

0:05:31.131,0:05:33.752
Over the centuries, these three racial archetypes

0:05:33.752,0:05:36.148
have been deeply ingrained in the white psyche.

0:05:36.148,0:05:38.528
And so when Black people cry out that their lives matter,

0:05:38.528,0:05:41.997
Indigenous people assert claims to their traditional lands and culture,

0:05:41.997,0:05:43.727
or refugees fleeing wars and poverty

0:05:43.727,0:05:45.839
demand their rights to political asylum,

0:05:45.839,0:05:49.102
it is unsettling to the power structure that these pillars prop up.

0:05:49.102,0:05:50.779
The response of states and rulings elites

0:05:50.779,0:05:53.409
will always be to attempt to reinforce these pillars

0:05:53.409,0:05:56.556
by fanning the flames of white paramilitary reaction.

0:05:56.556,0:05:58.098
For anarchists who seek a new world

0:05:58.098,0:06:00.572
built on the destruction of the state and capitalism,

0:06:00.572,0:06:04.630
our task is to help to knock out the pillars that these systems rest upon.

0:06:04.630,0:06:07.503
For some, this will mean severing the false bonds of whiteness

0:06:07.503,0:06:08.803
and joining the resistance

0:06:08.803,0:06:10.971
of those who have long struggled under its yoke.

0:06:10.971,0:06:13.909
Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.