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Available: Netflix

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An account of the regular gradation in man... by Charles White (1799)

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An account of the regular gradation in man... by Charles White (1799)

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Content warning: racism, race science, white supremacy

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An account of the regular gradation in man, and in different animals and vegetables ... : White, Charles, 1728-1813 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library

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Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (1847)

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Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (1847)

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Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics) by William Makepeace Thackeray - PDF Drive

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The Danger of the Single Story - Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

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The Danger of the Single Story - Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

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Critical Race Theory - eds. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2017)

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Critical Race Theory - eds. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2017)

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Critical Race Theory: An Introduction Download (225 Pages)

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Updated to include the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidency of Barack Obama, the rise of hate speech on the Internet, and more. Since the publication of the first edition of Critical Race Theory in 2001, the United States has lived through two economic downturns, an outbreak of terrorism, and

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Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said (1993)

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Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said (1993)

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Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said - PDF Drive

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and tenewed 1978 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Said, Edward W. Culture and imperialism/Edward W.

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Edward W. Said-Orientalism_ Western Conceptions of the Orient - PDF Drive

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their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. As 1 write these lines, the illegal and unsanctioned imperial invasion and occupation of Iraq by Britain and the United States proceeds, with a prospect of physical ravagement, political unrest and more invasions that is truly awful to conte

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Content warning: racism, police violence, white supremacy

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Ramsey Orta took plea deal on unrelated charges but says police harassed him after filming officers killing his friend.

File: Ramsey Orta, pictured centre, during the funeral service of Eric Garner [Julia Xanthos/Reuters]

On July 17, 2014, Ramsey Orta took out his mobile phone and filmed a police officer in New York killing his friend, Eric Garner. But as soon as he stopped recording, Orta says his own life also took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Viewed millions of times, Orta's clip shows Daniel Pantaleo, a white officer, gripping his arms around Garner's neck in a chokehold.

Garner, a black American, was 43 years old at the time, and an asthmatic.

"I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe," Garner said, as he was being pinned to the ground and asphyxiated.

They were his last words.

Garner, a father of six, was selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island, New York, when officers tackled him. His case was ruled as a homicide, meaning that his death was caused by human beings, but Pantaleo was not indicted. In 2015, Garner's family reached a $5.9m settlement with the city of New York.

Orta's recording of the killing has been praised by many for bringing to light police brutality, and setting off what has been described as a citizen journalism trend exposing injustices.

But ever since releasing the footage of Garner's killing, Orta, 25, says he has become the target of police retaliation.

'Behind enemy lines'

On Monday, Orta will begin a four-year prison sentence, after taking a plea deal in July for a weapons and drug case.

It is the result, he and his lawyers argue, of a police campaign to harm his life. After filming Garner's death, they claim, he was increasingly harassed and targeted by police and was arrested at least eight times in fewer than two years.

Of several criminal cases against him, only two charges stuck. Two weeks after filming Garner's death, Orta was arrested on charges of possessing a handgun and was later caught selling heroin to an undercover policeman.

"[Hours after] Eric died, at 4am in the morning, there was a spotlight shining through my window. I looked out the window and there was a cop [police] car outside," Orta told Al Jazeera on Friday.

"They parked outside my house and stopped people coming in and out of my house. That was going on until the day they ruled it [Garner's case] a homicide. I've been arrested and let out many times. And now I am convicted of only two of seven cases."

According to reports, Orta is suing New York City for $10m for unwarranted arrests by the NYPD that he says were attempts to discredit his video of Garner's final moments.

Al Jazeera contacted New York City police for comment, but did not receive a response at time of publication.

In August 2014, Pat Lynch, president of New York's biggest police union, said it "is criminals like Mr. Orta who carry illegal firearms who stand to benefit the most by demonising the good work of police officers".
READ MORE: NY police to keep disciplinary records from public
Orta has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and suffers from depression, anxiety and paranoia.

"My biggest fear about prison would be not coming out alive. I fear for myself being behind enemy lines," he said. "I'm going in there with a level head. I'm praying that I can come right out and continue my life as an activist."

My biggest fear about prison would be not coming out alive.

Ramsey Orta, activist

Since Garner's death, Orta joined the police watchdog organisation Copwatch, has given talks at universities, and become a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement.

At a recent event in Brooklyn, New York, Jewel Miller, the mother of Garner's youngest child, told Orta: "You took the video ... you really filmed up to the last seven and something minutes that he was here on Earth. And even though those words of 'I can't breathe' are in our heads ... it is the only voice for my daughter she'll ever know. And because of you I'll forever be grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Orta, a husband and father to two daughters, said he watches the video often.

"I watched it the day before yesterday," he said. "It just stays in my head. I try not to watch certain parts."

While he does not regret filming the killing, he wishes he had posted the clip anonymously.

"The only regret I have is not making my identity safe," he said.

Still grieving the loss of Garner, he said: "I miss his sense of humour the most."

'Shattering the myth of racial equality'

Orta is among several citizen journalists who say they have been hounded by police, including those who filmed the recent deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Freddie Gray, which sparked a wave of protests across the US

In August, filmmaker David Sutcliffe wrote an open letter in favour of the "right to record", which was signed by more than 100 documentarians, including Asif Kapadia, Laura Poitras and Nick Broomfield.

"Armed only with camera phones, citizen journalists have shattered America's myth of racial equality," the letter said. "Instead of garnering Pulitzers and Peabodys, they have been targeted, harassed and arrested by members of the very institution whose abuses they seek to expose."

Shaun King, a New York-based journalist focusing on justice, told Al Jazeera that harassment was not uncommon.

"I have seen many cases where people who film police are unlawfully targeted and harassed by them in response - sometimes for months or even years as a result," he said.

"My question is always this: what are you afraid of? Why does being filmed bother you so much? It's our right to film the police. In fact, if you ever see police in action and you have the time to film them, do so."

A petition by The American Civil Liberties Union calling on US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate harassment cases has gathered almost 21,000 signatures.

'Vicious intimidation'

Stanley Cohen, a New-York based lawyer and former social worker who in the 1980s held community cohesion sessions with the city's police departments, said that Orta's case was an example of "vicious, retaliatory and vindictive" intimidation.

"They want to create an environment where people are terrified to speak up and out and be good citizens," he told Al Jazeera.

"It's [harassment] not to undo the events of the murder of Garner as is it to deter the next [filming of a police killing]."

He added that after Garner's death, he felt a glimmer of hope.

"I had hoped, naively, that the Garner situation would change the relationship between police and community. It did for a short run, but more out of police concern of an explosion. Recently, it seems to be business as usual. There are more stories of the arrogant, abusive attitudes of cops in communities they control ... When you combine the militarisation of police with citizen journalists, you get a toxic confrontation."

According to Mapping Violence, police have killed at least 217 black people so far this year. Last year, they killed at least 346 black people.

As he prepared for jail, Orta said he has little hope for the near future.

"I expected this [police killings] to end up where it is now, it's only gotten worse since it started. I knew from our past history that that video wasn't going to change anything," he said.

"I don't want my situation to be a deterrent to people who continue to film, though. I encourage others to take a stand."
Follow Anealla Safdar on Twitter: @anealla

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NY man who filmed Eric Garner's death heading to jail

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Ramsey Orta took plea deal on unrelated charges but says police harassed him after filming officers killing his friend. On July 17, 2014, Ramsey Orta took out his mobile phone and filmed a police officer in New York killing his friend, Eric Garner.

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The Hottentot Venus, freak shows and the Neo-Victorian: Rewriting the identity of the sexual black body - Isabel Ruiz (2017)

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The Hottentot Venus, freak shows and the Neo-Victorian: Rewriting the identity of the sexual black body - Isabel Ruiz (2017)

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney (1981)

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney (1981)

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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney - PDF Drive

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Black marxism : the making of the Black radical tradition - PDF Drive

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In this text the author demonstrates that the efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate, because it presupposes European models of history. Black radicalism, he argues, must be linked to the African traditions.

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King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885)

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King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885)

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A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (Wide Sargasso Sea), Carl Plasa (2001)

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A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (Wide Sargasso Sea), Carl Plasa (2001)

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Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea a book by Carl Plasa.

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In this Reader’s Guide, Carl Plasa provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the most stimulating critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea . The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel from English and Caribbean critics, charting the differences between them. Chapter Two ex…

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Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts (2020)

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Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts (2020)

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Description

Winner of the Jhalak Prize

'A revelation' Owen Jones

'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch

A Guardian , New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019

'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.'

Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

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Winner of the Jhalak Prize 'A revelation' Owen Jones 'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch A Guardian , New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019 'Afropean.

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Content warning: white supremacy, racism, police violence

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george floyd's death was 'murder' and the accused officer 'knew what he was doing

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George Floyd's death was 'murder' and the accused officer 'knew what he was doing,' Minneapolis police chief says

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Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo says the death of George Floyd was "murder" and that the officer who was seen pressing his knee into Floyd's neck "knew what he was doing" because he had taken specific training on preventing "positional asphyxiation," or suffocation.

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African Europeans by Prof. Olivette Otele

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African Europeans by Prof. Olivette Otele

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Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property.

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Black and British by Prof. David Olusoga

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Black and British by Prof. David Olusoga

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Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga - PDF Drive

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A vital re-examination of a shared history, published to accompany the landmark BBC Two series.InBlack and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offers readers a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people

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Full reference - Norman, A (1999), 'Epistemological Violence' in Curtin, Dean and Litke, Robert, Institutional Violence, (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 353-62.

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Content warning: racism, white supremay, anti-Blackness

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Dismantling Race in Higher Education... (eds.) Jason Arday and Heidi Mirza (2018)

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Dismantling Race in Higher Education... (eds.) Jason Arday and Heidi Mirza (2018)

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Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy - PDF Drive

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This book reveals the roots of structural racism that limit social mobility and equality within Britain for Black and ethnicised students and academics in its inherently white Higher Education institutions. It brings together both established and emerging scholars in the fields of Race and Education

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The Order of St Michael and St George reaches its 200th anniversary this year. Here's the story of its first century.

The new year Gazette of 2018 ( Gazette issue 62150) contained the last in the regular series of bi-annual appointments to the Order of St Michael and St George to be published before the order reaches its 200th anniversary.

This article describes what happened during this order's first century, while the second hundred years is examined in part two.

Mediterranean base

The order now recognises a wide range of activities connected with the UK's interests around the globe, but it began during the Regency, with the narrow objective of catering for Malta and the Ionian Islands, which had recently come under British influence.

By the start of the Regency in 1811, the ribands of many orders were distributed along broad national lines, with the Garter for English noblemen, and the Thistle and St Patrick for their Scottish and Irish peers. As yet, no orders were dedicated to bolstering British interests in places such as North America, the East and West Indies, or the Pacific, but despite this, the government was persuaded to create an honour for the Mediterranean.

The document instituting the Order of St Michael and St George was not reported in The Gazette, nor was there any notice of the kind that accompanied other Regency innovations, including the extension of army gold medals and the reform of the Order of the Bath. The Gazette did, however, notice the career of Henry Bathurst, who was the political force behind the Mediterranean venture.

Henry Bathurst

Bathurst (pictured) had been secretary of state for war and the colonies since 1812, and appeared in several Gazettes, not least as the recipient of Wellington's despatch reporting his victory at Waterloo ( Gazette issue 17028), and as the minister who announced that St Helena would be Napoleon's future residence ( Gazette issue 17055). Bathurst had also witnessed an expansion in the use of ribands across Europe in the wake of the conflict with France, and knew about the insignia the Regent received from his allies in Russia and elsewhere.

Bathurst countersigned the letters patent creating the Order of St Michael and St George on 27 April 1818, as well as the statutes which were issued on the Regent's birthday in August of that year. His actions reflected two aspects of the political settlement with France arising out of the treaties that were signed at Paris in May 1814 and November 1815, which provided that Malta should belong 'in full right and Sovereignty to His Britannic Majesty' ( Gazette issue 16906) and the seven islands of 'Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Maura, Ithaca, Cerigo and Paxo .... Shall form a single, free and independent State, under the denomination of the United States of the Ionian Islands' to be placed 'under the immediate and exclusive protection of His Majesty' ( Gazette issue 17108).

Malta was a long-established base of the knights of St John, but the island had been seized by the French on their way to conquer Egypt. The Gazette reported 'the surrender of the fortress of La Valette... after sustaining a blockade of two years,' ( Gazette issue 15300) and quoted the articles of capitulation that were signed in 1800 by the officers commanding the allied troops and naval squadron, Major-General Henry Pigot and Captain George Martin, who would later join Bathurst's order.

The Ionian Islands were part of the Republic of Venice until the late 1790s, when they were formed into the Septinsular Republic under the joint control of Russia and Turkey. They were later threatened by France, and The Gazette reported the work of Brigadier-General John Oswald - another future member of the order - who explained that 'the French garrison in the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Cerigo have, after a very faint resistance, surrendered to His Majesty's Arms, the people liberated from the oppression of the French, and the government of the Sept' Insular Republic declared to be restored' ( Gazette issue 16321).

Bathurst handled Malta's affairs from London, with local control being exercised by Sir Thomas Maitland as governor. The Paris treaty provided for the Ionian Islands to be administered by a lord high commissioner, a role that Maitland united with his Maltese job. The treaty also allowed for an Ionian constitution, and The Gazette recorded how three senators presented the Regent with the charter their assembly had agreed ( Gazette issue 17267). Plans for creating an order were in draft by the time the Ionian deputation arrived in London in the summer of 1817, although Bathurst did not complete the formal process until the following year, when the three senators received their insignia during the first chapter of the order, which was held in the Palace of Corfu in November 1818.

Bathurst's order provided for the sovereign at its head, with a royal deputy or representative known as the grand master, and with 44 members, consisting of eight knights grand cross (GCMG), 12 knights commander (KCMG) and 24 companions (CMG). Thomas Maitland became the first grand master, and was joined by a few British members, as well as local supporters of the recent constitutional settlement, including Ionian senators and Maltese lords lieutenant.

Appointments were not gazetted until the 1860s, although there were rare exceptions, as happened in 1820, after an Ionian deputation presented an address to the Regent on his accession to the throne and he invested Senator Zavo as a KCMG ( Gazette issue 17618).

Insignia

The insignia worn by the senators and other members contained references to the history of their order and islands. The collar worn by the grand crosses showed the winged lion of St Mark, which recalled the Ionian link with the Venetian Republic, while the seven arrows held by the lion represented the islands that formed the Septinsular Republic, and the white Maltese cross was a familiar emblem of the knights of St John.

The badge of the order was worn from a riband of blue with a central red stripe. It had seven arms - in memory of Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante and the other four islands - with a crown above. The central section showed St George for England on one side, with the Archangel St Michael trampling on Satan on the other, in an allusion to Napoleon being crushed by the allied powers. Both saints were surrounded by the motto auspicium melioris aevi, which is usually rendered as 'token of a better age', and perhaps reflected Bathurst's hope for the future of his Mediterranean enterprise when he signed the founding patent in 1818.

The stars of the grand cross and knight commander grades combined the archangel motif with a red cross of St George. There was no difference in the insignia issued to naval and military personnel, in contrast to the contemporary approach in the Bath and Guelphic Order, which used different designs for their civil and military members.

Most candidates for the order came from the Ionian Islands, with the remainder being drawn from the smaller Maltese population. There were few British recipients at this stage, although the GCMG was often given to the person holding the offices of lord high commissioner and governor. Sir Thomas Maitland's legacy was divided into three after his death in 1824, as Frederick Adam became commissioner to the Ionian Islands; the Marquess of Hastings took over as governor of Malta (but did not add the GCMG to the many honours he already held); and the King's brother, Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, became the second grand master.

The British members during the order's first half-century included several grand crosses from 1837, which were conferred - decades after the events - on some of the senior officers who served in the blockade of Valletta, including Henry Pigot and George Martin, who were mentioned earlier, and others engaged in the capture of Zante, Cephalonia and Santa Maura.

