-
As individuals, our racial identity is so intimately inscribed
-
into the ways that we see and experience the world,
-
and other people in it,
-
that it's often taken as a natural and unchanging fact of life
-
Race is a social construction,
-
meaning that the stigmas and divisions associated with it
-
are born out of political and cultural,
-
rather than purely biological factors.
-
But it's also a material reality
-
– one that plays a central role in shaping the ways
-
that power operates in a specific society.
-
Given the current wave of racist
-
and nationalist reaction sweeping the globe,
-
it is important that anarchists
-
develop a shared understanding of race,
-
and the role that it plays in constructing
-
and reinforcing oppressive hierarchies.
-
So... what is race, exactly,
-
and what do anarchists have against it?
-
Well, a broad definition would be to say
-
that it's a particular type of caste system,
-
or a way of classifying people into rigid social hierarchies,
-
based on perceived ancestry
-
and intimately associated with notions of nationalism,
-
citizenship and class.
-
Most commonly associated with the global system
-
of European colonial dominance known as White Supremacy,
-
race has other close parallels,
-
such as India's varna system,
-
the ethnic constructions of Hutu and Tutsi
-
in Rwanda and Burundi,
-
and even religious sectarian divides
-
such as those found between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland
-
or Sunnis and Shia in several Middle Eastern countries.
-
But while race can, and does assume a variety of different forms
-
based on local demographic and political factors,
-
it has always been, and remains to this day,
-
a cross-class alliance
-
– a way of binding the ruling class
-
and a segment of the exploited classes
-
through a compact of shared identity,
-
in order to project force against those who fall outside of it.
-
Or to put it simply,
-
it's a way that states manipulate large groups of people
-
into believing that they have more in common with their rulers
-
than with the fellow ranks of the oppressed.
-
An early precursor of modern concepts of race
-
lies in the idea of the barbarian,
-
which was developed independently by the rulers
-
of a diverse number of early states,
-
ranging from the Shang Dynasty in ancient China,
-
to the Greek and Roman Empires of Eurasia,
-
and Aztec and Inca Empires
-
of modern-day Central and South America.
-
By dehumanizing different ethnic groups
-
outside their borders as barbarians,
-
rulers were able to mobilize armies
-
and rationalize the enslavement of captured populations.
-
Centuries later,
-
the rise and spread of powerful monotheistic religions
-
added a new dimension to the construction of race,
-
as the ideological conception of the barbarian
-
was given new weight
-
by the introduction of the notions of “pagan” or “infidel”.
-
Religious dictates calling for the forced conversion of non-believers
-
sanctified new wars of conquest,
-
waged by the armies of Christianity and Islam.
-
Fearing the expansionary rise of Islam
-
which by the 11th Century had spread
-
deep into the heart of European Christendom,
-
the Catholic Church teamed up
-
with feudal elites to launch the Crusades,
-
a series of holy wars spanning nearly four hundred years
-
and planting the seeds of ethnic, national and sectarian rivalries
-
that continue to this day.
-
In the final years of the Reconquest of Spain,
-
the Catholic Church ramped up popular sentiments
-
of anti semitism and Christian hysteria
-
by launching the Spanish Inquisition
-
– a bloody purge and forced conversion of Muslims and Jews
-
that provided a horrific new laboratory for the development of race
-
as an internal system of division and social control.
-
The Spanish Reconquest was completed in 1492,
-
and was followed in quick succession by
-
Christopher Columbus' accidental invasion of the Americas.
-
Believing the so-called “discovery” of the New World
-
to be sign of divine providence after their holy victory against Islam,
-
Spain launched the colonization of the Americas
-
with a brutal religious fervour,
-
waging a genocidal campaign of extermination
-
against the continents' original inhabitants,
-
alongside mass forced conversions
-
carried out by Jesuit and Franciscan priests.
-
In the decades that followed,
-
Spain was joined in its pillage of the Americas
-
by Portuguese, Dutch, and French colonialists.
-
They were soon faced with a labour shortage, however,
-
after working many Indigenous slaves to death
-
and killing millions of others through diseases like smallpox.
-
So, beginning in the early 16th century,
-
Portuguese merchants established the transatlantic slave trade,
-
a grotesque process of racial dehumanization
-
whereby millions of people were kidnapped from West Africa
-
and shipped across the ocean to slave-trading posts in the Caribbean
-
and Portuguese plantations in Brazil.
-
Britain joined the fray in 1607
-
and quickly set to work expanding the transatlantic slave trade,
-
establishing the vast southern Plantation system
-
and kick-starting a process of unprecedented
-
mass European migration.
-
Within Britain's thirteen American colonies,
-
a new pact of racial supremacy was forged
-
between settlers of mixed European descent,
-
based on their shared experiences of killing Natives
-
and subjugating Africans.
-
This new system, white supremacy,
-
provided all white men with a share of the spoils
-
stolen through genocidal territorial conquest
-
and an economy built on slave labour.
-
It also happened to make a small number
-
of those white men unimaginably rich,
-
setting the stage for the rise of capitalism.
-
Despite ongoing controversy regarding her own racial identity,
-
one of the most comprehensive descriptions
-
of how white supremacy functions in the United States
-
was written by Andrea Smith,
-
who identified its three supporting pillars as:
-
Slavery/Capitalism,
-
Genocide/Colonialism
-
and Orientalism/War.
-
The first pillar, Slavery, rests on the commodification of Black bodies,
-
and to their need to be controlled through force and imprisonment.
-
The second pillar, Genocide, rests on the need for Indigenous nations
-
to disappear or assimilate into settler society,
-
in order to justify white people's claims to the lands
-
that they currently occupy.
-
The final pillar, Orientalism,
-
based on earlier conceptions of the barbarian,
-
conjures up the image of outside forces
-
seeking to infiltrate and destroy society,
-
whether they take the form of Islamic terrorists,
-
hostile foreign states,
-
or simply the spectre of “illegal immigrants” in general.
-
Over the centuries, these three racial archetypes
-
have been deeply ingrained in the white psyche.
-
And so when Black people cry out that their lives matter,
-
Indigenous people assert claims to their traditional lands and culture,
-
or refugees fleeing wars and poverty
-
demand their rights to political asylum,
-
it is unsettling to the power structure that these pillars prop up.
-
The response of states and rulings elites
-
will always be to attempt to reinforce these pillars
-
by fanning the flames of white paramilitary reaction.
-
For anarchists who seek a new world
-
built on the destruction of the state and capitalism,
-
our task is to help to knock out the pillars that these systems rest upon.
-
For some, this will mean severing the false bonds of whiteness
-
and joining the resistance
-
of those who have long struggled under its yoke.
-
Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.