This archive report was first published on 28 June 2020.
On a recent survey, people were asked how they knew they were black. The responses were not what modern media might have led us to believe.
Most people simply knew they were people, full stop. Colour is a taught thing, and it's a social marker we adopt and live with. But who teaches it?
Colour-based racism isn't as universal as one might think, even though distrust of otherness is. Capitalism has a lot to do with this. Before Europeans started trying to conquer the world, there was plenty of interlocution between cultures of different cultures.
For instance, the people of Australia and Madagascar developed dark skin independently, like many physical features, as a response to environmental conditions. Indigenous people of the Arctic Circle can eat amounts of vitamin A that would kill anyone else, and the Sherpa of the Himalayas have been summiting Mount Everest long before some European 'explorer' male claimed to do so.
This lies at the core of the Black Lives Matter movement. There are many layers to this, but let's begin with one: slavery. Before Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, Europeans had tried to enslave Americans, but it was unsuccessful due to the genocide they visited upon them and cultural incompatibility.
Africans from the West of the continent came from rich, deep societies. Africans are resilient. Africans built the world's most capitalist nation, on their backs, through its crops, with their blood. And that is why being black is a threat. It isn't even about being black: it is about self-respect and identity.
People are trying to use the All Lives Matter credo to weaken the Black Lives Matter movement, and it is pathetically laughable. Of course, all lives matter - except to those who benefit from the system remaining the same.
The Black Lives Matter is a fight against the very worst of what capital has done to humanity. Black lives matter because life matters. It really is that simple. Know that anyone who says otherwise hates humanity.
