“Father, listen to me, I want to tell you from this other life the pain of being born black in a society where skin pigmentation is a stigma” (Zapata, 2010: 323) is what Manuel Zapata Olivella -a Colombian writer- relates in one of his books and although he wrote it more than 10 years ago in a Latin American context; This is what we can see in the documentary “Amendment XIII” that recounts the systematic criminalization and mass incarceration of black people in the United States, but it is also what unfortunately we can continue to see today in a context where migration is increasing and with it, xenophobia.
And why is skin pigmentation, place of origin, way of speaking, of seeing ourselves, our beliefs , or in general, “BEING DIFFERENT”, is it a cause of discrimination? To find the root of this, we probably have to study the construction of nations and how cultural, racial and gender homogeneity shaped the political and social imaginary with which it was determined who did or did not belong to the nation and what role they should assume. But why continue with these patterns of discrimination? The construction of the nations was in charge of men, whites, Catholics and everything that did not have those characteristics, was below them and with respect to that, we can no longer do anything, because it is past and we cannot return to it. The real problem is to continue reproducing that dominant, homogeneous and discriminatory imaginary. Therefore, now the question is what can we do ourselves so as not to be part of the problem?
The previous question came to me while watching the documentary “Amendment XIII” and listening to different activists and human rights defenders, recording movements such as “black lives matter” and thinking about the good work these people are doing to make visible and stop racial discrimination[1], xenophobia[2] and judicial persecution by categories such as race. However, at one point I asked myself, what about me? What do I do to contribute to this problem that ends, even with lives? And my most immediate response was to say to myself “You are not racist, you do not discriminate, everything is fine”. But is this enough?
In the documentary they mentioned the laws with which they selectively persecuted black people. But before these, they mentioned an aspect that contributed to giving legitimacy or support to these laws: language or speech. One of the activists interviewed in the documentary recounted how the term “super predator” became an inherent part of being black and, “therefore, a criminal.” That is, people began to associate being black or Latino with being a super-predator criminal and to use these associations in their speeches. And I remembered that the types of violence or discrimination are not simply the visible ones, like physical violence. But there are other types -cultural violence or structural violence- that end up legitimizing physical violence. For example, women: in Colombia domestic violence against women has very high rates -physical violence- and one of the problems is that women remain by their aggressor’s side because they do not have economic independence, which has one of its causes in that in the child-rearing process the discourse that “women are to take care of the home” is handled -cultural violence- and therefore, they do not enjoy the same accessibility to education or to jobs with a good salary remuneration than men -structural violence- So, to stop physical or more visible violence, it is essential to trace the others and also stop them.
And in an internal analysis I did this exercise not with women as an objective of analysis, but with blacks, Latinos and migrants and in this work, I realized that in my context we are still repeating the patterns of discrimination that were established since the construction of nations through taught or inherited behaviors that we normalize, but they correspond to a type of violence or discrimination that will ultimately help legitimize other types of violence. For example, in my country there is a saying: “we work like blacks, to live like whites” When we refer to “we work like blacks” we are usually talking about working very hard, not in good conditions, almost like slaves because “that way blacks work” And when we say “living like whites” we mean living well. And although these are learned phrases, they are also phrases that have embedded practices of racial discrimination.. And what will make it normal for a black person to continue working as a slave in our imagination to one day achieve the standard of living of a white person – cultural violence. Thus we would end up legitimizing and supporting structural violence and, ultimately, physical violence.
And so, I can follow mentioned examples within my context:
- Associate black with bad: black list, black joke, black day.
- Having an argument with a black person and being black is accompanied by the insult. For example: “silly black”, but if it is with a white man, his skin color does not accompany the insult.
- When a migrant makes a mistake Example: theft. His nationality accompanies the news: “Venezuelan migrant committed a robbery.” Is it perhaps when a national commits a robbery that emphasis is also placed on his nationality?
ETC, ETC, ETC.
The discourse, to which we sometimes do not pay attention and only repeat, builds imaginaries, imaginaries that in turn build nations. That is why it is important to stop within ourselves and analyze ourselves racial discrimination and xenophobia are big problems that are made up of some micro-actions that we have normalized, but they are not right. So, the answer is no, it is not enough to simply say I am not a racist, it is necessary to analyze what we have learned and deconstruct it to start building a language and discourse that promotes social cohesion and not classification by categories such as race, gender , cultural.