Victorian reform

The geographical reach of British ribands was extended beyond the Mediterranean in the 1840s, as the few grand crosses of the Order of the Bath (GCB) that had been granted to ambassadors and colonial governors since the Regency were supplemented at the knight commander (KCB) and companion (CB) level. The first of the lower level Baths were gazetted in 1848 and included envoys to Brazil, Spain and the USA, and the governors of Bombay, British Guiana and New Zealand ( Gazette issue 20850).

Shortly after the extension of the Bath, Bathurst's order was increased to 65 members, and the Queen's cousin Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, succeeded his father as the third grand master. London's relationship with the Ionian Islands was also examined, and William Gladstone (the future prime minister, who declined the GCMG) became lord high commissioner and enquired into the matter. Within a decade, the protectorate was ended and the islands passed to Greece in 1864, which meant that the role of the order was limited to Malta. The last appointments under the Mediterranean system were announced in April 1868 and included the GCMG for the governor of Malta, Sir Patrick Grant, and for the crown advocate, Adrian Dingli.

No new orders based on the Mediterranean precedent were created for places such as Australia and Canada, and instead, the deficiency in the supply of colonial ribands was addressed by a scheme involving Bathurst's order that was proposed in the House of Commons in 1865. The measure was promoted by one of Bathurst's successors, the Duke of Buckingham, who wrote to colonial governors in December 1868:

'The Queen has had occasion to observe that the constant progress of the British Empire in population, wealth, and enterprise, and the increased opportunities thus happily afforded to her subjects of rendering effective services to their Sovereign and their country, have in some respects outgrown Her Majesty's means of recognising those services in a fitting manner.... For this purpose Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to sanction such a modification of the statutes of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, originally instituted by King George III in connexion with His Majesty's Mediterranean possessions, and now presided over by a Prince of the Blood Royal, together with such an enlargement of its numbers as will render it available as a reward of distinguished merit or service in any part of Her Majesty's colonial possessions ....The Queen is confident that this measure will be received by her subjects as an evidence of the importance which Her Majesty attaches to her colonial dominions as integral parts of the British Empire, of her constant interest in their progress, and of her desire that services of which they are the scene or the occasion may not pass without adequate and appropriate recognition.' (The Times, 22 April 1869, page 5)

The statutes of December 1868 increased the membership to almost 200, and appointments were routinely gazetted for the first time. The earliest awards were announced by the Colonial Office in 1869 and set the pattern for the future, with the grand cross for the governor-general of Canada; the KCMG for the governors of the Bahamas, British Guiana, Ceylon, Nova Scotia and Tasmania; and the CMG for the attorney-general of Barbados, the colonial secretary of Mauritius, the secretary for native affairs in Natal and the chief minister of New South Wales ( Gazette issue 23512). A few names were added to enhance the standing of the reformed order, with the GCMG being conferred on three colonial secretaries: Lord Derby, who passed the act abolishing slavery in the West Indies, and Lords Grey and Russell, who gave self-government to Australia and British North America.

The order was used throughout the empire, with the exception of India, where other honours were used. Places were regularly allocated to candidates from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and in time, to officials working in a wide range of other countries. The colonial extension was followed by provision for the admission of extra and honorary members in 1877 ( Gazette issue 24464), while services connected with foreign affairs were added two years later.

The first extra GCMG was the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), while the initial Foreign Office grand crosses were Lord Lyons and Lord Odo Russell, the ambassadors to France and Germany ( Gazette issue 24726). The Foreign Office followed Colonial Office policy, with the CMG being awarded to junior officials, rising to the grand cross for senior embassies such as Paris and Berlin, where the GCMG operated in parallel with the civil GCB for a few senior ambassadors, until that practice lapsed in the 1940s.

The events and issues that were marked by the order between the late 1860s and the beginning of World War 1 include the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, the work of the commissions considering subjects as varied as the Ottoman province of Eastern Roumelia, the North American fisheries and the Venezuelan boundary, as well as telegraphic communication within the empire. Some of the major imperial developments were also noticed, including awards linked to the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, and the union of South Africa in 1910 (when the GCMG was granted to the first governor-general, Herbert Gladstone, the son of Prime Minister William Gladstone). There was also a short run of KCMGs for the lord mayor of London, reflecting the significant role played by the imperial capital at that time.

Pre-war awards

Two examples illustrate the progress of members from the overseas departments before the start of war in Europe. William MacGregor was made a CMG while chief medical officer in Fiji, and promoted to KCMG as administrator of British New Guinea, ending with the grand cross in 1907 as governor of Newfoundland. His Foreign Office colleague, Ernest Satow, became a CMG as Japanese secretary to the legation at Tokyo, a KCMG while envoy at Tangier, and a grand cross in 1902 as minister to China.

A few Australians progressed through the order, including Henry Ayers, who gave his name to Ayers Rock (Uluru). He emigrated from England and held various positions in the South Australian administration, which brought him the CMG as chief secretary in 1870, promotion to KCMG during one of his several terms as first minister, and the grand cross in 1894 as one of Australia's elder statesmen.

The final pre-war triple was Horatio Kitchener, one of Britain's most decorated soldiers, whose first honour was the CMG he received in 1886 while a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Engineers as 'Her Majesty's Commissioner for the Delimitation of the Territories of the Sultan of Zanzibar' ( Gazette issue 25614). Kitchener was promoted to KCMG while sirdar of the Egyptian Army ( Gazette issue 26484), and gained the grand cross in 1901 for services commanding the forces in South Africa ( Gazette issue 27306).

Military awards

Kitchener's grand cross contrasted with the small naval and military presence that existed in the membership before the 1868 reforms opened the order to wider use. Colonel Garnet Wolseley - later Field Marshal the Viscount Wolseley - was an early army recipient, appointed a KCMG in 1870 for military service in Canada.

The order soon assumed a junior role to the Bath in connection with the operations in Egypt and the Sudan in the 1880s, and more significant numbers were admitted for service during the war against the Boers, when the grants included a KCMG for John French, who led the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the European war. Another Boer award was the CMG for Lieutenant Colonel Seymour Bathurst, the grandson of the colonial secretary who signed the order's founding patent in 1818.

World War 1

The most significant development in the order's first century arose out of World War 1. The impact was dramatic, with more than 3,000 companions nominated between 1915 and 1920, compared with an average of around 40 a year before the war.

A statute of 1 January 1915 authorised appointments for those who rendered meritorious services in connection with military operations, provided their names were published in The Gazette as having been mentioned in despatches. Limits were placed on the minimum rank for admission to each grade, with the GCMG being set at major-general, the KCMG at colonel, and the CMG at major. The first of many wartime lists was issued on 18 February 1915 ( Gazette issue 29102), and headed with a KCMG for Major-General Julian Byng (who was promoted to grand cross when he became governor-general of Canada).

Awards mainly referred to services rendered during the struggle in France and Flanders, but also marked work at Gallipoli and Jutland, and in other theatres in Europe, as well as the Middle East. The air forces joined the scheme from 1918, and the war provision remained in place until July 1920, by which point a few members had earned the Victoria Cross (VC). One companion who did so was Lieutenant Colonel William Clark-Kennedy of the Canadian Corps, whose great-grandfather had captured a French ensign at Waterloo. Clark-Kennedy became a CMG in 1917 and received the VC for bravery in leading his battalion of the Quebec Regiment during attacks in northern France ( Gazette issue 31067).

The wartime influx included several officers who earned the highest military distinction of the grand cross of the Bath. The naval companions who secured the GCB include Roger Keyes, who returned to active service in 1940 as director of Combined Operations, and Roger Backhouse, who became first sea lord. Among the army CMGs who became field marshals and grand crosses were John Dill, who served as chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Archibald Wavell, who commanded in the Middle East and India before becoming viceroy of India. The air force companions who gained the GCB included two officers who held important commands during the Battle of Britain in 1940 - Cyril Newall was chief of the Air Staff, and Hugh Dowding headed Fighter Command.

The GCMG was strictly controlled, and fewer than 30 naval and military awards were made in connection with the war. General Edmund Allenby was noticed for his work in Egypt, and the Earl of Cavan, George Milne and William Marshall were nominated for services in Italy, the Balkans and Mesopotamia. Some of the principal allies were also rewarded with an honorary GCMG, as in the case of the French marshals Lyautey and Pétain.

The order did not routinely mark naval or military services after 1920, and instead that role was filled by the military division of the Order of the British Empire, which was established in 1918. The legacy of the war remained with the order for many years, as the last surviving GCMG was General Sir Hubert Gough, who died in 1963, and the last of the wartime KCMGs was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Oliver, who died in 1967.
About the author
Russell Malloch is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and an authority on British honours.

Image: GCMG Collar (detail), © Russell Malloch
See also The Order of St Michael and St George: 1818 to 2018 (part two)

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The Order of St Michael and St George: 1818 to 2018...

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The Order of St Michael and St George reaches its 200th anniversary this year. Here's the story of its first century. The new year Gazette of 2018 ( Gazette issue 62150) contained the last in the regular series of bi-annual appointments to the Order of St Michael and St George to be published before the order reaches its 200th anniversary.

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The History of Jamaica by Edward Long (1774)

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The History of Jamaica by Edward Long (1774)

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Content warning: White supremacy, racism, anti-Blackness, colonialism, enslavement

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The Horse and His Boy by C.S Lewis (1954)

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The Horse and His Boy by C.S Lewis (1954)

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The Horse and His Boy (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 3) by C. S. Lewis - PDF Drive

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One thousand, eight hundred and sixty days after Eric Garner was killed on the streets of Staten Island, New York, his family finally received a sliver of justice.

On Monday, the New York police department (NYPD) commissioner, James O'Neill, announced the NYPD would fire Daniel Pantaleo, who, on that hot summer's day in July 2014, placed the unarmed 43-year-old in a banned chokehold that contributed to Garner's death.

The decision follows years of protest, stalled investigations and secrecy in a case that came to embody the fractured relations between communities of color and police not just in New York City but around the US.

And Pantaleo's firing, the Garner family insists, should be only the beginning of the process.

Eric Garner's family holds a press conference regarding the firing of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, on 19 August. Photograph: MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock

The family has long demanded that in addition to Pantaleo, several other officers involved in Garner's arrest should be punished for their roles in the incident.

"We're not finished. We have other officers that we have to go after," Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, said at a rally outside NYPD headquarters in lower Manhattan on Monday. "You have heard the names. We know the wrongdoing that they have done. Show the pictures, say the names. Do the roll call, because they all need to lose their jobs."

But even after the announcement of Pantaleo's dismissal on Monday, the fates of the other officers remain largely opaque, as NYPD internal disciplinary procedures remain shrouded in secrecy. And there is little to suggest that any will face a similar process.

Pantaleo was fired following an administrative trial brought by the CCRB, the city's independent police review board, in a process overseen by an NYPD trial judge.

The judge, Rosemarie Maldonado, said in a secret judgment to O'Neill thatthe chokehold "fell so far short of objective reasonableness that this tribunal found it to be reckless - a gross deviation from the standard of conduct established for a New York City police officer". She recommended Pantaleo to be fired. (The judgment was leaked to the New York Times.)

Although Pantaleo did not testify during the trial, he was interviewed by NYPD internal affairs in the aftermath of the incident and argued, even after watching the eyewitness video of Garner's death, that he had not used a chokehold maneuver at all. Maldonado made clear in her judgment that Pantaleo's answer was "untruthful" and "self-serving".

But other officers involved did testify as defendant witnesses, and Maldonado found elements of some their testimony problematic. It is these six men, and one female sergeant, the Garner family wants dismissed. The two senior officers, Lt Christopher Bannon and Sgt Dhanan Saminath, were not present during the physical altercation that led to Garner's death. But the patrol officers Mark Ramos, Craig Furlani, Justin Damico and William Meems were all involved in the apprehension.

Each of the four officers testified they had not seen the positioning of Pantaleo's arms during the arrest. Maldonado's judgment describes this testimony as "unhelpful or unreliable", noting: "The more central the factual inquiry [from prosecutors] was, the more vague recollections became." But the document does not make a determination on whether any of the four should face discipline.

These are not the only concerns the Garner family has over the conduct of this group of six officers during the incident.

Bannon, the commanding officer who initiated Garner's arrest after observing a group of people he believed to be involved in the sale of untaxed cigarettes on his way to a meeting that morning, told Saminath via text that Garner's death was " not a big deal " after being informed of it.

After Garner's death, Damico, Pantaleo's partner that day,processed Garner's arrest on an inflated felony, suggesting Garner had been found with 10,000 untaxed cigarettes even though officers recovered just two packets on his body.

It is not clear if either of these incidents could or would be investigated as misconduct.

When asked about this finding at a press conference on Monday, O'Neill, the commissioner, intimated that none of the four officers would be subject to internal charges as a result, pointing out that the NYPD's internal affairs office had already examined them.

"This whole situation transpired in seconds," O'Neill said. "And if they could recount step-for-step what they did, I think that would be nothing short of a miracle."

The NYPD did not answer a request for further clarification, and referred the Guardan to O'Neill's comments.

The CCRB, which has the power to bring a case if a complaint is filed by a member of the public, did not respond to a request for comment.

"There's a lot that clearly that went wrong in the situation that led to Eric Garner's killing. And it wasn't just Officer Pantaleo. There is potential misconduct from any number of officers which should be investigated and, if warranted, pursued through disciplinary proceedings," said Michael Sisitzky, lead policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The NYPD has, however, leveled disciplinary charges against Kizzy Adonis, who was the supervisory sergeant present in the immediate aftermath of Garner's arrest.

Adonis faced four counts of "failure to supervise", according to reports. The reports say the sergeant told internal investigators she observed that Garner, who had said "I can't breathe" 11 times during the apprehension, did not seem in a serious condition and that "he did not appear to get worse".

The NYPD did not initially provide further clarification on Adonis's trial beyond O'Neill's comments.

On Wednesday afternoon, the NYPD confirmed that Adonis's case had been adjudicated internally. The supervisor has been docked 20 days' vacation, according to police sources, after O'Neill found her command to be "lacking in certain areas" on the day of Garner's death. Police sources also said the review "concluded by noting that nothing about her actions on that day either caused the use of the banned chokehold or delayed the arrival of medical attention" for Garner.

This article was amended on 21 August 2019 to reflect the confirmation Adonis's case has beenadjudicated internally.

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Eric Garner's family receives sliver of justice after firing of NYPD officer

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One thousand, eight hundred and sixty days after Eric Garner was killed on the streets of Staten Island, New York, his family finally received a sliver of justice. On Monday, the New York police department (NYPD) commissioner, James O'Neill, announced the NYPD would fire Daniel Pantaleo, who, on that hot summer's day in July 2014, placed the unarmed 43-year-old in a banned chokehold that contributed to Garner's death.

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Poetry: 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy' by Rudyard Kipling (1892)

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Poetry: 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy' by Rudyard Kipling (1892)

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Content warning: racism, colonialism, white supremacy

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Comments & analysis: We've fought with many men acrost the seas, / An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not:

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A defense attorney for the fired Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in connection with the death of George Floyd is asking a judge to drop all charges, arguing the 46-year-old man's death was allegedly from a drug overdose and not caused by the officer planting his knee in the back of Floyd's neck.

Defense attorney Eric J. Nelson filed the motion in Hennepin County, Minnesota, District Court on Friday, claiming prosecutors have failed to show probable cause for charging Derek Chauvin with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Nelson contends Chauvin acted on his training from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) in the use of a "Maximal Restraint Technique" and did so out of concern that Floyd might harm himself or the officers struggling to arrest him.

The Minneapolis Police Department policy on "Maximal Restraint Technique" says it "shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained."

