The Precedented Racism

We've done this dance our whole lives

I recently interviewed with 3CR Thursday Morning, which you can find here (begins at the 59-minute mark) on behalf of Unimelb for Palestine: https://www.3cr.org.au/thursday-breakfast/episode/marshal-rally-bugs%C2%A0-merchants-death-war-crimes-tribunal%C2%A0made-palestine

In the name of Allah, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

There is a misunderstanding, deliberately fed into by the colonial institutions, that racism is simply the tip of the hatred spear. We are told that racism is when hatred (driven by fear) attacks you as a result of explicit discrimination. In this way, the discourse framework (the understanding of the issue) is set for us: if racism is now abnormal, then anti-racism must be only a reaction to the extraordinary. It demands that we are reactive, not preemptive; we cannot wear armour nor can we disarm the spear carrier; instead, we must wait until they stab us.

In other words, we must wait for your symptoms to become terminal before we bother to treat you. Because racism is an illness that has festered in our bodies and continues to fester, it is not the tip of the spear nor is it the hand that thrusts it so deeply into our ribs; it is the mentality that first convinced the person that they ought to stab us.

I use the term spear carrier intentionally; it is a term referring to actors of little significance who are generally silent and exist only to decorate the scene for the main actors. When one focuses on the spear carriers, one loses sight of the scene. Focusing on the actions of the racist diverts us away from a very simple question: why? I will explain to you, first with a quote from Paulo Freire:

In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform everything into objects of their purchasing power; hence their strictly materialistic concept of existence. Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal. For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more—always more—even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the "haves."

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own "effort," with their "courage to take risks." If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the "generous gestures" of the dominant class. Precisely because they are "ungrateful" and "envious," the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.

All excerpts from Paulo Freire in this article comes from his text “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

Therefore, so long as there is a hierarchy of haves and have-nots, there is a societal intersection of people who believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the have-nots. And, therefore, it is normal for them that they are in a position of having, in a position of wealth and privilege without sharing, and for them not to consider how this wealth corrupts them or what responsibilities come with their wealth.

This excerpt, of course, for the fellow Muslims reading this criticism, is corroborated by the following Qur’an verse:

وَيْلٌۭ لِّلْمُطَفِّفِينَ

ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَا ٱكْتَالُوا۟ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِ يَسْتَوْفُونَ

وَإِذَا كَالُوهُمْ أَو وَّزَنُوهُمْ يُخْسِرُونَ

Woe to those who give short measure,

who demand of other people full measure for themselves,

but give less than they should when it is they who weigh or measure for others!

Surah 83, Al-Mutaffifin, Verses 1-3

Translated by Abdul Haleem

In this series of verses, as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209) described in his Tafsir (exegesis), we are warned about people who see and perpetuate injustice and are silent but are immediately offended when their own platforms (of explorative measures) are challenged or questioned. As all major scholars of Tafsir have argued, the concept of scales or weight in Islam is inherently associated with justice, and nearly every single verse referring to weighing is not just the literal action (of weighing someone’s goods for a sale), but of treating them fairly when you are the one in control of the scales. Fundamentally, it is the idea that when you are in a position of privilege, you owe the less privileged significant responsibilities.

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl expanded on this further in his Tafsir, explicitly linking it to the petite-bourgeois of 7th-century Mecca. Petite-Bourgeois are the people who have some privilege and power, like merchants, scholars, and their ilk, but are not necessarily the ones ‘in charge’ and instead envy the position of those above them, seeing within themselves the potential to one day ‘make it’ and become like those above them. So, in this pursuit, they imitate and they mimic. Thus, the petite-bourgeois of Mecca, and truthfully, the world as it is presently, had become so accustomed to their methods of oppression and injustice under the justification that they had the right to exploit those below them to hoard wealth, that they internalised this process of exploitation as natural. It was, therefore, to them, natural that they were above others and that those below them deserved less; that this societal division into a hierarchy of classes based on the exploitation of those under you and the envy of those above you was how society was ‘meant to be.’

We will racialize this relationship later because it is not so clear-cut, but it is important first that we understand how the world, especially in capitalist societies, functions on a class basis. There are then the other intersections in society: gender, race, indigeneity, religion, ethnicity, and so on, all of which compound with class to create a ‘unique fingerprint’ of a person’s privilege or lack thereof.

