teacakeomnislash:

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’

canadian-communist:

Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?

Most people haven’t heard of him.

But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.

His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.

He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his “business transactions” as philanthropic and scientific efforts under the banner of the “International African Society”. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.

Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Its bad to “say racist things” (sometimes), but quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.

Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. Its 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for example serves to re-inforce American anti-Socialist propaganda, but Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind – this is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.

When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.

There’s a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking who’s interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny minority of people were  eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict no less). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15 million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.

You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture doesn’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.

Leopold was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But this doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.

for further reading check out

King Leopold’s Ghost

and

King Leopold’s Rule in Africa

Reblogging this mostly for the links, and also because I just heard Obama’s idiotic address and I am furious.

alienswithankhs:

werewolfpussychiapet:

teacakeomnislash:

theedjcagedbird:

eyan-j:

trillaryclinton:

As a revered feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women through her iconic book The Color Purple. But one woman didn’t buy in to Alice’s beliefs - her daughter.

wow.

YOP

Hmmm…. This is deep. I am suspicious tho. But that image she painted of Alice tho… jesus

i got some thoughts on this

this is really sad, but sometimes that’s how the shit goes, y’know?

I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of folks who art we loved treated their children/spouses/families horribly 

I’m actually not surprised at all. I think I’ve mentioned before that I came from a horribly emotionally and physically abusive household—this just aside from the influence of extended family, like my paternal grandmother who regularly promised to poison me, or my uncles who called agberos on my siblings and me and put guns in my face more than once. My father is an ordained bishop, an academic, and is charismatic and extraverted in social company. So no, I’m not at all amazed by whatever private self Alice Walker cultivated, or how Rebecca Walker coped with it. I mean, for my own part, I moved out in my mid-teens and had no contact with any of my family until nineteen/twenty, when I did some reflecting and decided to forgive them only because I realised there’s been a long legacy of neglect, abuse (emotional, verbal, and physical) passed down especially from my father’s side, and most if not all of my family who were alive at the time (including my parents) likely suffer from undiagnosed PTSD brought on by the war and its decades-long aftermath. For all our parts, we deal with the ghosts by simply pretending all that bleeding never happened.

So I understand how Rebecca Walker’s own pro-woman ideas would be shaped partly in response to her mother’s.

…On the other hand…I don’t understand why her conception of female empowerment (and women’s agency) is so very…white? Admittedly, there is the potential that this is just a bad interview (the Daily Mail isn’t above spinning a story against the wind), and it IS old, but I’m not so sure if that’s to blame here. I dunno, maybe it’s my myopia talking, or experiences as a desperately poor immigrant as well as a black woman talking, but when she was going on about academic access, economic stability, socio-financial mobility, and the ability to enjoy motherhood free of stigma, and motherhood as a burden…well, it was just kind of like staring at a dead fish to me. None of it resonates because these ideas are not applicable to anything I’ve known. Self-sufficiency and independence have never been “feminist” acts to me, because I see them only as articles necessary for survival. No one will take care of me if I fail myself. They never have done. And I also know that, socially, I will be demonised as a leech, a drain if ever I do; there is no country that favours women who look like me. Even within Igbo culture, post-colonial patriarchy would have me abandoned, penniless, and called “useless” (worse yet if formerly married and with children). And black motherhood has never been viewed as valuable, so this “tricking” of women into “forsaking” it just all feels so irrelevant.

I guess what I’m getting is that I find it weird that she’s attacking the embodiment of this just very objectivist, Randian narcissism (like, that is some Kate Chopin type of bullshit) and framing it as not only the epitome, but the universal representation of all pro-woman discourse. It doesn’t feel relevant to me, and even less so when examined through the lens of collectivist experiences where devotion to family, many times to the exclusion of all else, is more or less given. If what she’s describing is the type of “pro-womanhood” Alice Walker subscribes to (and let’s be honest—that’s really just selfishness), then I couldn’t disagree with AW more and it is the sort of conflation we should be attacking. If Rebecca Walker is trying to say that women needn’t adhere to some stringent, arbitrary checklist in order to be considered “pro-woman,” then by all means, I agree with her because the school’s foundation is respecting a woman’s decisions for herself and her agency to make them. But it really seems to me she’s mostly striking out at her mother’s ghost whispering in her ear.

And what was that hot mess about women’s responsibility for “disrespecting men” (not touching the kids need two parents thing)? Pro-woman movements have zero obligation to men (provided the more privileged within them aren’t stepping on disenfranchised men) because it, at it the very essence, is concerned with furthering women. Naturally pro-male advocation arises from intersections of sexuality, gender-identity, race, class, and all other determinants in a kyriarchy—as it should—but bruh, I did not like that nonsense at all. I understand where she’s coming from, but almost none of what she said sat well with me.

teacakeomnislash:

theedjcagedbird:

eyan-j:

trillaryclinton:

As a revered feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women through her iconic book The Color Purple. But one woman didn’t buy in to Alice’s beliefs - her daughter.

wow.

YOP

Hmmm…. This is deep. I am suspicious tho. But that image she painted of Alice tho… jesus

i got some thoughts on this

mattressdemon:

brashblacknonbeliever:

So guys, I’m still broke, still jobless, and still stuck in a state with none of my or my child’s things. To everyone who donated before, thank you so much. It helped me get some clothes for me and the baby, diapers, food, and internet access so I could apply for jobs. However, I have bills I need to pay and necessities I need to buy. If you can spare a few dollars, that would be so freaking amazing and I’d love you forever.

Anyone who donates $1 to her I will draw you a quick one character portrait sketch and anyone who donates above $5 I will draw full body sketch, anyone who donates above $10 I will do you a flat colored portrait, and $20 will do you a colored full body. If you donate higher let me know we will work something out. These are negotiable to other things.

Send me a submit with a pic of the receipt and your request.

My art.