Nelson also included Minneapolis Police Department training materials on the proper use of the "Maximal Restraint Technique," in which photos show demonstrations of officers simulating putting their knee on a handcuffed subject's neck. Nelson argued the training material appeared to contradict a statement made shortly after the incident by Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo that he had not seen "anything that says you place your knee on someone's neck when they're facedown, handcuffed."

"Thus, any risk created by Mr. Chauvin's conduct lies largely with those who train MPD officers and those who approve such training," Nelson wrote in the motion filed on Friday.

Nelson also cited the autopsy conducted on Floyd that found fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system, a combination of drugs Nelson says is known as a speedball. He noted that the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's post-mortem report showed Floyd had arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, hypertension and sickle cell trait. Floyd also purportedly told the officers that he had contracted COVID-19 and was still positive for the virus at the time of his death, a claim confirmed by his autopsy.

"Put simply, Mr. Floyd could not breathe because he had ingested a lethal dose of fentanyl and, possibly, a speedball. Combined with sickle cell trait, his pre-existing heart conditions, Mr. Floyd's use of fentanyl and methamphetamine most likely killed him," Nelson argued. "Adding fentanyl and methamphetamine to Mr. Floyd's existing health issues was tantamount to lighting a fuse on a bomb."

Nelson added a footnote quoting Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker saying, "If [Mr. Floyd] were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD."

A Sept. 11 court hearing before Judge Peter Cahill has been scheduled on the motion filed by Nelson.

The attorney for Floyd's family, Benjamin Crump, did not respond to an ABC News request for comment on the motions. Previously, Crump stated regarding the drugs in Floyd's system, "The cause of death was that he was starving for air. It was lack of oxygen. And so everything else is a red herring to try to throw us off."

An independent autopsy ordered by Floyd's family found his death was a "homicide caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain."

A viral cellphone video of Floyd's fatal arrest on May 25 showed Chauvin with his knee on the back of Floyd's neck while he was handcuffed and prone on the ground next to a police patrol vehicle. Two other officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, are seen in the footage helping Chauvin restrain Floyd, whom they initially confronted when they responded to a 911 complaint that Floyd had allegedly used a phony $20 bill to purchase cigarettes at the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis.

The footage of Floyd's arrest showed him repeatedly saying "I can't breathe" and calling out for his dead mother before his body went listless. Floyd was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Floyd's death sparked nationwide outcry and massive protests across the U.S. and around the world against racial injustice. The episode, the latest in a string of police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States, has become a rallying cry against police brutality and part of a call to defund law enforcement agencies.

Lane, Kueng and Officer Tou Thao, who arrived at the scene with Chauvin when back-up was requested, have all been terminated from the Minneapolis Police Department and charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder in the death of Floyd.

Lane, Kueng, and Thao have not yet entered pleas -- in court documents, attorneys for Thao and Kueng said their clients intend to plead not guilty to the charges.

Attorneys for Lane, Kueng and Thao have also asked that charges against them be dropped. Cahill has yet to render a decision on those motions.

Prosecutors in the case filed a notice on Friday saying they intend to seek an "upward sentencing departure" from state judicial guidelines if the defendants are found guilty at trial, tentatively scheduled for March 2021.

"Mr. Floyd was treated with particular cruelty," prosecutors wrote in their notice. "Despite Mr. Floyd's pleas that he could not breathe and was going to die, as well as the pleas of eyewitnesses to get off Mr. Floyd and help him, Defendant and his co-defendants continued to restrain Mr. Floyd."

But Nelson argued in court papers that Chauvin and the other officers were trying to protect Floyd, who he alleged was acting erratically and resisting arrest, from injuring himself by "falling and hitting his head on the sidewalk, being struck by an oncoming vehicle, or in his struggles, injuring himself against the squad car."

"Mr. Chauvin demonstrated a concern for Mr. Floyd's well-being -- not an intent to inflict harm," Nelson wrote in the motion.

He said Chauvin was "clearly being cautious about the amount of pressure he used to restrain Mr. Floyd" and pointed out that in the video Floyd was able to raise his head several times while he was prone on the ground.

"If Mr. Chauvin's knee had been on the structure of Mr. Floyd's neck, he would not have been able to lift his head," Nelson wrote.

He also claimed that as the officers were restraining Floyd they requested a "code 3" response from emergency medical services requiring an ambulance responding to the scene to use lights and sirens, and that the officers together decided against the using a hobble restraint device on Floyd "which would have significantly delayed the transfer of Mr. Floyd into the ambulance and also have required an MPD sergeant to respond to the scene."

Nelson again cited the autopsy report that found no bruising or evidence of trauma on the back of Floyd's neck, his neck muscles or his back.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office ruled Floyd's death a homicide, finding he perished as the result of "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression."

Floyd's death has been roundly condemned by law enforcement, politicians and protesters nationwide and has been held up as an exhibit of excessive use of force by police.

Just days after the incident, President Donald Trump expressed the "nation's deepest condolences and most heartfelt sympathies to the family of George Floyd."

"Terrible, terrible thing that happened," Trump said on May 29, adding that he had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to expedite a federal investigation into the death. "We all saw what we saw and it's very hard to even conceive of anything other than what we did see. It should never happen. It should never be allowed to happen, a thing like that. But we're determined that justice be served."

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Officer charged in George Floyd's death argues drug overdose killed him, not knee on neck

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A defense attorney for the fired Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in connection with the death of George Floyd is asking a judge to drop all charges, arguing the 46-year-old man's death was allegedly from a drug overdose and not caused by the officer planting his knee in the back of Floyd's neck.

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Content warning: racism, white supremacy, police brutality

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How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody (Published 2020)

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The Times has reconstructed the death of George Floyd on May 25. Security footage, witness videos and official documents show how a series of actions by officers turned fatal.

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Usually delivers within 2 weeks.

Description

Is scientific positivism, long the reigning paradigm for research in the social sciences, the `best way' to conduct social research? This is the central question examined in The Paradigm Dialog . Recently three key challenges have appeared - positivism, critical theory and constructivism. All three offer researchers new methodological approaches and all three present fundamental questions that must be addressed. Can research be conducted between paradigms? Are they equally useful in answering questions of applied research? What constitutes good or ethical research in each? These and other significant questions are examined by a multidisciplinary group of leading figures in qualitative research.

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Is scientific positivism, long the reigning paradigm for research in the social sciences, the `best way' to conduct social research? This is the central question examined in The Paradigm Dialog . Recently three key challenges have appeared - positivism, critical theory and constructivism.

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Content warning: choke-hold, racism, white supremacy

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A suspended Metropolitan Police officer has been told he is the subject of a criminal investigation for common assault and gross misconduct after appearing to kneel on a black man's neck.

The police watchdog has launched a probe into the actions of two officers during the arrest of Marcus Coutain, 48, who was filmed pleading with officers to "get off my neck" as he was handcuffed on the pavement in Finsbury Park last month following a stop and search.

A second officer involved in the arrest was placed on restricted duties over the incident on 16 July and is now subject to a misconduct probe into whether he failed to challenge and report improper conduct.

Scotland Yard referred itself to the watchdog the day after the incident, the footage of which deputy commissioner Sir Steve House subsequently described as "deeply disturbing".

Some of the techniques used, which are "not taught in police training", caused him "great concern", Sir Steve added.

Mr Coutain was subsequently charged with possessing a knife in public, with Highbury Corner Magistrates Court hearing that police believed he matched the description of a suspect in an assault on the same road on which he was stopped and searched.

However, his lawyer, Timur Rustem, claimed that Mr Coutain was initially searched for drugs and was carrying the knife lawfully for repairing his bicycle.

"Essentially Mr Coutain was stopped and searched for matters for which he has not been charged," he told reporters after the hearing. "It is the use of what I would regard as excessive force, a knee being placed on his neck ... references which mirror exactly what happened to George Floyd in America.

"A man saying, 'I can't breathe,' and, 'Get your knee off my neck', while he was already handcuffed and while he was restrained by two police officers."

Mr Coutain suffered "fortunately minimal" injuries to his wrists and neck, he said, adding: "Fortunately it didn't lead to the tragic consequences that we saw in America".

Having indicated a plea of not guilty ahead of his next hearing on 17 August, Mr Coutain has called for a formal apology from Scotland Yard and for the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the charge.

Launching a witness appeal on Monday, the IOPC said: "One officer has been advised that they are subject to a criminal investigation for common assault and investigation for gross misconduct on use of force; authority, respect and courtesy; discreditable conduct and honesty and integrity.

"A second officer has been advised they are subject to a misconduct investigation on challenging and reporting improper conduct; authority, respect and courtesy and honesty and integrity."

Regional director Sal Naseem added: "We are independently examining whether the use of force and the stop and search on this occasion were appropriate and proportionate in line with approved police policies.

"We will also investigate whether the officers treated the man differently because of his race."

The incident is the second in as many months reported to the IOPC in which a black man has complained of officers applying force to their neck, after viral footage of the 2019 arrest of Simeon Francis prompted a fresh complaint in the weeks following George Floyd's death. His death in a Torquay police station a year later is also under investigation.

And in the wake of a series of high-profile cases involving alleged racial bias, the watchdog is preparing to launch a probe into whether police officers across England and Wales discriminate against ethnic minorities, and to establish whether there are "systemic issues which should be addressed".

The police watchdog review will focus on the use of force and stop and search - both of which black people are disproportionately likely to face at the hands of officers - and will review cases to determine whether a pattern of racial bias exists.

Of Mr Coutain's arrest, the IOPC's Mr Naseem added: "This incident took place in public and was witnessed by several members of the public. A video of the incident has been widely shared on social media platforms."
Witnesses are asked to call 03003035724 or email isledonroad@policeconduct.gov.uk Additional reporting by PA

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'Knee-on-neck' Met Police officer subject to criminal investigation, watchdog says

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A suspended Metropolitan Police officer has been told he is the subject of a criminal investigation for common assault and gross misconduct after appearing to kneel on a black man's neck.

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Insurgent Empire by Prof. Priyamvada Gopal (2019)

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Insurgent Empire by Prof. Priyamvada Gopal (2019)

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Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent a book by Priyamvada Gopal.

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Upsets received views to show how rebellious colonies changed British attitudes to empire Much has been written on the how colonial subjects took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. The possibility of reverse influence ha…

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Black People in the British Empire by Peter Fryer (1987)

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Black People in the British Empire by Peter Fryer (1987)

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Pre-Order Ships 20 June 2021

Description

Black People in the British Empire is a challenge to the official version of British history. It tells the story of Britain's exploitation and oppression of its subject peoples in its colonies, and in particular the people of Africa, Asia and Australasia

Peter Fryer reveals how the ideology of racism was used as justification for acquiring and expanding the Empire; how the British Industrial Revolution developed out of profits from the slave trade; and how the colonies were deliberately de-industrialised to create a market for British manufacturers.

In describing the frequency and the scale of revolts by subject peoples against slavery and foreign domination - and the brutality used in crushing them - Peter Fryer exposes the true history of colonialism, and restores to Black people their central role in Britain's past.

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Black People in the British Empire is a challenge to the official version of British history.

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One of the most important history books ever written, let alone Black history books

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Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer - PDF Drive

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Staying Poweris a panoramic history of black Britons. First published in 1984 amid race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act, revealing how Africans, Asians, and their descendants had been erased from British history. Stretching back to

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Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (1963)

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Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (1963)

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Black Skin, White Masks Download ( 288 Pages | Free )

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Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work.

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Our universities are at breaking point. Governments have systematically imposed new procedures regulating funding, governance, and assessment, forcing them to behave more like business enterprises in a commercial marketplace than centres of learning. This week on the Verso blog, writers respond to Speaking of Universities, Stefan Collini's cogent analysis of the marketisation of higher education. Speaking of Universities is 40% off until April 2.

For our first piece, Professor Akwugo Emejulu argues that when we speak of universities we must speak of the exclusionary relations at their institutional core: "Universities are contradictory spaces. They govern knowledge through hierarchies of control whilst simultaneously providing temporary and contingent spaces to think within and beyond themselves. When speaking of universities, it is imperative that we do not attempt to silence the realities of power that regulate what is legitimate to be known."

Disciplining the disciplines
Anyone working in higher education over the last 15 years has experienced the destructive changes to the university environment that Stefan Collini describes in Speaking of Universities. Universities have been transformed from semi-autonomous and self-governing institutions of scholarly pursuit to commodified and marketised entities. Today, universities are forced into competitive relations with each other and obliged to charge students exorbitant fees - a deliberate policy of central government control that harnesses the threat of revolt by debt-ridden students.

Further, the introduction of increased fees effectively removed universities from social welfare provision and delinked participation in higher education from conceptions of British social citizenship and solidarity. To participate in higher education in Britain is no longer a social good but a privatised risk - although participation in higher education continues to be a mostly elite activity despite the expansion of universities from the 1960s. We should understand the introduction of student fees as part of the permanent austerity agenda of advanced welfare states since the 1990s.
The University is not innocent
A policy of precarity has transformed the working conditions of higher education workers. Thanks to predatory league tables published by, for example, QS World University Rankings, and the regulatory governance of scholarship through the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the coming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and the ephemeral impact agenda, scholarly work must now fulfil an arbitrary ranking system of 'world leading' and 'excellence' for the sake of increased funding from central government. These regulatory instruments are deeply affective, generating anxiety and fear for academics. Both university management and central government leverage this stress to discipline and control individual academics and our knowledge production in deeply gendered and racialised ways: white women, people of colour and women of colour in particular are more likely to placed on teaching-only contracts or languish on insecure contracts which curtail their futures as academics.

Thus to speak of universities necessitates speaking of and making visible the material conditions of universities. We cannot speak of universities without also speaking of the outsourcing of cleaning and catering services and the struggle of mostly Black, minority and migrant workers to be paid a living wage and resist the imposition of zero-hour contracts. We cannot speak of universities without also seeing how the experiments in precarity with the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers inevitably spread to other workers who perhaps thought they were protected from the logic of capitalist accumulation by their commitment to the university as a 'protected home of free inquiry'. As we have seen across the country, temporary, low-paid contracts have been introduced to PhD students and early career researchers to enable higher status academics like myself to participate in the disciplining devices of the REF, TEF and research impact.

Speaking of universities requires us to understand that universities are neither innocent nor neutral. It is part of the epistemic power that universities wield to construct them as essentially passive actors in struggles to regulate and decide what knowledge is and whose knowledge counts.

Take for example the fact that Black and Minority Ethnic young people are more likely to leave school with better qualifications than their white counterparts but are less likely to gain admission to Britain's top universities. Once at university, students of colour are more likely to experience an attainment gap: they are less likely to get top marks in their studies in terms of graduating with first or upper second class honour degrees. After graduation, as they enter the labour market, graduates of colour are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, in comparison to their white peers. For those people of colour who manage to navigate this perilous journey through higher education to become academics, they are confronted again by institutionalised gender and racial discrimination in universities. According to the Equality Challenge Unit figures from 2016, there are only 345 women of colour professors: to analyse this category further, there are only 30 Black British, 10 British Pakistani and 5 British Bangladeshi women professors (the largest groups of women of colour professors are British Indian women, 80, and British Chinese, 75). In comparison, there are 3,895 white female and 12,455 white male professors. Thus, to speak of universities is to recognise them as spaces of exclusion and discrimination which hide their epistemic violence behind a rhetoric of meritocracy, collegiality and the 'free exchange of ideas'.

As I have previously argued, decolonisation struggles attempt to break open the stranglehold that the canon has on 'legitimate knowledge'. When colleagues at University College London asked 'Why is My Curriculum White?' and 'Why Isn't My Professor Black?', they were attempting to recast the university to make visible its material and discursive interests.

There have always been limits to who can know, what is allowed to be known and what is deemed knowable in universities, long before the REF and TEF: from the epistemological violence of the closure of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham to the backlash against decolonisation at SOAS and Oxford, and the historical and contemporary exclusion of people based on their race, class, gender, sexuality, disability and legal status. These attempts to control knowledge and knowing are the hallmarks of the elite institutional project of the university: selection, suppression and exclusion.