Paulo Freire then expands on this class hierarchy, explaining how when features of the ‘natural’ society were reformed in favour of a more just society, the former oppressors perceived the change as oppressive. This explains why, when challenged by any demand for justice or accountability, the oppressors feel as though they have been oppressed. But this does not constitute oppression, for it is not oppressive to end oppression. As he explains:

Resolution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction indeed implies the disappearance of the oppressors as a dominant class. However, the restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their oppressors, so that the latter cannot reassume their former position, do not constitute oppression. An act is oppressive only when it prevents people from being more fully human. Accordingly, these necessary restraints do not in themselves signify that yesterdays oppressed have become today's oppressors. Acts which prevent the restoration of the oppressive regime cannot be compared with those which create and maintain it, cannot be compared with those by which a few men and women deny the majority their right to be human.

…

[When the oppressors are toppled] the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights—although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things."

For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence. This behavior, this way of understanding the world and people (which necessarily makes the oppressors resist the installation of a new regime) is explained by their experience as a dominant class. Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established, it engenders an entire way of life and behavior for those caught up in it—oppressors and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks of oppression ... This violence, as a process, is perpetuated from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its heirs and are shaped in its climate. This climate creates in the oppressor a strongly possessive consciousness—possessive of the world and of men and women ... The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time—everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.

So now we understand, of course, that to maintain this class structure, there needs to be oppression, and as we are told in the Qur’an, a systemic giving of short measures when it comes to justice. But where does race fit into this? I will use one last Paulo Freire quote, then introduce you to others:

For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call "the oppressed" but—depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not—"those people" or "the blind and envious masses" or "savages" or "natives" or "subversives") who are disaffected, who are "violent," "barbaric," "wicked," or "ferocious" when they react to the violence of the oppressors.

So, in order to justify their own position as oppressors, the oppressors assign to the oppressed labels that ‘explain’ why it is okay to maintain this parasitic relationship. Because, after all, if not for the oppressed, then the oppressors will starve, will have no clothes to wear, will have no labour to profit from, and will sooner perish than learn how to survive. So, they need the oppressed to remain oppressed, but they must also explain to the oppressed why they are the way they are and why this is no cause for revolt.

Racism, so long as it has been a social category (and in fact, made into a scientific category during the ‘scientific revolution’, but this is a history lesson for another day), has been a category to justify why some must be treated differently and why institutions had to be formed to analyse these ‘racial’ differences. In this way, Whiteness was made the ‘default’, as though we have all deviated from Whiteness rather than Whiteness having deviated from us. So, racial studies became the home to any hack wanting to make a career out of exploring the perfection in Whiteness through the ‘imperfections’ of non-Whiteness. Because, after all, when studying the imperfections of something, it can only be understood in relation to that which is ‘better’. And, of no surprise to anyone, it was no coincidence that the White people funding these institutions and studies, funding every project that claimed they had the reasons to prove why White people deserved to oppress everyone else, just so happened to be at the very top of society.

Why? Because to be an oppressor is to be insecure. It is to worry that at any given time, you will be found out, that the legitimacy you fraudulently obtained will be discovered, and that your justifications were nothing other than mythology. So, you must constantly fund institutions that will spend every waking minute glorifying you. To be an oppressor is to never rest, to constantly want more, and to project every fault of your own onto the oppressed. It is only in this deep insecurity that the need to prove one’s own superiority and therefore bolster one’s ego is formed; it is only in this deep insecurity that the White Europeans rushed to colonise and oppress. Allow me to flip the world order for you, which has shaped every single hierarchy and organisation the West has thought of: the number of people unwillingly under you does not increase your status nor does it bolster your prestige. What makes this relationship untenable, of course, is simple: If you are perfect, and therefore do not need to improve, and are oppressing people under the facade of ‘perfecting them’, then there must be a viable avenue for them to ‘become perfect.’ But if they are perfect, then you can no longer rule over them, you can no longer oppress them, and you can no longer profit from them. So, you do not wish for them to be perfect, because you do not wish for your justification to collapse in on itself. As Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot analysed,

The idea of [European] progress … suggested that men were perfectible. Therefore, subhumans could be, theoretically at least, perfectible.

