What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri

Author:Emma Dabiri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2021-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile, the UK, with characteristic sleight of hand, generally outsourced its abuse of black people. Nonetheless, the exploitation of black people and the investment in the belief in white superiority would become an enduring cornerstone of both the economy of Britain and its identity. English superiority over the subjugated and the colonized was the ideological underpinning of the empire. The flow of wealth into the UK from the transatlantic slave trade was a crucial part of the industrial revolution, facilitating the development of industry, building the grandeur of many of the country’s cities—places like Bath, Bristol, and Liverpool—and creating the framework for the modern banking system. It also laid the groundwork for colonialism. Those parts of Africa that had been looted for human bodies became the territories that Europeans colonized, once colonialism—the extraction of resources and the opening of new markets, that ongoing and relentless pursuit of capitalism—proved more profitable than the trade in slaves. All of this allowed Britain to consolidate more wealth and power.

I think it’s safe to say that any antiracist or allyship initiative that disregards the capitalist imperatives (not to mention the deep psychological attachments that fuel “whiteness”), and that imagines that all of this can be undone by missives about “giving up your privilege,” is highly unlikely to enjoy success.

It is crucial to connect the dots between the origins of global capitalism, colonialism, and the invention of race. Doing so highlights the fictitious nature of race, as well as revealing the motivations and incentives behind its creation and upkeep. Boots Riley, the communist filmmaker, discusses the movement from workplace organizing—a real and direct threat to capital (recall it was the threat posed by unions of laborers, enslaved and indentured, that inspired the creation of “race” in the first instance in places like colonial Barbados and Virginia)—to student organizing, which in the second half of the twentieth century came to shape concepts of revolution and societal change. Consider the difference between a labor strike and a student strike: one threatens capital, the other threatens little. Riley notes that, with the coming to prominence of the latter model, demonstrations become the be-all and end-all, people being out in the street and creating a spectacle become all important, and the media is seen as key. Yet, he argues, this is all largely symbolic. When you subtract organizing around the exploitation of labor, what is it that you are actually fighting for? The goal becomes more and more amorphous.

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