Conclusions
Stefano Harney and Fred Moten go further still: given the epistemic violence of universities and their neoliberal logic, 'the only possible relationship to the university today is a criminal one'. They highlight the fundamental contradiction of Black scholars in and of universities and argue for a scholarly relationship of theft:

'It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. In the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what one can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony... to be in but not of - this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university'.

Collini's analysis of the neoliberalisation of universities is elegant and persuasive. It rests, however, on a broader construction and defense of the university that elides the exclusionary relations at its institutional core. Universities are contradictory spaces. They govern knowledge through hierarchies of control whilst simultaneously providing temporary and contingent spaces to think within and beyond themselves. When speaking of universities, it is imperative that we do not attempt to silence the realities of power that regulate what is legitimate to be known.

Akwugo Emejulu is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her co-authored book, Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain, will be published in July 2017 by Policy Press.

Speaking of Universities, Stefan Collini's cogent analysis of the marketisation of higher education, is 40% off (with free shipping and bundled ebook) until April 2.

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From inactivity to encouragement [...] - Chandra, Mishra and Pranjali

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ABSTRACT
In light of the focus placed on English education by the colonial government, and the petition signed by 70,000 local inhabitants of the Madras Presidency, Lord John Elphinstone, the Governor, made efforts to disseminate English education during his governorship (1837-1842). Spurred on by the petition, Elphinstone wrote two fundamental educational minutes, in 1839 and 1841, and established Madras High School. Later, the School was transformed into Presidency College and became the first home of the University of Madras. Elphinstone's planning led to the first systematic effort by the Madras government to impart English education. Subsequently, Elphinstone emphasised the dissemination of secular education and inclusion of native people in educational administration. Against this background, this paper discusses the contribution of Elphinstone to the educational development of Madras. It also questions the historiographical neglect of Elphinstone and challenges the established post-colonial discourse that the establishment of English institutions was a 'colonialist' imposition.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Venkata Raghotham and Dhrub Kumar Singh for their insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. They thank Andy Metcalfe and Pranab Jyoti Sarma in helping them in presentation of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gautam Chandra
Gautam Chandra is a Ph.D. student at the Department of History, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India. He is currently working on the emergence of intellectual proletariat in colonial Madras. His research interests include intellectual and economic history of modern India. Chandra was selected for the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Young Researchers Workshop, 2017 for his doctoral research.

Veerendra Kumar Mishra
Veerendra Kumar Mishra teaches English at the Banasthali University, Banasthali, India. He has earned his doctorate in English from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee on the broader area of modern novels. Mishra has widely written on the literary criticism and post-colonial discourse in English studies including Modern Novels and Poetics of Self: Reading Modernist Bildungsromane (New Delhi, 2014) and an edited volume on A Modern Criticism on Language and Literature (New Delhi, 2017).

Pranjali is a Ph.D. student at the Department of History, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India. She is presently working on imperial botany and the contribution of William Roxburgh which constitutes the area of her doctoral research. Her research interests include the history of colonial science and the institutionalisation of profession education in the Coromandel Coast.

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From inactivity to encouragement: the contribution of Lord Elphinstone to the educational development of the Madras Presidency (1837-1842)

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ABSTRACT In light of the focus placed on English education by the colonial government, and the petition signed by 70,000 local inhabitants of the Madras Presidency, Lord John Elphinstone, the Governor, made efforts to disseminate English education during his governorship (1837-1842).

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'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question' by Thomas Carlyle (1849)

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'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question' by Thomas Carlyle (1849)

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Content Warning: racism, white supremacy, race science

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WARNING AND DISCLAIMER

"Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question"

1849

Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country
(London, Vol. XL., February 1849)

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[Note on HET version: This essay by Thomas Carlyle was published anonymously in 1849 in Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. Please read our WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. For more information and context, see our Carlyle-Mill "Negro Question" Debate.

This electronic text is taken from the versionreprinted in America under the title "West India Emancipation" in Page numbers in bold square brackets, e.g. The Commercial Review of the South and West (later [p.528], denote the beginning of the respective page in the 1850 Commercial Review version. All errors are left intact. By way of contrast, we have included the introductions to two American reprints of this essay: the first by the editor (J.D. de Bow?) of the Commercial Review of the South and West (1850, New Orleans, Louisiana) and another by the editor (E. Littell?) of Littell's Living Age (1850, Boston, Massachusetts). De Bow's Review), June, 1850, Vol. VIII (Old Series), Vol. II, No.4 N.S., p.527-538 (ed. J.D. De Bow, New Orleans). It is available in GIF format online from the University of Michigan's "Making of America" Database, whom thank for permission to reproduce here.

As far as we know, this essay is in the public domain. You are free to make use of this electronic version in any way you wish, except for commercial purposes, without asking permission. All comments and corrections of this text are encouraged and can be addressed to HET contact]
[Introduction by the editor (J.D. de Bow?) in The Commercial Review of the South and West, 1850, p.527]
ART. III.- CARLYLE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.

WHAT HAVE THE WEST INDIA NEGROES GAINED BY EMANCIPATION, AND WHAT HAS THE WORLD GAINED BY THE EFFORTS OF EXETER HALL PHILANTHROPISTS

[THE following paper appeared in a late number of Frazer's London Magazine. The style and manner are plainly those of Thomas Carlyle, to whom it is attributed. It is a piece of pungent satire, upon the whole body of pseudo philanthropists, who, within the last few years, have been a curse to our own country, as well as to England. The West India question is, for the first time, put in its true light before the English people, and it will much surprise us if a reaction, in favor of common sense, is not the result. The reader will not allow the quaint style, and the odd conceits of Mr. Carlyle, to prevent him from giving an attentive perusal to the matter. We are sure that he will agree with us, that the case of Quashee is disposed of with a master hand, and left in its nakedness, without a single prop or support. When British writers can so speak, it is time for Northern fanaticism to pause and reflect.-ED.]

[Introduction by the editor (E. Littell?) in Littell's Living Age, 1850, p.248]

[We find the following pages in Fraser's Magazine. Are they by Mr. Carlyle? They will be a grief to many of his admirers in this region, and yet they, and others, (if others indeed there be!) will think it desirable to read whatever the sage may write.]

________________________________________________________

[ p.527]

Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question

THE following occasional discourse, delivered by we know not whom, and of date seemingly above a year back, may, perhaps, be welcome to here and there a speculative reader. It comes to us -- no speaker named, no time or place assigned, no commentary of any sort given in the hand-writing of the so-called "Doctor," properly "Absconded Reporter," Dr. Phelin M'Quirk, whose singular powers of reporting, and also whose debts, extravagances, and sorrowful insidious finance-operations, now winded up by a sudden disappearance, to the grief of many poor trades-people, are making too much noise in the police offices at present! Of M'Quirk's composition, we by no means suppose it to be; but from M'Quirk, as the last traceable source, it comes to us; offered, in fact, by his respectable, unfortunate landlady, desirous to make up part of her losses in this way.

To absconded reporters, who bilk their lodgings, we have, of course, no account to give; but if the speaker be of any eminence or substantiality, and feel himself aggrieved by the transaction, let him understand that such, and such only, is our connection with him or his affairs. As the colonial and negro question is still alive, and likely to grow livelier for some time, we have accepted the article, at a cheap market rate; and give it publicity, without, in the least, committing ourselves to the strange doctrines and notions shadowed forth in it. Doctrines and notions which, we rather suspect, are pretty much in a minority of one, in the present era of the world. Here, sure enough, are peculiar views of the rights of negroes; involving, it is probable, peculiar ditto of innumerable other rights, duties, expectations, wrongs and disappointments, much argued of, by logic and by grape-shot, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind. Silence now, however, and let the speaker himself enter:

[p.528]

My Philanthropic Friends: It is my painful duty to address some words to you, this evening, upon the rights of negroes. Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and, as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present, and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge up-break, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the UNIVERSAL ABOLITION-OF-PAIN-ASSOCIATION, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower, and summary of modern philanthropisms, all in one, do not issue as a universal "Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society" -- we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this view, the council has decided, both that the negro question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and, if possible, the first settled; and then, also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that -- that, in short, I was to be speaker on the occasion. An honorable duty! yet, as I said, a painful one! Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not, in the least, like it.

West Indian affairs, as we all know, and some of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while. In regard to West Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious, that the negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed. West Indian whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West Indian colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin; at home, too, the British whites are rather badly off-several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine -- and, in single towns, many thousands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not to live "well," or as a man should, in any sense, temporal or spiritual, but to live at all-these, again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely extensive and important ones. But, thank heaven, our interesting black population equaling, almost, in number of heads, one of the ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valor and value), perhaps one of the streets of seven dials --are all doing remarkably well. "Sweet blighted lilies "'-- as the American epitaph on the niggar child has it -- sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim, dreary stagnancy at home, as if, for England too, there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait, with arms crossed, till black anarchy and social death devoured us also, as it has done the others; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon; our beautiful black darlings are at last happy; with little labor except to the teeth, which, surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!

Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The twenty millions, a mere trifle, despatched with a single dash of the pen, are paid; and, far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely "free" indeed. Sitting yonder, with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; [p.529] the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates; while the sugar crops rot round them, uncut, because labor cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins; and at home, we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English laborers, some slight "differential sugar duties." and lend a poor half million, or a few more millions, now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind, which has earned us, not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud, long-eared halleluiahs of laudatory psalmody from the friends of freedom everywhere, but lasting favor (it is hoped) from the heavenly powers themselves; which may, at least, justly appeal to the heavenly powers, and ask them, if ever, in terrestrial procedure, they saw the match of it! Certainly, in the past history of the human species, it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it have in the future.

Sunk in deep froth-oceans of "Benevolence," "Fraternity," "Emancipation-principle," "Christian Philanthropy," and other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and, in the end, baleful and all-bewildering jargon -- sad product of a skeptical eighteenth century, and of poor human hearts, left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, christian or heathen, and reduced to believe, in rosepink sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its christian, anti-christian, broad-brimmed, Brutus-headed, and other forms -- has not the human species gone strange roads during that period? and poor Exeter Hall, cultivating the broad-brimmed form of christian sentimentalism, and long talking, and bleating, and braying, in that strain -- has it not worked out results? Our West India legislatings, with their spoutings. anti-spoutings, and interminable jangle and babble-our twenty millions, down on the nail for blacks of our own-thirty gradual millions more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching blacks of other people's-and now, at last, our ruined sugar estates, differential sugar duties, "immigration loan," and beautiful blacks, sitting there, up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful whites, sitting here, without potatoes to eat; never, till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses, of which, with the two hot nights of the Missing-Despatch Debate,* God grant that the measure might now, at last, be full! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and, in fact, an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists, that merely have speeches to deliver, and despatches to write. O Heaven! in West Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with us-the more is the sorrow! The West Indies, it appears, are short of labor, as, indeed, is very conceivable in those circumstances. Where a black man, by working half an hour a day (such is the calculation), can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be[p.530] a little stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which, science says, should be brought to bear on him, have an up-hill task-of it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis -- rich soil, in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions, almost gratis: these are his supply; and half an hour a day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin, which is his "demand." The fortunate black man! very swiftly does he settle his account with supply and demand; not so swiftly the less fortunate white man of these tropical localities. He, himself, cannot work; and his black neighbor, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him. Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man's "demand," and take his own time in supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane crop cannot wait; still higher -- till no conceivable opulence of cane crop will cover such wages! In Demerara, as I read in the blue book of last year, the cane crop, far and wide, stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen: strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the "demand" rise a little. Sweet, blighted lilies, now getting up their heads again!

Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate (equal, in fact, to nothing in some places, as appears), increase the supply; bring more blacks into the labor market, then will the rate fall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West Indian policy, is this recipe of "immigration;" of keeping down the labor-market in those islands, by importing new Africans to labor and live there. If the Africans that are already there could be made to lay down their pumpkins and labor for a living, there are already Africans enough. If the new Africans, after laboring a little, take to pumpkins like the others, what remedy is there? To bring in new and ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow dear -- till the country is crowded with Africans, and black men there, like white men here, are forced, by hunger, to labor for their living? That will be a consummation. To have "emancipated" the West Indies into a black Ireland -- " free,"' indeed, but an Ireland, and black! The world may yet see prodigies, and reality be stranger than a nightmare dream.

Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly starving, from age to age, on its act-of-parliament "freedom," was hitherto the flower of mismanagement among the nations; but what will this be to a negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselves fallen scarce like potatoes? Imagination cannot fathom such an object; the belly of chaos never held the like. The human mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt, yet, of such a "freedom" as that will be. Toward that, if Exeter Hall, and science of supply and demand, are to continue our guides in the matter, we are daily traveling, and even struggling, with loans of half a million, and such like, to accelerate ourselves.

Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall philanthropy is wonderful; and the social science -- not a "gay science," but a rueful --which finds the secret of this universe in "supply and demand," and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a "gay science," I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; [p.531] what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. These two, Exeter Hall philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of black emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it -- will give birth to progenies and prodigies: dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!

In fact, it will behoove us of this English nation, to overhaul our West Indian procedure from top to bottom; and to ascertain a little better what it is that fact and nature demand of us, and what only Exeter Hall, wedded to the Dismal Science, demands. To the former set of demands we will endeavor, at our peril -- and worse peril than our purse's, at our soul's peril -- to give all obedience. To the latter we will very frequently demur, and try if we cannot stop short where they contradict the former, and, especially, before arriving at the black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us. Alas, in many other provinces, beside the West Indian, that unhappy wedlock of philanthropic liberalism and the Dismal Science, has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of the moon-calf sort -- and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poor, civilized world, in these days! And sore will be the battle with said moon-calves; and terrible the struggle to return out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West Indies alone, but Europe generally, is nearing the Niagara Falls. [ Here various persons, in an agitated manner, with an air of indignation, left the room; especially one very tall gentleman, in white trousers, whose boots creaked much. The President, in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigor, whatever his own private feelings might be, enjoined, " Silence! Silence!" The meeting again sat motionless.]

My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed headlands in this wide-weltering deluge of benevolent twaddle and revolutionary grapeshot that has burst forth on us -- no sure bearings at all? Fact and nature, it seems to me, say a few words to us, if, happily, we have still an ear for fact and nature. Let us listen a little, and try. And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, that no black man, who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be, but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world. To do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this, the end of his being. That is the'" unhappy" lot -- lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this, his sacred appointment, to labor while he lives on earth -- that, I say, is the man's deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power, or opportunity, toward delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the [p.532] enemy he must be delivered from; and the first "right" he has -- poor indolent blockhead, black or white -- is, that every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavor to "emancipate" him from his indolence, and, by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficient Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, compelled, to do what work the Maker of him has intended, by the making of him for this world. Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our black friend -- but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that. And his own happiness, and that of others around him, will alone be possible, by his and their getting into such a relation that this can be permitted him, and, in case of need, that this can be compelled him. I beg you to understand this, for you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present. The idle black man in the West Indies, had, not long since, the right, and will again, under better form, if it please Heaven, have the right (actually the first "right of man" for an indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker's will, who had constructed him with such and such prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike, and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine right of being compelled (if "permitted" will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute, in a life so short! Alas, we had then a perfect world! and the millennium and true "organization of labor," and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers and men, had then arrived, which, in these, our own poor districts of the planet, as we all lament to know, it is very far from having yet done.

