The Colombian media reported that the New York Times editorial page criticized Colombia’s recently passed ‘impunity for paramilitaries’ law.
Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe
The living standards of the Zimbabweans have plummeted as the country’s gross domestic product has shrunk by more than 40 percent in the past five years, so the mainstream media tells us.
To attribute this state of affairs solely on the Mugabe presidency without talking about external forces that contributed to the plunge of the living standards of Zimbabweans is intellectually dishonest. The introduction of structural adjustment in that country in the early 1990s can be seen as THE process which eroded the living standards of Zimbabweans. It is the introduction of structural adjustment in that country that facilitated the increase of illegal settlements that Mugabe has been tyrannically demolishing in the past weeks.
President Mugabe terms this demolition of informal settlements: “Operation drive out dirt”, and promises to build 2 million homes by 2010 to replace the informal settlements – a promise economists say he cannot afford. The main opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has been reported as saying the campaign is aimed at breaking up its stronghold among the urban poor and forcing its supporters into rural areas, where Mugabe’s Zanu-PF dominates.
The South African government stance of “Quiet Diplomacy” towards Zimbabwe has been criticized as ineffective, nationally and internationally. Calls for South to intervene have increased.
Strangely, no one is making any strong demands that the African Union (AU) should intervene in Zimbabwe. If anyone has a right to intervene in that country, it should be the AU, not South Africa. We do not need an imitation of the US that goes around playing policeman and telling sovereign states what changes they should implement in their own countries. It is to guard against such moves that we have structures like the AU and the South African Development Community (SADC).
Robert Mugabe is a dictator, no doubt, and he rules by an iron fist, and has even stated in public that he intends to rule until he is 100. As for the opposition, MDC, because of the donations and funds it has received from overseas — particularly from countries like the UK and US, it has been accused of being agents of foreign powers, who are bent on fomenting discord and trying to reverse the gains of the liberation war.
The fact that the MDC is pushing for the neo-liberal agenda has not help improve its image. And its vagueness as to how to deal with land reforms in Zimbabwe does not advance its cause.
In the last elections, which were held two months ago, the MDC did not do so well. The disputed elections gave President Mugabe a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The MDC is challenging the election results in the new electoral court on the basis of compelling evidence of massive vote-rigging, according to The Sunday Independent.
Political commentators compare Mugabe to Pol Pot, and the Amnesty International claims that: “The people of Zimbabwe are being sold out – in the interest of a false ‘African Solidarity’.” Tony Blair has repeatedly called for Mugabe’s resignation, and in 2002 Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth.
In a surprising move, last month, Britain suddenly ended the two-year moratorium on returning asylum seekers to Zimbabwe. Now, the question is: “If Mugabe’s government is as bad as the [British] Foreign Office claims, why is the [British] Home Affairs sending failed asylum claimants back to Zimbabwe?”
As much as I think the Zimbabwe situation is serious, but I also believe that there are other conflict-ridden areas on the continent that urgently and desperately need the attention Zimbabwe is getting. Places like the Congo (DRC), Sudan and Eritrea come to mind.
hello
My name is Mandisi Majavu, am joining up forces with with Justin Podur. I’m based in South Africa, Durban; and predictably my blog will focus mainly on African politics. As a philosophy student, I like to practise my philosophical skills from time to time, and so tend to ramble about nothing. So please bear with me.
Zapatistas Sixth Declaration
I just read the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacondona (in Spanish). In it the Zapatistas outline their plan for the next little while. First, they clarify what their plan is *not* – it is *not* to break their unilateral ceasefire or initiate any armed actions, nor to provide any aid to any other armed groups, overtly or covertly. They do, however, intend to send some material (corn) to Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador; in the first case to symbolically break the embargo on Cuba, and in the latter cases as part of exchanges with indigenous peoples of the Americas, of whom they are a part. They’ll also be launching a national campaign, sending a delegation around Mexico, to meet with people all over the country and develop a national plan of struggle against neoliberalism. I’m sure irlandesa is translating it even as I write, so you’ll have their own words on the topic before too long!
People of Color Talk is Cheap
Any category or concept is going to leave important things out. It’s the nature of abstraction. Using the term ‘Black’ to describe a group of people can obscure more than it reveals. As a biological category it is meaningless, as is the concept of race generally. There is no clear biologically relevant distinction between blacks and non-blacks. There are some genetic diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia, that are more prevalent among those with African ancestry compared to those with European ancestry. Other diseases prevalent in the Black community, like hypertension, however, are related to social, not biological phenomena.
Even as a social category, it abstracts a lot of differences. Within the group of Black people, there are men and women, there are children and adults, there are wealthy and poor, there are powerful and disenfranchised, there are those with access to resources and those without, there those with legal status and those without. So a lot of detail and nuance is lost in the use of the concept.
Despite this, it is still very meaningful as a social category. Black people in the United States, for example, have less wealth, less income, suffer poorer health, and are disproportionately incarcerated compared to people who are not Black. To say that the concept of race has no biological value and that individuals are what they are, cannot be made into an argument to deny the social reality of racism. Racism is real. It is brutal. And in the system of caste that is US racism, Black people, and indigenous people, are at the bottom.
