On Churchill, racial justice and status addiction.
Churchill “Hero or lesser villain?”
The Churchill vs Hitler debate is back because a Churchill statue was defaced during a BlackLivesMatter protest recently.
As you might imagine, Churchill has a lot of support from across the world. His supporters are mostly white but there is a significant non-white constituency that venerates him for defeating Hitler.
‘Hitler vs Churchill’ is one racist against another. It is, more importantly, one racist empire against another. You cannot say that Churchill saved the world from the Teutonic plague without saying that he ensured the continuity of the Anglo-Saxon one.
In order to understand institutionalised racism and how deeply it is ingrained in us, all we need to do is look at the history of the American revolution. Our minds are so polluted with White supremacy that we believe that Washington and Jefferson were heroes of humankind. The war that the American founders fought was a war for the power of one kind of White man against another kind of White man, both of whom were fine with massacring native tribes, enslaving thousands of black people and erasing their cultures and histories.
I understand the urge to designate heroes because of the fear of a worldwide German Reich, but it is important to remember that all we are doing is picking an arbitrary time in the history of white supremacy and colonialism.
What should racial justice look like?
To understand what racial justice, especially in the White-Black debate, should look like, we need to move back further in time when injustices were not based on race. A pre-colonial era where there still were many injustices but not on the basis of race. Regardless of the intra-race atrocities in those times, they are the best baseline/ benchmark we have. Such a timeline would not be arbitrary from a racial justice viewpoint. I have to stress that I am talking only about a “black vs white racial justice” viewpoint here. There are many other injustices that will require us to go further back in time to find a baseline for. There are some injustices for which we may never find a baseline. Feminism tackles such an injustice. So, that said, let us pick a pre colonial timeline to understand how white supremacy has tinted our eyes and normalised the blatant racism of the Washingtons and the Churchills of the world. Say, 1400. You can pick an earlier time if you’d like.
Racial equality has to be based on the rights that black people had in their own societies in a pre-colonial time. The arc of history, as MLK Jr said, has to move towards this justice, by any means necessary, as Malcolm X said.
Racial justice, as seen by most of us privileged types, is a feel good notion of compassion and equality. We believe that non-violent protests and hashtags will do the job and White imperialism will somehow fall as a result. The truth is that we are wedded to the perks of the White Imperialist world. The crumbs that they have thrown at us all these centuries have made us status addicts and our addiction colours our politics much deeper than we care to admit.
This is why we make proclamations like “property should not be destroyed”, “protests are not the solution”, “Churchill was a great man” and “All lives matter”. Any meaningful racial justice will come from a complete overthrow of White imperialism. What started with violence, will most likely end with violence and only because the White man is not about to see the light and admit his crimes.
Token concessions from our White overlords is not racial justice. Real racial justice won’t suit us because our bank accounts and land papers will be in its firing line. So when we use the BlackLivesMatter hashtag, we should think hard about what a world without White supremacy will look like and where we would fit in that new world.
PS: Columbus was a racist mercenary. He was also an adventurer and an explorer. Well done on those counts but his statues much come down.