Let me suggest another consideration withal; West India islands, still full of waste fertility, produce abundant pumpkins; pumpkins, however, you will please to observe, are not the sole requisite for human well-being. No! for a pig they are the one thing needful -- but for a man, they are only the first of several things needful. And now, as to the right of chief management in cultivating those West India lands -- as to the "right of property" so called, and of doing what you like with your own. The question is abstruse enough. Who it may be that has a right to raise pumpkins and other produce on those islands, perhaps none can, except temporarily, decide. The islands are good withal for pepper, for sugar, for sago, arrowroot, for coffee, perhaps for cinnamon and precious spices-things far nobler than pumpkins, and leading toward commerces, arts, politics, and social developments, which, alone, are the noble product, where men (and not pigs with pumpkins) are the parties concerned! Well, all this fruit, too, fruit spicy and commercial, fruit spiritual and celestial, so far beyond the merely pumpkinish and grossly terrene, lies in the West India lands; and the ultimate "proprietorship" of them -- why, I suppose, it will vest in him who can the best educe from them, whatever of noble produce they were created fit for yielding. He, I compute, is the real [p.533] "Vicegerent of the Maker" there; in him, better and better chosen, and not in another, is the "property" vested by decree of Heaven's chancery itself!

Up to this time, it is the Saxon British mainly; they hitherto have cultivated with some manfulness; and when a manfuller class of cultivators, stronger, worthier to have such land, abler to bring fruit from it, shall make their appearance, they, doubt it not, by fortune of war, and other confused negotiation and vicissitude, will be declared by nature and fact to be the worthier, and will become proprietors, perhaps, also, only for a time. That is the law, I take it, ultimate supreme, for all lands, in all countries, under this sky. The one perfect, Eternal Proprietor, is the Maker who created them; the temporary, better or worse proprietor, is he whom the Maker has sent on that mission; he who the best hitherto can educe from said lands the beneficent gifts the Maker endowed them with -- or, which is but another definition of the same person, he who leads hitherto the manfullest life on that bit of soil, doing better than another yet found can do, the Eternal Purpose and Supreme Will there. And now observe, my friends. it was not Black Quashee, or those he represents, that made those West India islands what they are, or can, by any hypothesis, be considered to have the right of growing pumpkins there. For countless ages, since they first mounted oozy on the back of earthquakes, from their dark bed in the ocean deeps, and reeking, saluted the tropical sun, and ever onward, till the European white man first saw them, some three short centuries ago, those islands had produced mere jungle, savagery, poison reptiles and swamp malaria till the white European first saw them, they were, as if not yet created; their noble elements of cinnamon -- sugar, coffee, pepper, black and gray, lying all asleep, waiting the white Enchanter, who should say to them, awake! Till the end of human history, and the sounding of the trump of doom, they might have lain so, had Quashee, and the like of him, been the only artists in the game. Swamps, fever-jungles, maneating caribs, rattle-snakes, and reeking waste and putrefaction: this had been the produce of them under the incompetent caribal (what we call cannibal) possessors till that time; and Quashee knows, himself, whether ever he could have introduced an improvement. Him, had he, by a miraculous chance, been wafted thither, the caribals would have eaten, rolling him as a fat morsel under their tongue-for him, till the sounding of the trump of doom, the rattlesnakes and savageries would have held on their way. It was not he, then -- it was another than he! Never, by art of his, could one pumpkin have grown there, to solace any human throat; nothing but savagery, and reeking putrefaction could have grown there! These plentiful pumpkins, I say, therefore, are not his; no, they are another's; they are only his under conditions -- conditions which Exeter Hall, for the present, has forgotten; but which nature, and the Eternal Powers, have, by no manner of means, forgotten, but do, at all moments, keep in mind; and, at the right moment, will, with the due impressiveness, perhaps in rather a terrible manner, bring again to our mind also! If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West India islands, for the benefit [p.534] of all mankind, then, I say, neither will the powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit, but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground -- him, and all that partake with him -- perhaps in a very terrible manner. For, under favor of Exeter Hall, the "terrible manner" is not yet quite extinct with the destinies in this universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft-sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory, now, or henceforth. No! the gods wish, besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies; infinitely more they wish -- that manful, industrious men occupy their West Indies, not indolent, two-legged cattle, however "happy" over their abundant pumpkins! Both these things, we may be assured, the immortal gods have decided upon -- passed their eternal act of parliament for; and both of them, though all terrestial parliaments and entities oppose it to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficient whip, since other methods avail not, will be compelled to work. Or, alas, let him look across to Hayti, and trace a far sterner prophecy! Let him, by his ugliness, idleness, rebellion, banish all white men from the West Indies, and make it all one Hayti, with little or no sugar-growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and, where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous jungle -- does he think that will forever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rose-pink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men sent by the laws of this universe, and the inexorable course of things; men hungry for gold, remorseless, fierce as old buccaneers were -- and a doom for Quashee, which I had rather not contemplate! The gods are long-suffering; but the law, from the beginning, was, He that will not work shall perish from the earth -- and the patience of the gods has limits!

Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences and waste savageries could become arable, and the devils be, in some measure, chained there! The West Indies grow pineapples, and sweet fruits, and spices; we hope they will, one day, grow beautiful, heroic human lives too, which is surely the ultimate object they were made for; beautiful souls and brave; sages, poets, what not -- making the earth nobler round them, as their kindred from of old have been doing; true "splinters of the old Hartz Rock;" heroic white men, worthy to be called old Saxons, browned with a mahogany tint in those new climates and conditions. But under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices, or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid. Brave Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave Colonel Brayne -- the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there, worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the devils, which were manifold. Heroic Blake contributed a bit of his life to that Jamaica. A bit of the great Protector's own life lies there -- beneath those pumpkins lies a bit of the life that was Oliver Cromwell's. How [p.535] the great Protector would have rejoiced, to think that all this was to issue in growing pumpkins, to keep Quashee in a comfortably idle condition! No, that is not the ultimate issue, not that!

The West Indian whites, so soon as this bewilderment of philanthropic and other jargon abates from them, and their poor eyes get to discern a little what the facts are and what the laws are, will strike into another course, I apprehend! I apprehend they will, as a preliminary, resolutely refuse to permit the black man any privilege whatever of pumpkins till he agrees for work in return. Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful isles, purchased by British blood, shall any black man hold to grow pumpkins for him, except on terms that are fair toward Britain. Fair; see that they be not unfair, not toward ourselves, and still more, not toward him. For injustice is forever accursed; and precisely our unfairness toward the enslaved black man has -- by inevitable revulsion and fated turn of the wheel -- brought about these present confusions. Fair toward Britain it will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the state so many days of service. Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also without fail, shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labor. The state has plenty of waste soil; but the state will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The state wants sugar from these islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these islands, and must have it. The state demands of you such service as will bring these results, this latter result which includes all. Not a black Ireland, by immigration, and boundless black supply for the demand; not that -- may the gods forbid! -- but a regulated West Indies, with black working population in adequate numbers; all "happy,"' if they find it possible; and not entirely unbeautifutl to gods and men, which latter result they must find possible! All "happy" enough; that is to say, all working according to the faculty they have got; making a little more divine this earth which the gods have given them. Is there any other "happiness" -- if it be not that of pigs fattening daily to the slaughter? So will the state speak by and by.

Any poor, idle black man, any idle white man, rich or poor, is a mere eye-sore to the state; a perpetual blister on the skin of the state. The state is taking measures. some of them rather extensive, in Europe at this very time, and already, is in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, rather tremendous measures, to get its rich white then set to work; for, alas. they also have sat, negro-like, up to the ears in pumpkin, regardless of "work," and of a world all going to waste for their idleness! Extensive measures, I say; and already (as, in all European lands, this scandalous fear of street-barricades and fugitive sham-kings exhibits) tremendous measures for the thing is instant to be done.

The thing must be done everywhere: must is the word. Only it is so terribly difficult to do; and will take generations yet, this of getting our rich European white men "set to work!'" But yours in the West Indies, my obscure black friends, your work, and the getting of you set to it, is a simple affair; and by diligence, the West Indian legislatures, and royal governor, setting their faces fairly to the problem, will get it done. You are not " slaves" now; nor do I wish, if it can be [p.536] avoided, to see you slaves again; but decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you -- servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you. That, you may depend upon it, my obscure black friends, is and was always the law of the world, for you and for all men; to be servants, the more foolish of us to the more wise; and only sorrow, futility and disappointment will betide both, till both, in some approximate degree, get to conform to the same. Heaven's laws are not repealable by earth, however earth may try and it has been trying hard. in some directions, of late! I say, no well being, and in the end no being at all, will be possible for you or us, if the law of heaven is not complied with. And if "slave" mean essentially "servant hired for life," or by a contract of long continuance, and not easily dissoluble -- I ask, Whether in all human things, the "contract of long continuance" is not precisely the contract to be desired, were the right terms once found for it? Servant hired for life, were the right terms once found, which I do not pretend they are, seems to me much preferable to servants hired for the month, or by contract dissoluble in a day. An ill-situated servant, that -- servant grown to be nomadic; between whom and his master a good relation cannot easily spring up!

To state articulately, and put into practical law books, what on all sides is fair from the West India white to the West India black; what relations the Eternal Maker has established between these two creatures of His: what he has written down, with intricate but ineffaceable record, legible to candid human insight, in the respective qualities, strengths, necessities and capabilities of each of the two; this will be a long problem; only to be solved by continuous human endeavor, and earnest effort gradually perfecting itself as experience successively yields new light to it. This will be to "find the right terms" of a contract that will endure, and be sanctioned by Heaven and obtain prosperity on earth, between the two. A long problem, terribly neglected hitherto; whence these West Indian sorrows; and Exeter Hall monstrosities. just now! But a problem which must be entered upon, and by degrees be completed. A problem which, I think, the English people, if they mean to retain human colonies, and not black Irelands in addition to the white, cannot begin too soon! What are the true relations between negro and white, their mutual duties under the sight of the Maker of them both; what human laws will assist both to comply more and more with these? The solution, only to be gained by earnest endeavor and sincere experience, such as have never yet been bestowed on it, is not yet here; the solution is perhaps still distant; but some approximation to it, various real approximations, could be made. and must be made; this of declaring that negro and white are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of supply and demand according to the Dismal Science; this which contradicts the palpablest facts, is clearly no solution, but a cutting of the knot assunder; and every hour we persist in this is leading us toward dis solution instead of solution.

What, then, is practicably to be done? Much, very much, my [p.537] friends, to which it hardly falls to me to allude at present; but all this of perfect equality, of cutting loose from one another; all this, with "immigration loan," "happiness of black peasantry," and the other melancholy stuff that has followed from it, will first of all require to be undone, and have the ground cleared of it, by way of preliminary to "doing!"

Already one hears of black Adscripti glebae; which seems a promising arrangement, one of the first to suggest itself in such a complicacy. It appears the Dutch blacks, in Java, are already a kind of Adscripts, after the manner of the old European serfs; bound by royal authority, to give so many days of work a year. Is not this something like a real approximation; the first step toward all manner of such? Wherever, in British territory, there exists a black man, and needful work to the just extent is not to be got out of him, such a law, in defect of better, should be brought to bear upon said black man! How many laws of like purport, conceivable some of them, might be brought to bear upon the black man and the white, with all despatch, by way of solution instead of dissolution to their complicated case just now! On the whole, it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for white men to live beside black men, and in some just manner to command black men, and produce West Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies, bidding us ignominiously, Depart, ye quack-ridden. incompetent!--

One other remark. as to the present trade in slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the sugar-islands for sale again, be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the laws of this universe, let us heartily pray to Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs in the same planet with it; why, then indeed ----. But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold; unbought, unmarketable Irish "free" citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my lord of rackrent and the constitutional sheriffs have evicted them; or at those "divine missionaries," of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what "freedom " really is; -- and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs in the same planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means; this thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it -- provided your premise be not doubtful.

But now furthermore give me leave to ask: Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the con-[p.538]tinent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along the extremely extensive and unwholesome coast? The enterprise is very gigantic and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprise has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it! Watch the coast of Africa, good part of the coast of the terraqueous globe? And the living centers of this slave mischief, the live coal that produces all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, are perfectly accessible and manageable. If the laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question -- if you really appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it -- why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of 74-gun ships, and signify to those nefarious countries, that their procedure on the negro question is too bad; that of all the solicisms now submitted to on earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same planet with it; that they clearly will not, the nefarious populations will not, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the negro enough; wherefore you here, with your seventy-fours. are come to be king over them, and will, on the spot, henceforth see for yourselves that they do it. Why not, if Heaven do send you? The thing can be done; easily. if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done, it is the way to "suppress the slave-trade;" and so far as yet appears, the one way.

Most thinking people! -- If hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent. will you station police officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the parish in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense. with almost no effect; or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is,and kill the fox? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is -- kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers! Oh. my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of human stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, "of all peoples the wisest in action;" but, he added, "the stupidest in speech:" and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal parliamentary and other eloquence, that the "speakers" have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business!-- Explicit MS.

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Footnotes
* - [p.529] Does any reader now remember it? A cloudy reminiscence of some such thing, and of noise in the newspapers upon it, remains with us -- fast hastening to abolition for every man. [back]

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Top
[The Carlyle-Mill "Negro Question" Debate]

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T. Carlyle, 1849, "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question", Fraser's Mag

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WARNING AND DISCLAIMER 1849 Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country (London, Vol. XL., February 1849) Back [Note on HET version: This essay by Thomas Carlyle was published anonymously in 1849 in Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. Please read our WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. For more information and context, see our Carlyle-Mill "Negro Question" Debate.

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White Privilege by Prof. Kalwant Bhopal (2020)

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White Privilege by Prof. Kalwant Bhopal (2020)

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White privilege: The myth of a Post-Racial Society PDF ( Free | 218 Pages )

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Why and how do those from black and minority ethnic communities continue to be marginalised? Despite claims that we now live in a post-racial society, race continues to disadvantage those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Kalwant Bhopal explores how neoliberal policy making has increased r

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Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society a book by Hilary Beckles.

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This work deals with women in Caribbean slave societies and the different social strata within it, showing how they resisted oppression in various ways while, at the same time, opening themselves up to male domination.

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I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti (2000/2007)

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I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti (2000/2007)

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Winner of the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal, this fierce and moving work is an unparalleled rendering of the human aspects of the Palestinian predicament.Barred from his homeland after 1967's Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile--shuttling among the world's cities, y

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Decolonising the University (Bhambra and co, 2018)

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Decolonising the University (Bhambra and co, 2018)

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me. This is deeply disturbing and I don't know what to make of this shift. Is it age? A creeping conservative that has me running from my radical roots?

I honestly feel like I'm just so sick and tired of being sick and tired, I'd rather overlook the rampant misogyny and sexism on the airwaves to focus on what's compelling in the music. This is really troublesome because I wasn't this girl. In fact, there was a time when I abhorred people who gave conditional passes or tried to see the possibilities in a genre I thought was causing so many problems.

I feel like my ambivalence is in some ways a decision to opt out of the foolishness because honestly it's just too much to bear at times. The seemingly innocuous radio hit " BedRock " by Young Money has a line penned by the now incarcerated Wayne that I hadn't paid much attention to.

"I knock her lights out
but she still shine..."

Clever for sure, but violent as fuck. It really gave me pause because it's the type of lyric that washes over you, sandwiched between lyrics that are more or less memorable. This slightly veiled violence is often dismissed because it's said playfully and in the context of a medley that suggests a more amorous interpretation.

My reorientation to the misogynoir[1] ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that " All the Way Turnt Up " was a great song because it didn't objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric "three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow."

Only one line, one line out of 40 odd rather mundane lyrics (materialism, present controversy, and drug use notwithstanding). Is this a big deal? Should I be offended? I do feel disappointed. Even when things attempt to move away from the formula, MONEY+ CARS + HOES = hit record, they can't move that far; money+ cars+ hoes = hit record. A song about playing your music loud still has to call on the transformative power of Roscoe Dash, Travis Porter, et. al's masculinity to make lesbians want to suck a dick? Nice.