What about the concept of ‘People of Color’? That, too, obscures a great deal. It obscures differentials in political power; it obscures class differences; it obscures gender differences; it obscures questions of imperialism; it obscures the crucial distinction in this world of those who have papers and passports and can cross borders and those who do not, cannot, and are ‘illegal’.
Does it, however, have merit, like the concept of Black race or ethnicity, that countervails what it costs in abstraction? It has the merit of excluding whites, who, while they can be oppressed on gender or class lines, are at the top of the racial caste system. It can be a useful substitute for the term ‘non-white’. But it can also lead to simple-minded analysis.
When whites in movements argue that everyone needs to get over race, transcend it, and work on common issues of class, against capitalism and the ruling elite, antiracists are unimpressed because such an approach enables the most privileged and powerful groups to impose their agenda on the rest. Such an approach denies problems of privilege and differentials of power within movements and organizations for social change. Denial is no basis for solidarity. As a substitute for denial, antiracists ask white activists to think about privilege, to be attuned to hierarchies and exclusion that can happen in organizations, and to work to overcome them. Pretending equality is already here is a recipe for maintaining inequality. Addressing and attempting to make structural redress for inequality can make a group, or a movement, stronger.
The way to fight racism is not to deny differences and hierarchies of privilege but to bring them out in the open and try to change them. But if that is the case, the ‘People of Color’ label is often not helpful, for several reasons.
First, because it leads to the same kinds of denial as comes from denying race altogether. There is a hierarchy of privilege within the group ‘People of Color’. At the bottom are poor African Americans, indigenous people, and Latinos. At the top are an elite of people from different ethnicities selected and adopted into the ruling class. In between are groups of immigrants, some of whom have historically had a degree of upward mobility and are used against those below them as rhetorical devices: ‘model minorities’ who are supposed to have ‘made it’, proving that racism does not hold ‘People of Color’ back and thus that African Americans (as an example) have not ‘made it’ through their own fault. There are also groups of brutally exploited and oppressed immigrants and refugees, who work at low wages to try to remit money to support their families in poor countries under constant threat of deportation. These groups are treated differently within the racial system. They are subject to different stereotypes. They have different, and sometimes opposed, interests. Black people, for example, have an interest in a tighter labor market, while immigrants have an interest in the chance to go to the US to work. Many institutions, and often the law, think affirmative action obligations to Blacks to redress centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation and violence are met when an upper class Asian is hired.
Collapsing all of these groups under the rubric of ‘People of Color’ does exclude those at the top of the hierarchy (white people) but it leaves the rest of the hierarchy intact. As a result, people at the top of the new hierarchy – in movement organizations these are often drawn from the ranks of class-privileged academics from the least oppressed racial groups – can claim the oppression of everyone below them as their own. Rather than trying to understand and addressing our own privilege and hierarchy, we can posture and be righteous. This does not help those we ought to be most concerned about – those who are most oppressed, those who are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
If addressing privilege and working against it within social movements and organizations is onerous, then why should whites shoulder the burden alone, since they are not the only ones with privilege? If, conversely, as antiracists claim, addressing privilege and working against it is a positive personal growth experience, then why should whites monopolize such a wonderful thing? We could all benefit from understanding how privilege and hierarchy work, and taking an honest look at where we stand. Perhaps we could start by being a little more specific about the racial system and its impacts, which do not come down on everyone equally. Using a better set of categories might help. The categories I use for North America, with their own flaws and problems, are: European or white, South Asian, East Asian, West Asian, Latino, African or Black, and Indigenous; always with the question of citizenship and status (immigrant, refugee, status/non-status).
Recognizing these differences is particularly important when ‘People of Color’ groups, caucuses, and organizations are formed. A ‘People of Color’ caucus in a community antiwar group is an example. The idea here is good: to create an autonomous space where an oppressed group can work and develop without constantly negotiating boundaries and issues of privilege. So long as the creation of such a space does not come at the expense of representation of the oppressed in larger, integrated groups (in the antiwar example, the existence of a caucus should not prevent people of color from being represented in the leadership of the larger antiwar organization or coalition). But if the autonomous space is a ‘people of color’ space where highly privileged people of color interact with much less privileged people of color, the most oppressed still have no space, and can now be denied a voice, of their own.
It’s true that no set of categories or concepts is perfect, and it would be easy to come up with arguments against the set I’ve chosen. But starting with a concept like ‘People of Color’, which obscures privilege and hierarchy within the racial system itself, can often make work harder for antiracists.
Justin Podur is a writer and activist based in Toronto.
Crash and Race
I watched the movie ‘Crash’ (Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito, Ryan Philippe, Mat Dillon, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris, lots of others). It was fascinating. I’m not sure what to make of it, still, but I would recommend it. If I were putting together a film festival of recent mainstream fiction movies ‘Crash’ would be in it (So would ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ and ‘Red Dust’, and even ‘The Interpreter’, but we’ll leave those for another time).
