Streets protests in the USA
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From that Dundas link, first “black” MP in 1832! You live and learn. Doesn’t sound like a good role model though but then I don’t suppose he regarded himself as “black”.
The start of the Seattle Commune?
https://twitter.com/BRRN_Fed/status/1270345660617891842
The barricades are up around a 6 block zone, calling itself autonomous…
They also took over a building abandoned by the police. Is this the creation of the new Black Panthers organization? They talk a lot about the Second Amendment but when it comes to the black peoples it is not applicable like it was not applicable to the black slaves
A critique of Black Lives Matter that we could probably endorse.
The problem is just to see this situation as a racial problem instead of a class problem. When Martin Luther King was analysing everything according to the racial problem everything was apparently alright, but when he start to unify the situation with the character of wars, class struggles, and the unification of white, black, Latinos, Asian and all the peoples around the world, it became a big problem, even more, the black organizations moved away from him, and he was assassinated. The same situation took place with Malcolm X
Indeed an interesting read, deflating much of the hope and trust in #BlackLivesMatter.
A couple of points to emphasise – Firstly, identity politics is invariably co-opted by the Establishment and the big corporations as it doesn’t challenge the foundations of the system and secondly, the Democratic Party even when it had the support of the Southern Democrats, the Dixiecrats, has been the home of the African-American voter regardless of the damage its leaders have done to their communities.
Yes, the ironic thing is that after the US Civil War the newly enfranchised black voters supported the Republican Party.
Nixon strategically changed that when he went for the Southern Strategy to pick up white racist voters in the south, where the likes of Wallace and Byrd were considered progressive democrats…
I have been guilty of associating indentured servants with slavery and the “black Irish.” I didn’t realise that such an association is promoted with white supremacists.
This is a lengthy debunking of Irish “slaves” had it worse that black African slaves
https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/the-imagery-of-the-irish-slaves-myth-dissected-143e70aa6e74
That link does a good job in demolishing white suprematist claims about Irish slaves in America but historically there were “European” slaves in North Africa obtained in raids by slavers from there on the Christian parts of Europe:
https://www.theguardian.com/guardianweekly/story/0,12674,1171347,00.htm
I don’t think this can be described as Africans enslaving Europeans since the skin colour of people living on both sides of the Mediterranean was the same and still is today, the difference was religion.
Muslim slavers also enslaved black Africans which makes it particularly ironic that some Black Nationalists rejected christianity in favour of islam and adopted Islamic names.
Irish and Italians were discriminated in the USA because they were Catholics, there was a widespread sentiment of anti-Catholicism in the USA promoted by the Protestants especially the Calvinists and the Puritans. John F Kennedy had many oppositions to be accepted as a presidential candidate because he was Catholic, and still, he is considered as the first Catholic president, and he came from an Irish family .
Muslims were the first ones who started to sell black slaves to the white European slaver traders from Holland, and most of the American black slaves came from the same tribe, as well the black slaves from Jamaica came from the same tribe, and they were hunted as animals by the Muslim black slaves traders
According to Wikipedia, the slaves that were transported from Africa to the Americas were bought off other Africans:
”The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans, or by half European ‘merchant princes’ to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas.”
Those referred to here as “half Europeans” were of course also “half Africans” and today would be classified as Blacks — exposing that the absurdity “race” classifications, which are cultural and political not scientific.
Both slavery and indentured servitude go back thousands of years. Indeed both are fully endorsed by the Bible. And indeed slavery existed in Africa as well as in Muslim countries.
What we must be careful of not doing is being seen to be doing is blaming the Atlantic Slave Trade, the production of cotton, sugar and other commodities for the European market on Africans for it and so absolving capitalism of culpability and complicity.
The KKK and the later Know-Nothing Party were indeed anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish, too.
Even Eugene Debs in his earlier days expressed the prevailing prejudice against Italians, in addition to abiding by anti-black policies
“The Dago works for small pay, and lives far more like a savage or a wild beast, than the Chinese.”
The Italian “fattens on garbage” and cares little for civilization, and therefore, “able to underbid an American workingman.” Only in this way can the Italian appear industrious and Debs warned that Italy “has millions of them to spare and they are coming”
Jews fared little better. When it was announced that the London Board of Guardians had instated a program to transfer Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, Debs claimed that that this would increase the already increasing hostility towards immigrants. Identifying these immigrants as “criminals and paupers” Debs bemoaned the fact that most were able to “take up a permanent residence” and strongly asserted that “it was possible to end the infamous business.”
And our companion party in Canada had an element of anti-Chinese that the SPGB had to distance itself from those views held by some SPC members.
An update on the statue posts. Rather out of sight, out of mind, Edinburgh will be placing a plaque alongside the Dundas monument explaining his politics.
“On the plinth at the centre of St Andrew Square stands a neoclassical column with a statue at the top. This represents Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742 – 1811). He was the Scottish Lord Advocate and an MP for Edinburgh and Midlothian, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Dundas was a contentious figure, provoking controversies that resonate to this day.
“While Home Secretary in 1792 and first Secretary of State for War in 1796 he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Slave trading by British ships was not abolished until 1807. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic.
“Dundas also curbed democratic dissent in Scotland.
“Dundas both defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples. He was impeached in the United Kingdom for misappropriation of public money and although acquitted, he never held public office again. Despite this, the monument before you to Henry Dundas was funded by voluntary contribution from officers, petty officers, seamen and marines and erected in 1821, with the statue placed on top in 1827.
“In 2020 this was dedicated to the memory of the more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.”https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-52997858
This may well be a worthy job creation programme for unemployed history graduates to check out all the statues in cities and towns across the country and place historical context.
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