I wonder what it means that there are no songs on mainstream radio that challenge the status quo. And when artists do manage to break out, they look so out of place. Did you see the trippiness that was Erykah "On and On" Badu on 106 and park last year? Painfully awkward. I think folks still don't know what to do with her next to latest offering Jump Up in the Air, even with Wayne's ubiquitous co-signing.

So rather than deal with the persistent and pervasive assault on women in the music, I've cultivated a world that supports the age old adage in hip hop apologist vernacular that used to make my blood boil; "He's not talking about me." In my mostly queer academic class privileged world, I am pretty much immune to the direct fallout of lyrics like the ones I've mentioned. They are frustrating and disappointing but their utterance and repetition seem to have less and less direct effect on my movements or relationships with cis gendered black men.

I see my work in this life as trying to address these issues in the music as oppose to retreat from them but I find a fatigued ambivalence the most accurate articulation of where I am right now. I am trying to figure out what my evolving relationship to rap music will be and I welcome you along for the ride.

*update*

My feelings might be best expressed by this video (what's up w/ the (non) relationship between the single black girl dancer and the white girl ensemble?). Thanks @ Chaseology for the link.

LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.

[1] Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.

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As a queer woman in love, sometimes it's hard to relate to what my straight sisters are going through. What used to make me want to hold rap stars accountable is now likely to pass my ears without so much as a raised eyebrow of concern from me.

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Back to Black (2020) by Prof. Kehinde Andrews 

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Back to Black (2020) by Prof. Kehinde Andrews 

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Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century by Kehinde Andrews - PDF Drive

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Back to Black traces the long and eminent history of Black radical politics. Born out of resistance to slavery and colonialism, its rich past encompasses figures such as Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter activists of today.

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Stuart Hall - Race, Gender, Class in the Media

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Documentary on African writing and how it countered colonialist stereotypes of Africa and Africans.

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Africa Turns The Page - The Novels That Shaped A Continent (2020)

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When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color

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When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color

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Available: Britbox

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Available: Netflix

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Period drama based on Jane Austen's novel about the husband-hunting Bennet sisters.

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In this period drama loosely based on Jane Austen's most autobiographical novel, penniless heroine Fanny Price is sent to live with wealthy relatives in 1800s England, where her wit and writing talent find the room and circumstance to grow.

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'Decolonise, Not Diversify' by Kavita Bhanot (2015)

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'Decolonise, Not Diversify' by Kavita Bhanot (2015)

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by Kavita Bhanot

Since the recent failure of World Book Night to include any writers of colour in its 2015 list, there has been a fresh bout of conversation about the need for more 'diversity' in the literature that is published and awarded in Britain, as well as amongst those working in publishing.

Alongside a series of Guardian articles, there has been a call for contributions to Nikesh Shukla's crowd-funded anthology on race and immigration (in itself a great idea); writers of colour have been invited to come forward, to contact Shukla. #diversedecember, a twitter initiative set up by bloggers Naomi Frisby and Dan Lipscombe, has been encouraging people to 'read with diversity' and share the 'diverse' books that they are reading. Many organisations and individuals, readers and writers, are joining in to help bring more 'diversity' to publishing.

To whom is all this directed? Who should read more 'diverse' literature? For whom is literature written by minority writers 'diverse'? For whom are minority writers 'diverse'? Can I describe myself as 'diverse' - do I exist in that space called 'diversity'?

The concept of diversity only exists if there is an assumed neutral point from which 'others' are 'diverse.' Putting aside for now the straight, male, middle-classness of that 'neutral' space, its dominant aspect is whiteness. Constructed by a white establishment, the idea of 'diversity' is neo-liberal speak. It is the new corporatized version of multiculturalism. It is about management, efficiency, box-ticking. As writers of colour, we parrot this idea back, reminding white institutions that they need to increase their diversity; appealing to them to let us in, to give some of us a seat at the table too. To help convince them, institutions are reminded that 'diversity' is actually good for them too, that it will help them to make more money. Danuta Keane writes, in the ' Writing the Future' report on the need for improved cultural/ethnic diversity in literature: 'this isn't about making the industry feel good. Monocultures are bad for business....within 20 years the UK BAME population will be 25%. If books don't reflect that, they will become increasingly irrelevant and unprofitable.' Similarly, Shukla writes in a Guardian article: 'I wouldn't be wasting my time if I didn't feel there was a potential financial reward for investing in BAME writers.' Meanwhile, a tweet on #diversedecember tells us, through a posted article, that 'just being around people of different ethnicities may literally make you smarter.'

Although the lack of interest in our work on the part of white publishers is a very real problem, when we respond to and celebrate 'diversity', we don't deeply challenge a white system. We only appeal to it, try to fit ourselves into it, make ourselves attractive to it to, trying to sell our 'diversity'. We go to workshops that tell us how, as BAME writers, we can brand ourselves better, package ourselves, make ourselves more marketable; to get funding, to find a publisher, to sell books. And in this way, we define ourselves through this system, softening ourselves, performing our identities and ethnicities for it. Perhaps there's little choice when you're entering the mainstream space as an isolated individual, as a writer or an editor; it's the only way to get in and survive. We don't talk about racism, just 'lack of diversity'. As Ellen Berry says in the recent article, ' Diversity is for white people: The big lie behind a well-intended word', 'Diversity is how we talk about race when we can't talk about race. It has become a stand-in when open discussion of race is too controversial or - let's be frank - when white people find the topic of race uncomfortable. Diversity seems polite, positive, hopeful.'

And it's just this non-threatening positivity, hopefulness and cheery celebration that we've seen in this new phase of 'diversity in literature' campaigning, co-curated by the Guardian, drawing on data and recommendations by the recent 'Spread the Word' report. '#diversedecember is a celebration of books by BAME writers. For December 2015, read with diversity and spread the joy of stories' is the message on the twitter page for this worthy cause. 'Diverse December lifts the Christmas spirits,' writes Jackie Kay in the double-page article in Guardian Review, ' How do we stop UK publishing being so posh and white? ' Meanwhile, the extraordinary success of Nikesh Shukla's crowd-funded anthology of essays about race and immigration has left him feeling 'a mixture of relief and vindication that there is such a fierce appetite for BAME voices out there.'

Such diversity campaigns make it all look so easy. Through one concrete action, or perhaps a list of actions, everyone can help to sort out the problem. You can recommend your favourite 'diverse' book on #diversedecember. Feeling virtuous, you can read a 'diverse' book this month; a bit like medicine, reading a diverse book is good for you, it opens up your mind, teaches you about another culture/country. 'Today, we'd really like to receive recommendations of books by Muslim authors, please!' #diversedecember tweeted on the 9th December. 'Also don't neglect your genre fiction in #diversedecember - crime novels especially are an amazing way of reading about non-Western life,' says one retweet.

Or you can contribute money to the proposed collection of essays on 'race and immigration' (avoiding the word 'racism'). 'I think this will be an important, timely read. Help fund The Good Immigrant (I've donated at link below)' tweets JK Rowling. (How can race, racism or immigration be timely, you wonder, 'flavour of the month'?)

Rowling, after a generous contribution, is now patron of Shukla's anthology. Her name will grace the front cover of the book. Nobody questions the fact that a book on 'race and immigration' has also now become about Rowling as celebrity white saviour. 'JK Rowling inspires surge to fund book on race and immigration in three days,' the Guardian article, carrying her photograph, tells us. This is the same writer who was recently criticised in two excellent letters by Mia Oudeh (a fan of the Harry Potter series), for signing the 'Culture for Coexistence' letter, supporting Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and opposition to the BDS movement. According to Rowling, 'boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory'.

Like accusations of reverse racism or casteism, there is not only naïvete, but also violence in erasing historical and continuing oppressions and power hierarchies, labelling the oppressed who seek to redress, 'divisive' and 'discriminatory'. It is the same conciliatory, ahistorical approach that can ground these diversity in literature campaigns. There is a sense that everyone only needs to come together, make a bit of an effort with a few simple acts. Diversity is about forgetting the past, and celebrating a multi-coloured present. Diversity initiatives often involve a Benetton style ad of 'diverse looking' people's faces, and we see such an image adorning the cover of the Guardian Review which contains the aforementioned article, 'How do we stop UK publishing being so posh and white?'

In this article, various writers, publishers, organisers of festivals have listed the things that they have done or pledge to do to improve the situation. Jackie Kay tells us that Carol Ann Duffy has offered to give up her place on the list of books for World Book Night for a 'diverse' writer. Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival pledges that he will, among other things, 'buy another copy of The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma and give it to someone as a Christmas present'; 'try to persuade Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to visit the UK with a group of emerging African writers'; 'invite Jackie Kay to talk to Syrian refugees in Scotland and share their stories at the book festival" and 'ask Kamila Shamsie and Mohammed Hanif to recommend Pakistani writers not yet known here, and invite them to Edinburgh'. Meanwhile Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton writes in the same article, 'luckily, there are partners we can work with. The Caine prize for African writing, the Muslim writers awards and the DSC prize for south Asian literature, for example, do a great job in showcasing diverse writers, as do magazines such as Wasafiri and SABLE LitMag'.

We see here one of the problems with quick-fixes to the 'diversity' problem: they usually involve reaching out for the handful of well-known names, writers, organisations that immediately come to mind, promoting them or asking them for advice and recommendations (although there have been some new and lesser known writers recommended and highlighted on #diversedecember). Not to undermine the good work that some of these magazines and prizes do, but this approach ensures that literature remains in the same circles of power, within one class and caste. Such tokenism also means that it is often the writers of colour who are most visible, who work the hardest to turn themselves into shiny friendly packages, who are most acceptable and amenable, that are reached for. These includes international writers who are westernised, cosmopolitan, upper class and upper caste, or British writers whose ideologies and world views, articulated through their fiction and non-fiction, most resemble that of white Britain, right wing or left-liberal. My research, which has included close readings of contemporary published British Asian literature, has shown that the writers who overtly spout the kind of racism that it is no longer 'politically correct' for a white public figure to articulate, are often the most visible and celebrated. The racism in the books and articles by these writers is acceptable, since they are of South Asian origin, and it is invisible because it is normalised in British society. It is perhaps inevitable that writers who are a product of British society, education, literature, media, will internalise and reproduce white supremacy. The literature they write is directed towards white readers; it is about Britishness, about assimilation, about becoming a British citizen. Their representations of 'difference' often feed racism and stereotypes, with their focus primarily on the 'reverse racism' of their families and communities.

It is perhaps not an accident that these writers are so often given a voice and platform. Diversity boxes are ticked, without really shaking things up too much. Even within this double-page spread Guardian article, two or three of the writers, doing okay themselves, undermine the claimed intention of the piece by writing that they don't really see that there is too much of a problem. Sarfraz Manzoor 'would be wary of an excessive focus on race and religion', while Akhil Sharma feels that he has actually "'benefited from being an ethnic writer ... Because I am writing about things that are not well known, and I am writing about a community that people are curious about, I have received a great deal of attention ... my complaining would feel churlish since I have benefited so much from being a minority'.

Who are the 'people' who are curious about the community that Sharma is writing about, allowing him to 'benefit' from his ethnicity? Certainly not the community he is writing about. It is clear in what Sharma says, who his work is directed towards, who he writes for. 'People' here equals white people. So much of our writing consciously or unconsciously reproduces this assumption, and subtly reveals internalised white supremacy. There was an uproar when Marlon James talked about the pressure on writers to pander to white women, but such pressures, on the part of agents and editors, are real. Although it is not necessarily a conscious, cynical pandering, we often unconsciously direct our work towards the white reader, privileging the white reader, since that is the normative perspective. We will continue to do this unless we consciously interrogate ourselves, unless we read each others work and our own critically, to 'see' white supremacy (along with upper class and caste, male, heterosexual supremacy) in what has come before and what continues to be produced. In order to write differently. This will certainly not happen in university creative writing courses, mentoring schemes, through mainstream editors or discussions at literature festivals, where white literature is held up as the 'real' literature that we all need to aspire towards.

Adopting a phrase that is being used by radical anti-racist campaigns and movements growing and connecting across the world today, as writers and editors we need to 'decolonise, not diversify', and that is what we need to demand of publishers, creative writing courses, and mentoring schemes too. Decolonisation does not airbrush colonial history, decolonisation takes continuing white supremacy head-on. And if publishers or organisers of literature festivals are not interested in literature that comes from this place, that doesn't privilege the white reader, we need to use models such as Shukla's crowd-funded book, to produce our own literature. We need to organise our own festivals. There are writers, publishers and organisations that have been and continue, despite all odds, doing this.

But to focus only on numbers, as the 'Writing the Future' report does, to talk only about the need for a greater 'diversity' of writers in terms of background, is a limited and misleading approach. The real problem is not simply a monoculture but a mono-ideology, a mono-perspective. I'm sorry to spoil the party, but this is not a problem that was going to be solved this December or even, now that #diversitydecember has become #ReadDiverse2016.
All work published on Media Diversified is the intellectual property of its writers. Please do not reproduce, republish or repost any content from this site without express written permission from Media Diversified. For further information, please see our reposting guidelines This article is part of our You can find out more and support Bare Lit Festival 2016, giving authors and poets of colour the platform and visibility they deserve here Did you enjoy reading this article? Help us continue to provide more! Media Diversified is 100% reader-funded -you can subscribe for as little as £5 per month academic experimental space for long form writing. A space for provocative and engaging writing from any academic discipline. .
Kavita Bhanot grew up in London, lived for many years in Birmingham, then moved to India, where she directed an international literature festival, worked as an editor for India's first literary agency and set up and ran a guest house in Himachal Pradesh. Having spent some years in Manchester (she recently completed a PhD at Manchester University, in Creative Writing and Literature) she now lives between UK and India. Her short stories and non-fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines and journals, two of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and she is the editor of the short story collection Too Asian, Not Asian Enough (Tindal Street Press, 2011). She is a reader with The Literary Consultancy. Kavita has, over the last fifteen years, been working with writers in the UK and South Asia, as mentor and editor, as well as through organising events, workshops, reading/writing groups and conferences around the politics of reading, writing and representation. Her focus, through these events, through academic research, through social media, and in her fiction and non-fiction, has particularly been on punjabiyat, ideology and white, upper class/caste and male supremacy in 'British Asian' literature.

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by Kavita Bhanot Since the recent failure of World Book Night to include any writers of colour in its 2015 list, there has been a fresh bout of conversation about the need for more 'diversity' in the literature that is published and awarded in Britain, as well as amongst those working in publishing.

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White Women, Race Matters... by Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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White Women, Race Matters... by Ruth Frankenberg (1993)

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White Women, Race Matters_ The Social Construction of Whiteness ( PDFDrive )

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White people are not literally or symbolically white; nor are they uniquely virtuous and pure. Racial imagery and racial representation are central to the organisation of the contemporary world but, while there are many studies of images of black and Asian people, whiteness is an invisible racial po

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Black Reconstruction in America by WEB DuBois (1935)

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Black Reconstruction in America by WEB DuBois (1935)

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Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 - PDF Drive

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The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been fre

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh (1988)

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh (1988)

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Noel Ignatiev (Noel Ignatin)

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In 1995, Noel Ignatiev, a recent graduate of the doctoral program in history at Harvard, published his dissertation with Routledge, an academic press. Many such books appear, then disappear, subsumed into the endless paper shuffling of the academic credentialling process. But Ignatiev was not a typical graduate student, and his book, " How the Irish Became White," was not meant to stay within the academy. A fifty-four-year-old Marxist radical, Ignatiev had come to the academy after two decades of work in steel mills and factories. The provocative argument at the center of his book-that whiteness was not a biological fact but rather a social construction with boundaries that shifted over time-had emerged, in large part, out of his observations of how workers from every conceivable background had interacted on the factory floor. Ignatiev wasn't merely describing these dynamics; he wanted to change them. If whiteness could be created, it could also be destroyed.