Yvon Neptune and Faking Genocide
A very important, very substantial two part research article by Kevin Skerrett on Haiti and the case of Yvon Neptune, the former Prime Minister of Haiti who was ousted in the Feb 29 2004 coup and who has been languishing in prison for about a year, having been charged after 11 months of languishing, with a set of total sham charges. Neptune is wasting away on hunger strike and is very likely going to die of starvation, one of the thousands of casualties of the coup. Skerrett reviews the evidence and examines the role of the Haitian ‘human rights’ group NCHR, including looking at where the money comes from… Canada… of course.
Walgreens
Quick story I got in the email. African American pharmacists at Walgreens have launched a class action lawsuit against that corporation for racial discrimination. I’ve blogged elsewhere about Black Americans and health care. It is among the deadliest impacts of racism in the US, though it is not usually understood that way. It is also one of the easiest to fix – universal health care would do nicely. Of course, it is harder to campaign for such a thing when the notion of ‘undeserving poor’ is so deeply ingrained into the culture, and when ‘undeserving poor’ is actually code for ‘Black’, and relies on racism, that makes it still harder. This lawsuit shows some of the connections as well: corporate power, the health care industry, and racism, all coming together.
Haitian Blood on Canadian Hands, etc.
Devoted followers of this blog might remember a photo I posted of activist and writer Yves Engler confronting Canadian Foreign Minister and coupster Pierre Pettigrew with a copy of the University of Miami Human Rights report aka ‘Griffin Report’, a harrowing and meticulously documented piece that shows the devastation in the wake of the coup. Pettigrew dismissed this as ‘propaganda’, without responding to any of the claims or evidence or photos. I suppose that is what one would expect from a vicious liar and a gangster (sorry for mincing words, I’m trying to keep this a family blog).
At a recent conference on Haiti in Montreal (June 17-18) where the future of occupied Haiti was being planned, Engler had another encounter with Pettigrew, the beginning of which is shown here:
It ended with Engler splashing Pettigrew’s hands with fake blood (cranberry juice, I believe). Engler was wrestled to the ground and arrested, spending the night in jail (charges were later dropped, except for disturbing the piece – I suppose they don’t want a trial and for Engler to have a platform). Pettigrew, after cleaning up, tellingly quipped about his favourite Calvin Klein suit. At least one letter-writer wondered in a Canadian daily newspaper about whether the CK suit was made in a Haitian sweatshop, where the minimum wage had been lowered since the coup.
Naomi Klein was in South Africa a few days ago and interviewed ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide, asking him his opinion on the incident:
Naomi Klein:
Pierre Pettigrew just hosted a summit on the ‘transition’ and some Haitian
solidarity activists did an action where they put some red paint on [Foreign
Minister Pierre] Pettigrew’s hands to symbolize that Canada has blood on its
hands in Haiti. Does Canada have blood on its hands in Haiti?
President Jean Bertrand Aristide:
Some people in the Canadian government yes, they have Haitian blood on their
hands. But not Canada as all the people of Canada or as one country. I try
to make a clear distinction between the Canadian people who didn’t decide to
have their government going to Haiti, seeing Pettigrew and the others with
the Haitian blood on their hands.
Aristide also took some pains to distance himself from the action – no doubt wanting to avoid the constant propaganda about him pressing buttons from Africa and causing crimes halfway around the world. He told Naomi:
I don’t encourage people to go against any government in Canada or to go
against the de facto government in Haiti. I encourage them to resist in a
peaceful way while they are asking for my return.
There was a bit of tactical debate about Engler’s action, which I thought was wonderful. Some who wrote me wondered whether it would be counterproductive. I think not. I worry when tactics seem disproportionate – when the ‘punishment’ seems to exceed the crime. Pettigrew’s crimes so far exceed what Engler did or could do that it’s uncomfortable to make the comparison, so there’s no proportionality problem there. What about consequences? Because it was obviously a Canadian acting on his own initiative, it can’t be easily used to attack Lavalas or Haitians, so there is insulation for the victims. Engler made a calculation about the possible personal costs, and I think made a courageous decision. He could have faced jail time, etc. – but that would also have given him a platform from which to attack Canada’s horrendous actions in Haiti. As it was, he put the fact that there is opposition in Canada to what the Canadian government has done and is doing on the table in a way that had not been on the table before, despite efforts at mobilization and small (hopefully growing) efforts at organization and education. So, I’d have to say thanks to Engler, and look forward to seeing his book (with Anthony Fenton) on Canada in Haiti, which is coming out in the fall.
More on the Red Alert
First, if you only read english, you should know that Irlandesa, the main english translator of Zapatista material, has a new blog and will be posting her translations there, though that wasn’t her intention in starting the blog, as she says. She translates everything from the Zapatista command, and does so very fast.
ZNet has republished two communiques explaining a little more about the Red Alert.