In January of 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama began forming an exploratory committee to consider running for president. The run and the election marked a turning point in U.S. history: for the first time a man of African descent held the office of president. Yet it is worth remembering that even before Obama announced his candidacy, he was being accused of not “really being black.” Early in the race, Stanley Crouch emphasized that Obama wasn’t black like him, and he refused to consider Obama as “one of us.” Debra Dickerson took it even further and argued that considering Obama black was an insult to those African-Americans who had endured the legacy of slavery.
After Dickerson suggested that Obama’s experience of race made him an outsider to the “true” black experience, Stephen Colbert decided to invite her onto “The Colbert Report” to defend her claims. When Dickerson described Obama as an African African-American, Colbert dove in and told her he had a way to fix the problem. Keying into Dickerson’s idea that the issue was that Obama’s ancestors hadn’t been enslaved, Colbert proposed that Obama simply spend some time as a slave:
What if for a brief period of time he were enslaved? And then uh, but nothing racist, he could be like Jesse Jackson’s slave or Al Sharpton’s slave. And then they could say like, you know, you’re free now — and you know, no foul, no harm, and then he has all the street cred he needs?
As Colbert finished his “modest proposal,” he left Dickerson speechless. Check out the full interview here.
Obama had to endure both white supremacist lynching fantasies and accusations of not being black enough. The story is a valuable reminder of the fact that those on the left can be as divisive and as fragmenting as those on the right.
And yet, for each example of the illogical and frankly bigoted ways that some on the left separate themselves, there are stories of alliances, collaborations and support between those rallying around a common cause.
That is the idea behind a recent film, “Generation Revolution,” which follows two London-based activist groups struggling for the rights of black and brown people living in the United Kingdom. While the film focuses on the specific story of the London Black Revolutionaries (or Black Revs) and R Movement, it also draws ties to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. The idea is to inspire a whole generation of activists willing to struggle for social justice for people of color.
Tracing the similar ways that people of color suffer from racism, death in police custody and other forms of institutionalized oppression, the film works to remind viewers that local struggles can have global connections.
For instance, the film covers the ways that London-based activists responded to the death of Eric Garner, who died in U.S. police custody in July 2014. The Black Revs organized a “die-in” protest over Eric Garner’s death, which led to the arrest of 76 people in 2015. Then the film covers a 2016 London-based Black Lives Matter march in Brixton held in response to police killings of blacks in the United States.
Demonstrators at the march chanted "black lives matter" and "racist police, our streets" as they drew large crowds to Windrush Square in Brixton. The protesters’ calls for justice offered a chorus to the same chants that were being used by activists in Ferguson, Missouri.
In an interview with the film’s directors, Usayd Younis and Cassie Quarless, they explained to me that the goal of the film was two-fold. The first is to show how the global spotlight on the U.S.-based Black Lives Matter movement helped inspire and encourage a new generation of activists across the globe. The second is to point out that what was first covered in the media as an “American problem” was also a problem in the UK as well. As they put it, “it became important for us to highlight that activists in the UK had also been organizing against white supremacy, police and state violence in the domestic context.”
Younis and Quarless are working to build ties across communities struggling against similar types of injustices. Building these lines of solidarity, they explain, doesn’t mean flattening out differences and it doesn’t mean ignoring distinct contexts.
“Generation Revolution,” which will be digitally released on October 23, offers a nice complement to the recently released documentary, “Whose Streets,” which followed a core set of activists that rose up in Ferguson in response to the death of Michael Brown. Both films focus on the individual stories of a few key activists in order to show viewers how average, ordinary citizens can decide to rise up and fight against injustice.
As we watch right-wing nationalist groups rise up across the globe, it is time to face the reality that police brutality and institutional racism is a problem that extends well past the borders of a community or even a nation. The New Statesmen reports that there is significant rise in “far-right parties in mainstream European politics.”
A recent piece in the Washington Post by Joseph Parrott highlighted the fact that "alt-right" pundit and Breitbart editor Steven Bannon is working to take his white supremacist message global. Breitbart has added offices in London and Jerusalem.
Parrott explains that white supremacy has long had a global mission. But, up until recently, white supremacy had been mainly marginalized. Today, in response to right-wing anti-globalism, “global white supremacy has been making a comeback, attracting adherents by stoking a new unease with changing demographics, using an expanded rhetoric of deluge and cultivating nostalgia for a time when various white governments ruled the world (and local cities).” Parrott explains that there is a “new global iconography of supremacy,” epitomized by the fact that Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was clothed in the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia alongside the familiar Stars and Bars.
As white supremacy grows on the global stage, so too should we expect anti-racist activism to take an increasingly global turn. What is interesting, as shown in “Generation Revolution,” is to note how activists work to address local crises while also standing in solidarity with movements across the globe.
Younis and Quarless point out that the struggle for social justice in London has also meant fostering “solidarity work with refugees entering the continent” and seeing the politics of Brexit as a regressive move that is “overwhelmingly impacting communities of color.”
“The banner of ‘Black Lives Matter,’” they explain, “has crossed borders to become transnational.” The calls to solidarity and action and struggles for equality across the various Black Lives Matter groups dotting the globe counteract what Parrott describes as the "alt-right’s" “rhetoric of deluge, catastrophe, righteousness and control.”
As if to emphasize the fact that conversations about race, identity and social justice can no longer be contained within specific local contexts, South African-born host of “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah. was recently featured at a New York Times sponsored live event for college students focused on race relations. The live stream, which aired on October 15, began by asking Noah to read an excerpt from his book “Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood.”
As Noah described the racism that he encountered growing up in apartheid South Africa, the event’s host, John Eligon, asked Noah to compare his experiences of racism in South Africa to what he has witnessed in the United States. Neither flattening out differences nor suggesting that the experience of being black is the same everywhere, Noah offered viewers a chance to think through the various ways that racism is a global problem with local distinctions.
The choice of Noah as a featured guest to talk to college students about race relations underscored the reality that a global crisis can’t be solved locally.
Noah has long advocated for avoiding stark black versus white oppositions. Shortly after the election of Donald Trump last year, Noah penned a piece that called for finding alliances across groups. As he put it, “divided people are easier to rule.”
What’s ironic is that in that earlier piece, Noah had pushed back on the idea that his job as host of “The Daily Show” was to “eviscerate.” At the time, he stated he didn’t want to have that sort of bite to his political comedy.
One year later, as black protesters have been shut down and neo-Nazi marches have gone mainstream, Noah has used his satire to become one of the foremost critics of racial bigotry in the United States, often drawing links to racism abroad as well.
That’s why his recent bit for “The Daily Show,” “When is the Right time for Black People to Protest?,” was a welcome reminder that those protesting for racial justice will always be marginalized, denigrated or characterized as inappropriate.
As Noah ends the piece, he plays homage to Dr. Seuss: "You still haven't told us the right way for black people to protest. I mean, we know it's wrong to do it in the streets, it's wrong to do it in the tweets, you cannot do it on the field, you cannot do it if you've kneeled. And don't do it if you're rich, you ungrateful son of a bitch, because there's one thing that's a fact: You cannot protest if you're black."
Noah is right: whether on an NFL football field or in a London market, Black Lives Matter protesters are facing repression and criticism and political pressure. And yet, as global pressures against these protesters increase, so too does their solidarity.
White supremacy may be on the rise, but it’s being met by a new generation of activists fighting to change the social and political landscape in their communities and across the globe. The common thread linking these groups is the belief that all black lives matter everywhere, all the time.
Shares