"How the Irish Became White" quickly broke out of the academic-publishing bubble. Writing in the Washington Post, the historian Nell Irvin Painter called it "the most interesting history book of 1995." Mumia Abu-Jamal, the activist and death-row inmate, provided an enthusiastic back-cover blurb. Today, many of the ideas Ignatiev proposed or refined-about the nature of whiteness, and about the racial dynamics that unfold among immigrant workers-are taken for granted in classrooms; they influence films, literature, and art. But Ignatiev found it hard to accept the academic rewards that came with his book's success. Committed to radicalism, he spent much of his time in academia doing what he had done on the factory floor: publishing leaflets and zines about the possibilities of revolutionary change.

He was still at it on October 27th, when Hard Crackers, a journal that Ignatiev edited with a collection of friends and old collaborators, threw a launch party for its latest issue, at Freddy's Bar, in Brooklyn. Wearing a white Panama hat and a loose-fitting suit, Ignatiev spoke briefly: Hard Crackers, he said, had been founded with the conviction that American society was a "time bomb," and that its salvation could only come through the stories and actions of ordinary people. In that spirit, the journal published short, memoir-driven portraits of working Americans, in the style of Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel." This portraiture served a political purpose. Ignatiev and his fellow-editors hoped to provoke small but potentially explosive moments of revelation in their readers-to create instants of autonomy which, they thought, might allow those readers to forge coalitions with other seekers of "a new society." This philosophy, inspired by the work of the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, had run through all of Ignatiev's work as a radical youth, a radical factory worker, and then, finally, a radical scholar.

Ignatiev's speech was energetic, funny, and shot through with brio and irony. But it included a note of reflection. Ignatiev said that he had spent most of his life around people who vehemently disagreed with everything he said; he was confident that he had always been right, but also pretty sure that being right had amounted to nothing. He seemed to be posing a difficult question for those who believe, as Ignatiev did, in spontaneous revolutionary change: How do you measure success if the revolution hasn't yet come? A few days later, Ignatiev flew out to Arizona to see his daughter and grandchildren. On November 9th, he died, at the age of seventy-eight.

The question of what Ignatiev accomplished is especially hard to answer because his radicalism took so many forms. He was born in 1940, in Philadelphia, into a family of working-class Russian Jews. By seventeen, he had joined the Communist Party; after dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to Chicago to work in the steel mills. He would be a factory laborer for more than two decades, always with an eye toward provoking his fellow-workers into looking at their struggle in new ways. In 1967, he composed a letter to the Progressive Labor Party that outlined his views. "The greatest ideological barrier to the achievement of proletarian class consciousness, solidarity and political action is now, and has been historically, white chauvinism," Ignatiev wrote. "White chauvinism is the ideological bulwark of the practice of white supremacy, the general oppression of blacks by whites." He argued that it would be impossible to build true solidarity among the working class without addressing the question of race, because white workers could always be placated by whatever privileges, however meaningless, management dangled in front of them. The only way to change this was for white working-class people to reject whiteness altogether. "In the struggle for socialism," Ignatiev wrote, white workers "have more to lose than their chains; they have also to 'lose' their white-skin privileges, the perquisites that separate them from the rest of the working class, that act as the material base for the split in the ranks of labor."

Many scholars have cited Ignatiev's letter as one of the first articulations of the modern idea of "white privilege." But Ignatiev's version differs from the one we often use today. In his conception, white privilege wasn't an accounting tool used to compile inequalities; it was a shunt hammered into the minds of the white working class to make its members side with their masters instead of rising up with their black comrades. White privilege was a deceptive tactic wielded by bosses-a way of tricking exploited workers into believing that they were "white."

In the late sixties, when Ignatiev was still working in steel mills and factories, he and a number of collaborators started the Sojourner Truth Organization, which aimed to approach labor organizing through the lens of race. S.T.O. members entered factories with two main goals: collaborating with black and Latino worker organizations, and putting Ignatiev's theory of white-skin privileges into action. The white workers, Ignatiev believed, were capable of repudiating their whiteness; they needed only to be provoked into consciousness. The S.T.O. hoped to accomplish this through the dissemination of workplace publications, such as the Calumet Insurgent Worker, and constant conversation. In an essay titled "Black Worker, White Worker," from 1972, Ignatiev examined what he called the "civil war" in the minds of his white colleagues in plants and steel mills. It begins with an anecdote:

In one department of a giant steel mill in northwest Indiana a foreman assigned a white worker to the job of operating a crane. The Black workers in the department felt that on the basis of seniority and job experience, one of them should have been given the job, which represented a promotion from the labor gang. They spent a few hours in the morning talking among themselves and agreed that they had a legitimate beef. Then they went and talked to the white workers in the department and got their support. After lunch the other crane operators mounted their cranes and proceeded to block in the crane of the newly promoted worker-one crane on each side of his-and run at the slowest possible speed, thus stopping work in the department. By the end of the day the foreman had gotten the message. He took the white worker off the crane and replaced him with a Black worker, and the cranes began to move again.

A few weeks after the slowdown, several of the white workers who had joined the black operators in protest took part in meetings in Glen Park, a virtually all-white section of Gary, with the aim of seceding from the city, in order to escape from the administration of the black mayor, Richard Hatcher. While the secessionists demanded, in their words, "the power to make the decisions which affect their lives," it was clear that the effort was racially inspired.

To Ignatiev, these contradictions revealed a white mind perpetually battling with itself. On one side were the learned behaviors, expectations, and falsehoods associated with being "white"; on the other was the recognition, however suppressed and forbidden, that black and white workers' concerns were aligned. The learned behaviors triumphed, Ignatiev thought, because of "the ideology and institution of white supremacy, which provides the illusion of common interests between the exploited white masses and the white ruling class." In the workplace, Ignatiev had seen white people who seemed to be enforcing their whiteness only out of habit, or because they feared social rebuke, or suffered under the illusion that they might one day ascend to the ownership class. Their "civil war," he thought, was winnable: one just had to show the white workers that their true enemies were the bosses.

Around that time, according to Ignatiev's longtime friend and collaborator Kingsley Clarke, the steel industry had placed racist restrictions on black and Latino laborers, who were given dangerous jobs in blast furnaces and ovens and blocked from moving into safer and higher-paying positions within plants. The federal government eventually intervened, through an early iteration of the Affirmative Action program, and Ignatiev and the S.T.O. created smaller organizations that aimed to force the larger trade union to comply with the new law. Ignatiev found that many black workers were receptive to those efforts; he felt that he never quite broke through with whites. "The only white people who seemed to sympathize were the evangelical Christian types," Clarke told me. "But when it came to asking them to open up the jobs for the black workers, none of them wanted to do that." Ignatiev was discouraged; at the same time, Clarke never saw him waver in his beliefs. "Noel kept saying, look, if we can just change five people's minds, we can change the world!"

In the eighties, the economy began to shift. Automation took root, and plants began laying off workers. Contemplating the large, industrial workforces of prior decades, Ignatiev had been able to imagine workers forming councils, seizing the means of production, and deposing their bosses. But, as factories emptied out, he no longer knew where to look. In his forties, he, too, was laid off. He decided to go back to school. A friend from S.T.O. who had been admitted to Harvard's Graduate School of Education persuaded the administration to admit Ignatiev, despite the fact that he lacked a bachelor's degree. Ignatiev enrolled, then transferred to the history department, where he worked toward his doctorate.

Ignatiev was now a student at the most prestigious university in the world. But he still believed in creating literary projects unencumbered by the traditional press and its credentialled demands. In 1993, he and his friend John Garvey, a former New York City cab driver whom he'd met on the radical labor circuit, started Race Traitor, a journal with the motto "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." John Brown, the white man who led a small militia of black men as they raided an arsenal, at Harpers Ferry, in hopes of sparking an armed slave rebellion, became their lodestar-an example of what it might look like to reject one's whiteness. Ignatiev and Garvey, who is also an editor at Hard Crackers, called for an "abolition of the white race." This prompted the expected outrage from right-wingers, who heard a call for extinction, but also upset liberals, who saw them as impractical troublemakers.

In 1995, Ignatiev finished the dissertation that would become "How the Irish Became White." Not long ago, someone asked him why he had written the book. "The country is divided into masters and slaves," Ignatiev wrote:

A big political problem is that many of the slaves think they are masters, or at least side with the masters at crucial moments-because they think they are white. I wanted to understand why the Irish, coming from conditions about as bad as could be imagined and thrown into low positions when they arrived, came to side with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed. Imagine how history might have been different had the Irish, the unskilled labor force of the north, and the slaves, the unskilled labor force of the South, been unified. I hoped that understanding why that didn't happen in the past might open up new possibilities next time.

The book was a hit, by academic standards. Ignatiev now had a powerful platform. But he was also a decade removed from the steel mills, and he was unsure how much a book could really do. Privately, he questioned the value of his new life in the highest reaches of the academy. His on-campus provocations-which included a 1992 incident in which he called for the removal of a kosher toaster oven in a student dormitory-only caused bewilderment among students and administrators.

By 1998, it was time for him to move on. He accepted a post at Bowdoin College, a small school in Maine that mostly catered to white New England prep schoolers. The first class he taught there was a freshman seminar on the making of race; his most adoring student that semester was me, a naïve, vain eighteen-year-old Korean immigrant from North Carolina who desperately wanted to live outside the confines dictated by his race and his own privilege. Ignatiev, with his stories of working in the steel mills, his scorn for credentialled people, and his unwavering belief that a society free from white supremacy was possible, provided a model of a life worth living. I attended all of his office hours, learned to idolize John Brown, and read everything he put in front of me. In my dorm room and in the cafeteria, I talked excitedly to my confused friends about revolutionary politics and abolishing whiteness. At the end of that year, I dropped out and enrolled in Americorps, in hopes of becoming a radical.

I learned, ultimately, that I didn't have the strength of his convictions. I could never see a new society in my co-workers or, perhaps more importantly, in myself. Even so, I kept looking for traces of what Ignatiev was talking about. There are moments-observing a seemingly small gesture of kindness between two protesters in St. Paul, or noticing the elegant design of the food halls at Standing Rock-when some great possibility seems to reveal itself. When that happens, I think immediately of Ignatiev and his belief in the revolutionary potential of ordinary Americans.

A couple of months before he died, I drove up to see Ignatiev at his home, in Connecticut. His illness prevented him from swallowing, but he wanted to cook dinner for me in his back yard, where he had fitted a large wok over a rusty propane ring. "Even though I can't eat anymore, I still find it relaxing to cook," he told me. As we chopped up the vegetables in a light rain, we talked about all the things we had discussed in his office-John Brown, labor movements, the need to break away from credentialled society. Just as he would a few weeks later, at Freddy's Bar, he expressed doubt about whether his work had amounted to anything.

I am not so vain as to believe that Noel's influence on my life provides proof that his work, in fact, made a difference. If his ideas about whiteness and of "white privilege" became fashionable within the academy, they later took on forms he could barely recognize, and oftentimes, despised. He was bewildered by the rise of a style of identity politics that reified the fictions of race and, through its fixation on diversity in élite spaces, abandoned the working class. And as a lifelong radical he took little solace in the rise of a young, insurgent left drawn to the reformist revolution of Democratic Socialism. These movements, I imagine, must have felt like defeats to Ignatiev. We are very far from the abolition of the white race, and there are very few people who believe that changing the minds of five, much less five hundred thousand people, could potentially revolutionize the world.

And yet, from another perspective, there is no political or literary trend-or President-capable of derailing Ignatiev's true lifelong project. In his writing, and in Race Traitor and Hard Crackers, Ignatiev demonstrated the transformative power of working-class stories. His radicalism was always tethered to specific people, who, in their own ways, inspired sympathy and a desire for connection. That specificity will always be relevant; it may be especially so at a moment of cynical alienation, when identities have become recitations rather than communities. There is enduring power in the narratives he collected and shared-the stories of people he met as a child, in Philadelphia, or in the plants and mills of Chicago, or in his classrooms. My favorite of these stories is included in the introduction to "How the Irish Became White":

On one occasion, many years ago, I was sitting on my front step when my neighbor came out of the house next door carrying her small child, whom she placed in her automobile. She turned away from him for a moment, and as she started to close the car door, I saw that the child had put his hand where it would be crushed when the door was closed. I shouted to the woman to stop. She halted in mid-motion, and when she realized what she had almost done, an amazing thing happened: she began laughing, then broke into tears and began hitting the child. It was the most intense and dramatic display of conflicting emotions I have ever beheld. My attitude toward the subjects of this study accommodates stresses similar to those I witnessed in that mother.

Sometimes, while walking around gentrifying Brooklyn, I will see young, white progressives talking to the people whom they are displacing. There's an officiousness-an almost disingenuous toadying-to these interactions that I, with my modern, fashionable prejudices, find a bit funny and gross. Do they believe that the contradictions between their stated politics and their actual lives can be cleansed through ritualistic bonhomie? Or are they just saying an extended goodbye to their temporary neighbors? Ignatiev might have looked at those same conversations and seen people who desperately wanted to be saved from their whiteness. He might have walked by, with a generosity of spirit that I do not possess, and dropped a few leaflets at their feet, filled with enthusiastic, optimistic provocations, and unreasonable demands.

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Noel Ignatiev's Long Fight Against Whiteness

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In 1995, Noel Ignatiev, a recent graduate of the doctoral program in history at Harvard, published his dissertation with Routledge, an academic press. Many such books appear, then disappear, subsumed into the endless paper shuffling of the academic credentialling process.

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Available: Amazon Prime

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Three Faces of Civilisation... by Robert Van Krieken (2011)

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Three Faces of Civilisation... by Robert Van Krieken (2011)

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This paper outlines a refinement of the sociological usage of the concept 'civilization' by distinguishing between three different 'faces' of civilization - as the opposite of barbarism, as equivalent to culture, and in Elias's sense as capturing a particular trajectory of socio-historical development. I then illustrate how this distinction between three different faces of civilization can be deployed in relation to the history of the various attempts by the English to civilize the population of Ireland. Finally, I reflect on the centrality of the experience of the colonization of Ireland for the English conception of how 'barbarism' should be understood and opposed to 'civilization' (which was then later mobilized in the colonization of the New World), as well as on the ways in which the colonization of Ireland constituted a binding together of both civilizing and decivilizing processes.

References

Dates given in square brackets are those of first publication.
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Buruma, Ian , (2004), 'Lost in translation: the two minds of Bernard Lewis', The New Yorker, 14 June.
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Elias, Norbert , (2000 [1969]), 'Postscript (1968)', in The Civilizing Process, rev. edn, Oxford: Blackwell: 449-83 [further rev. edn On the Process of Civilisation, Collected Works, Vol. 3, forthcoming].
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Zwaan, Ton , (2003), 'On Civilizing and Decivilizing Processes: A Theoretical Discussion', in Dunning, Eric , and Mennell, Stephen , (eds), Norbert Elias - Vol. 4 (Sage Masters of Modern Social Thought), London: Sage: 167-75.
Google Scholar

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Three Faces of Civilization: 'In the Beginning All the World was Ireland' - Robert van Krieken, 2011

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This paper outlines a refinement of the sociological usage of the concept 'civilization' by distinguishing between three different 'faces' of civilization - as the opposite of barbarism, as equivalent to culture, and in Elias's sense as capturing a particular trajectory of socio-historical development.

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Critical Whiteness Studies by Anoop Nayak (2007)

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Critical Whiteness Studies by Anoop Nayak (2007)

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Abstract

Until relatively recently the sociology of race and ethnicity, with a few notable exceptions, has been predominantly concerned with ethnic minorities and colour‐based forms of racism. However, developments across a range disciplines have seen a new attention given to the question of white ethnicity and the meaning of whiteness. This paper considers three discernable approaches to critical whiteness studies and is focused on developing a productive dialogue between the materialist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic frameworks identified. The author argues that these repertoires differ in seeking to abolish, deconstruct or rethink the meaning of whiteness and white identities as they currently stand. It is suggested that each of these positions can inspire an interrogation of white identities capable of disturbing the more traditional focus of race enquiry to engender new theory and political practices in the field. The article concludes by pointing to some of the limits of white ethnicities research and argues for more international approaches to offset the parochial possibilities of a 'white studies' agenda. It is suggested that new geographies of whiteness can displace the construction of critical whiteness studies as a Western pursuit and open up researchers to a global interpretation and postcolonial understanding of such race markers.