Finally, this reflection invites the reader, just as the author did, to analyze himself and deconstruct what is part of the problema, those political, social and cultural imaginaries that we have inherited and are part of the discrimination.
If you are interested in this topic, I leave for you some tools:
- Implicit Association Test (IAT): a social psychology tool that assesses people’s implicit preferences. You can find several categories, among them: race. Find the test at the following link: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
- The documentary that inspired this reflection: “Amendment XIII”
- The book mentioned in this reflection “Chango, el gran putas” by Manuel Zapata Olivella.
- The book “Savage Portrayals. Race, Media & the Central Park Jogger Story”. Chapter 8 . “Selling Savage Portrayals: Young Black and Latino Males in the Carceral State” (pp.168-181) by author Natalie P. Byfield
- Victoria Santa Cruz’s poem titled “They yelled at me black” -Me gritaron negra- accompanied by an invitation to think and analyze the struggles black people face to define, appropriate and fall in love with their identity in a context where we are taught that our body is wrong. A context where, for example, black women are taught from a young age that we have to straighten our hair, because wearing it natural -“afros”- looks bad or where to tell us Black! It is an insult, it becomes a context where we have to fight daily and from a young age with prejudice, with looking at ourselves in the mirror and having a process from a young age to accept them, love ourselves and feel proud of who we are, while society repeats to us that our body and culture is wrong. That is why now we are proud to say that WE ARE BLACK and we use, for example, natural hair, it is part of the revolution
The poem by Victoria Santa Cruz (who is a black woman from Peru) narrates one of those situations that many black people go through:
I was barely seven years old, just seven years old,
What seven years!
I didn’t even get to five!
Suddenly some voices in the street
They yelled at me BLACK! (black! black! black! black! black! black! black!)
Am I black? I told myself (YES)
What is it to be black? (black!)
And I did not know the sad truth that it hid. (black!)
And I felt black (black!)
As they said (black!)
And backed up (black!)
As they wanted (black!)
And I hate my hair and my thick lips
And look sadly at my roasted meat
And backed up (black!)
And backed up (black! black! black! Black!…)
And time passed
And always bitter
I kept carrying my back
My heavy load
And how heavy
I straightened my hair,
I powdered my face
and between my hair the same word always resonated (black! black! black! black!)
Until one day when I was going backwards, backwards and I was going to fall (black! black! black! Black!…)
And that?
black!
Yes
black!
Am
black!
black
black!
I am black
black! Yes
black!
Am
black!
black
I am black
From now on I don’t want
straighten my hair
I do not want
And I’m going to laugh at those,
that to avoid – according to them –
that to avoid us some disappointment
They call blacks people of color
And what color?
BLACK
And how beautiful it sounds!
BLACK
And what rhythm does it have?
BLACK BLACK BLACK BLACK…
Finally
I finally understood
FINALLY
I don’t go back anymore
FINALLY
And I move forward safely
FINALLY
I advance and wait
FINALLY
And I bless the sky because God wanted
that jet black was my color
And I already understood
FINALLY
I already have the key
BLACK BLACK BLACK BLACK…
Black I am
If you want to listen to it in the voice of its author and with a rhythm that represents black culture, you can do it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHr8DTNRZdg It is an honor for me to share what for me is like a hymn of life, enjoy it!
[1] Understanding racial discrimination as “discriminatory or abusive conduct towards members of another race. Racial discrimination” denotes any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, lineage or ethnic or national origin that has as its object or purpose result in nullifying or undermining the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, under conditions of equality, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural spheres or in any other sphere of public life.” (Art. 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, of 1965)” (International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2006)
[2] Understanding this as “hate, disgust or hostility towards foreigners. In the international arena there is no accepted definition of xenophobia, although it can be described as attitudes, prejudices or behaviors that reject, exclude and, many times, despise other people, based on the condition of being a foreigner or alien to the identity of the community, of society or country” (International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2006)
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The content of this article is the sole responsibility of the IKS association.
The project “Age of Migration” is financed by the Erasmus+ eacea program.