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Until relatively recently the sociology of race and ethnicity, with a few notable exceptions, has been predominantly concerned with ethnic minorities and colour‐based forms of racism. However, developments across a range disciplines have seen a new attention given to the question of white ethnicity and the meaning of whiteness.

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Declarations of Whiteness by Sara Ahmed (2004)

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Declarations of Whiteness by Sara Ahmed (2004)

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. 2004. Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism. Borderlands, 3(2), [Article]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

This paper examines six different modes for declaring whiteness used within academic writing, public culture and government policy, arguing that such declarations are non-performative: they do not do what they say. The paper offers a general critique of the mode of declaration, in which 'admissions' of 'bad practice' are taken up as signs of 'good practice', as well as a more specific critique of how whiteness studies constitutes itself through such declarations. The declarative mode involves a fantasy of transcendence in which 'what' is transcended is the very 'thing' admitted to in the declaration (for example, if we are say that we are racists, then we are not racists, as racists do not know they are racists). By investigating declarative speech acts, the paper offers a critique of the self-reflexive turn in whiteness studies, suggesting that we should not rush too quickly beyond the exposure of racism by turning towards whiteness as a marked category, by identifying 'what white people can do' , by describing good practice, or even by assuming that whiteness studies can provide the conditions of anti-racism. Declarations of whiteness could be described as ''unhappy performatives', the conditions are not in place that would allow such declarations to do what they say.

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2004. Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism. Borderlands, 3(2), [Article] No full text available This paper examines six different modes for declaring whiteness used within academic writing, public culture and government policy, arguing that such declarations are non-performative: they do not do what they say.

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Description

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Financial Times Book of the Year Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year Guardian Book of the Year New Statesman Book of the Year 'Roundly debunks racism's core lie - that inequality is to do with genetics, rather than political power' Reni Eddo-Lodge Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean?

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The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)

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What White Looks Like... ed. George Yancy (2004)

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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)

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Power, Politics and Emotions (2015) by Shona Hunter

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The National Trust has been silent for too long on identifying the historic connections its properties have with slavery and colonialism, its director-general said today. Hilary McGrady said the trust's research project had identified that just under one third of the historic properties it cares for had "direct or indirect links to colonialism broadly and slavery more specifically".

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by Michael Staudenmaier

Noel Ignatiev died on November 9, 2019, at the age of 78. As both a worker and a scholar, Ignatiev modeled the sort of public engagement that radical academics strive for, even while he represented an era - in the US economy, in academia, and in left politics - that for the most part no longer exists. Deindustrialization and automation have made it far harder to find and keep a job in a steel mill, and the casualization of academic labor has made it all but impossible for someone to get a PhD, much less tenure, without an undergraduate degree. That Ignatiev accomplished all of these things, spending, as he put it in an interview this year, "23 years in industry and 33 years in the academy," testified above all else to the intensity of his political commitments.
Agitation
First and foremost, Ignatiev was a militant. Born Noel Ignatin, he was a red-diaper baby who held tightly to a (radically transformed) version of his childhood communist politics throughout his life.

Despite a perpetual tendency to challenge political orthodoxy in all its forms, he spent his life largely as a joiner rather than a political independent. As an adult, he belonged to a sequence of ever-smaller revolutionary organizations: the Communist Party (CPUSA), the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (POC), and the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO), which he helped found at the end of 1969. After leaving STO around 1984, he helped establish two publishing collectives, producing the journal Race Traitor intermittently from 1993 to 2006, and the magazine Hard Crackers.

Race Traitor was published intermittently between 1993 and 2005. Image courtesy of Michael Staudenmaier.

During his decades of political work, Ignatiev worked best as an agitator rather than an organizer. He wrote and spoke in energizing and often deliberately polarizing ways, highlighting the central issues in language devoid of the jargon so often found in far-left publications. In the mills, he rejected the United Steel Workers (USW) union as a vehicle for struggle, and instead invariably supported grassroots campaigns initiated by his most militant black co-workers, regardless of whether these were supported or opposed by the USW.

He also agitated outside of the steel mills. To offer just one example, in February 1974, a nationwide strike of independent long-haul truck drivers nearly brought the US economy to its knees. On the day the strike began, truckers refused to continue their shipments, and instead congregated at truck stops across the country. One of these was in Gary, Indiana, where Ignatin was living at the time. While the striking truckers were disproportionately white and male, he and STO viewed their willingness to wildcat (as independent contractors, they had no union) and their capacity to disrupt the normal functioning of capitalism to be potentially revolutionary. Ignatin and other members of STO provided material support to the strikers, including printing posters and coordinating communication by helping truckers stuck in Gary make contact with local families of truckers encamped elsewhere.
Treason
After leaving STO, Ignatiev moved to Massachusetts and eventually obtained both a master's degree and a PhD (in History of American Civilization) from Harvard University. In 1993, while completing his dissertation, he cofounded the publication Race Traitor, with its famous masthead slogan, "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." This work, which in many ways marked a continuation of his political work and writing within STO and the steel mills, nonetheless brought his thinking to a far wider audience than he had ever encountered before.

Race Traitor happened to emerge at the right time, as the scholarly consensus that race was socially constructed rather than based in biological differences began to filter more broadly into popular consciousness. The journal, along with his 1996 book, How the Irish Became White, became cornerstones of the emerging academic sub-field of whiteness studies, much to Ignatiev's subsequent chagrin. While other academics analyzed white identity in order to match the identity politics advanced by radical activists and scholars of color, Ignatiev and Race Traitor wanted to destroy whiteness in order to create the conditions for revolution. Indeed, the journal's editors adopted the label "abolitionist," explicitly connecting themselves to anti-slavery radicals of the antebellum period.

This notion of historical inquiry as a practical exercise in radical political struggle against white supremacy was not unique to Ignatiev: David Roediger, Theodore W. Allen, and others in the pioneering generation of "whiteness studies" were similarly motivated, and similarly frustrated to watch as the field become progressively legitimated into the academic mainstream. Ignatiev must share some responsibility, both for better and for worse, for the contemporary ubiquity of privilege-based narratives of oppression. Regardless, he at the very least did his best to mark out the lines of division between what he sometimes called the loyal and the disloyal opposition, with his own commitments firmly in the latter camp.
Agency
In historiographic terms, Ignatiev's major contribution had to do with marrying two lines of thought that were taking the academy by storm in the 1990s: the study of whiteness as a social construction; and the analytic priority given to the "agency" of historically marginalized populations, over and against older scholarly models that centered structural forces in the making of history, including structures of oppression. Ever the historical materialist, Ignatiev's version of agency was not a form of magical thinking that turned every incident of oppression into a previously undiscovered act of resistance, but rather an empirically grounded argument about collective capacity and responsibility.

Ignatiev's focus on agency in historical contexts had its roots in his political experience as an agitator in the steel mills of Gary. In 1972, while working in the mills, he gave a speech later published under the title, "Black Worker, White Worker" (a reference to W.E.B. DuBois, specifically to the titles of the first two chapters of Black Reconstruction in America). Here, he linked the black freedom struggle to the possibilities for socialist revolution in the United States and on a world scale. Borrowing tone and terminology from the black Trinidadian revolutionary intellectual CLR James, Ignatin wrote that "the daily activities of the Black people, especially the Black workers, are the best existing model for the aspirations of the workers generally as a distinct class of people. Other groups in society, when they act collectively on their own, usually represent partial and occasionally even reactionary interests. The activities of the Black workers are the most advanced outpost of the new society we seek to establish." While he later became more concerned about the limits of black radicalism, he always maintained an almost utopian belief that a popular, anti-capitalist revolution could create a free and humane society.

A quarter-century later, in How the Irish Became White, Ignatiev made a related point. Rather than viewing whiteness as a structural force that somehow naturally absorbed newly arrived European immigrants into itself, he demonstrated the important work done by working class Irish immigrants in the antebellum North to advance their own incorporation into whiteness. As he put it, "In viewing entry into the white race as something the Irish did 'on' (though not by) themselves, this book seeks to make them the actors in their own history." (p. 4) Notably, this inverted a common trope in agency-centered scholarship, focusing on the agency of the oppressed to oppress others, rather than their capacity to resist oppression as such. (A similar re-purposing of traditional "agency of the oppressed" logic animates Thavolia Glymph's 2008 monograph, Out of the House of Bondage, which carefully documents the capacity and agency of white women enslavers for the horrors of slavery.)

Just weeks before his death, Ignatiev laid out his "debt and obligation" to another early revolutionary scholar of whiteness, Theodore W. Allen, whose two-volume The Invention of the White Race, was published two years before How the Irish Became White. The two men had known each other since the 1950s, and Allen had been a mentor to Ignatiev as a young communist. According to Ignatiev, Allen had coined the term "white skin privilege" in the 1960s, and the two had collaborated on a pivotal early piece in the development of the theory, the 1967 pamphlet "The White Blindspot" (another DuBois reference, this time to a famous passage near the end of Black Reconstruction, which decades later also inspired the title of Roediger's well known The Wages of Whiteness). Like Ignatiev, Allen was a life-long communist militant, though the latter never obtained a university degree and never taught above the junior high school level.

In Ignatiev's rendering, the two disagreed over how to assign blame for the entirely lamentable emergence of the white race. Where Allen focused overwhelmingly on the actions of a supposed cabal of colonial elites in and around the House of Burgesses in 17 th-century Virginia, Ignatiev believed the persistence of white skin privilege "cannot be blamed on bourgeois machinations; one must look instead to its roots within the working-class movement." But where others saw blame, Ignatiev actually saw opportunity: what had been done could also be undone. If the past held a lesson for the present, it was that white skin privileges could be repudiated in struggle, and a working class no longer divided along racial lines could overthrow capitalism. Even at his most academic, in the midst of a debate about racial distinctions in colonial Virginia, Ignatiev foregrounded the political consequences.
Conflict
Ignatiev was no saint. While his writing and activism inspired many, both in activist and academic circles, he managed to anger and alienate people with remarkable frequency over his long career. As a result, he made enemies everywhere he went, not only among bosses, reactionaries and white supremacists, but also often among his own (former) comrades and friends.

Even among those who remained close to him, every single friend and comrade could tell a story of confrontation and challenge. In the 1970s, Ignatiev was known to criticize mainstream labor unions involved in strikes, particularly if (as has so often been the case) the striking workers were members of overwhelmingly white unions and the strikebreakers were largely black or Latina/o/x. Bill Lamme, a former member of STO and now a retired public school teacher and Chicago Teachers Union militant, tells a story in which he eagerly explained his work in support of striking factory workers in Iowa around 1975. Ignatiev's response was to ask, "How can you be sure you are on the right side?"

Later conflicts were even more explosive. In 1996, a year before his own death, Ted Allen demanded that his name be removed from the masthead of Race Traitor, where it had been prominently placed for the first five issues. He did so because he objected to the publication in issue #5 of an exchange of letters between Ignatiev and an anonymous neo-Nazi who expressed, in the pages of the journal, explicit racial hatred toward people of color and toward Jews. This was far from the only time Ignatiev was accused of coddling anti-Semites.

By the mid-2000s, many others had taken serious issue with Ignatiev's continuing and apparently friendly interactions with the anti-Semitic writer Israel Shamir, whose writing was published in the final issue of Race Traitor in 2006. A similar dalliance between Ignatiev and the anti-Semitic jazz musician Gilad Atzmon ended in 2011, not because of Atzmon's repugnant views on Jews, but because Ignatiev could not countenance Atzmon's comparison of the Palestinian right of self-determination to that of "lost cause" white supremacists who upheld the "right" of the Confederacy to self-determination - and slavery - in the context of the US Civil War.

Given Ignatiev's life-long opposition to white supremacy, such controversial positions can be hard to understand. My best guess is that Ignatiev, who permanently rejected the formal politics of Stalinism in the late 1960s, spent the rest of his life struggling to shed the remnants of Stalinist political method that persisted in his political DNA. He was raised in a world of vitriolic rhetoric and ideologically driven splits inside already small organizations that believed they had sole access to the "scientific" truths of class struggle. In a seemingly endless array of circumstances, Ignatiev saw both principles and people through an instrumentalist lens, as tools or mechanisms through which to accomplish one or another political objective. While these goals - freedom for Palestine, the destruction of white supremacy, the defense of black autonomy, and the ultimate project of communist revolution - were and remain eminently laudable, Ignatiev's strategic choices were not above reproach, and demand continuing critical scrutiny at a bare minimum.
Epitaph
Whatever his weaknesses and flaws, Ignatiev remains an inspiration for many, including some of us who try to square academic careers with radical organizing and activism. I first met Ignatiev in 1996, and while it would be a stretch to say we were friends, we were long on a first-name basis and had a comradely relationship over the last quarter-century of his life.

Noel was particularly helpful to me as I worked to complete my monograph on the history of STO. Among many other contributions, he uttered the words that generated the working title of the book, before it was finally published as Truth and Revolution: STO, he told me on the phone in 2005, was "an organization of revolutionaries that tried to think." I don't know if Ignatiev will have an actual gravestone, but it would be harder to find a more fitting epitaph: "Noel Ignatiev, 1940-2019: A revolutionary who tried to think."

Noel Ignatiev, "a revolutionary who tried to think," circa 1990. Image courtesy of Rachel Edwards.

AUTHOR BIO

Michael Staudenmaier is assistant professor of history at Manchester University, in North Manchester, IN. He is the author, among other works, of Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986 (AK Press, 2012).

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Noel Ignatiev, 1940-2019: A revolutionary who tried to think

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Noel Ignatiev died on November 9, 2019, at the age of 78. As both a worker and a scholar, Ignatiev modeled the sort of public engagement that radical academics strive for, even while he represented an era - in the US economy, in academia, and in left politics - that for the most part no longer exists.

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Letter to Progressive Labour by Noel Ignatiev 

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Letter to Progressive Labour by Noel Ignatiev 

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White Blindspot by Noel Ignatiev and Theodore 'Ted' Allen

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White Blindspot by Noel Ignatiev and Theodore 'Ted' Allen

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Brash, in your face documentary that captures a much lamented era of one of the all time great teams in ANY sport. Fifteen years at the top of their sport, with too many genuine greats of cricket to mention (but Richards, Lloyd, Greenidge, Haynes, Murray, Marshall, Holding, Roberts, Garner, Walsh will do for starters), this team not only dominated cricket but were a focus for national identity and pride in being West Indian. They transended their sport like all the great teams or individuals do (think Mohammed Ali or Imran Khan). This documentary communicates the emotion and political commitment with which this team played and the fans supported them. Not the most sophisticated film-making you'll ever see, but it was a good idea to just let the guys talk and tell us in their own words how they saw it. incredible to think that there were many - mostly English - players, fans and commentators who said of the Windies at the time that they were crude, brutal bullies, totally incorrectly because these guys were masters of their craft. Time has lent perspective and I hope that even the most blinkered England fan can now see that this was truly a team of greats. By the way, they were matched on the field only by Imran's Pakistan team of 1986-8, itself a terrific side, who played out two consecutive drawn series, which both Imran and Richards said was the best cricket they had ever seen.

To all lovers of cricket, this is a must, with a killer soundtrack to boot. For those who don't know why cricket is such an addictive and thrilling, even terrifying sport, watch this and you'll see.

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Charting the glorious supremacy of the West Indies cricket team throughout the late '70s and '80s.

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The Cricket Match | Downton Abbey | Season 3

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