…

On the one hand, resistance and defi­ance did not exist [to Europeans], since to acknowledge them was to acknowl­edge the humanity of the enslaved. On the other hand, since resistance occurred, it was dealt with quite severely, within or around the plantations [for contradicting the idea that slaves were ‘meant’ to be slaves] … [Europeans] could not fully deny resistance, but they tried to provide reassuring certitudes by trivializing all its manifestations. Resistance [therefore could] not exist as a global phenomenon. Rather, each case of unmistakable defiance, each possible instance of resistance was treated separately and drained of its political content. Slave A ran away because he was particularly mistreated by his master. Slave B was missing because he was not properly fed. Slave X killed herself in a fatal tantrum. Slave Y poisoned her mistress because she was jealous. The run­ away emerges from this literature—which still has its disciples as an animal driven by biological constraints, at best as a patho­logical case.

…

In fact, this argument didn’t convince the planters themselves. They held on to it because it was the only scheme that allowed them not to deal with the issue as a mass phenomenon. That lat­ter interpretation was inconceivable. Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system

Racism, therefore, is an inherent tool in any society that must justify why one subsect of it should be allowed to oppress another. It is through racist frameworks, institutions, and sciences that they have maintained this false superiority. This false superiority, of White superiority, is the process by which we have come to centre Whiteness for centuries and, at present, continue to centre within ourselves. Everything ‘exceptional’ Whiteness does is inherent to Whiteness; everything exceptional non-Whiteness does is unique and individual. In this way, though White societies have for so long abandoned communalism in favour of hyper-individualism, White supremacists claim their achievements as evidence for why they are so exceptional, and then they rationalise everything we have achieved as being unique only to the individual, an outlier. Every act of resistance we perform is explained away as the angry demands of one person, as though we are not all united in our resistance against the very same racist structures that for centuries have oppressed us as an entire world.

European exceptionalism is the notion that they have come to dominate the world for centuries because they are so unique in their thinking. Yes, you are unique because you are the only people who, in their insecurity, felt the need to kill and oppress every other person they encountered. You have envied and coveted every neighbour you ever had, and you have been the scourge of the world since you asserted your own perfection. You fear that anyone else will discover you to be a fake, an arrogant bag of air. You ask why we did not do the same, as though the yardstick of civilisation is how inhumane you can be. We did not do what you did because we centred humanity; we never, in a spiral of delusion, saw ourselves as masters of the earth and felt the need to assert this. We are human because we love, and to be an anti-racist and demand liberation for all is to love. Out of love for you, we hope to end your oppression of us because we wish for you to be human while you wish for us to be extinct. Though I can criticise the history of Europe and what it has produced, and truthfully, I would find it very easy to provide ample cases to justify it, this is not my aim for this article.

Racism, therefore, is the very idea that one group of people is inherently better than another based on an arbitrary category. The acts of racism, the hate speech, and so forth are only manifestations of this. So how do we combat it? Do we wait for the manifestation, or do we focus on ending the mentality that has permitted the division of the world into Whites as the default and everyone else as the lesser detritus of colonialism?

Here is one such example of how this mentality has manifested in a way that the institutions have told you is not racist but is deeply so. Why is it that every single person is expected to know that there was once a Roman Empire, separate from its predecessor, the Roman Republic, and that there was once a Caesar who had a son with Cleopatra? Why do we know of the thirteen colonies demanding independence from their empire so they could colonise the rest of North America as they wished without sharing the spoils? Why do we know that once there was a Tsar and then there was none, that once there was a King and now there is a prime minister? Why do we know that Napolean was exiled, then returned, then exiled again? Why do we know that once, thousands of years ago, Alexander looked eastward?

Because this has become the “default knowledge,” what we, the entire human population, are told we must know inherently. We are expected to be the standard bearers of the European past, and if we do not know their history, then we ‘do not know,’ as though the yardstick for knowledge is European. First, we must know White knowledge, and then we are (occasionally) permitted to know non-White knowledge, an alternative to the White canon, which exists only as a spin-off for the most dedicated knowers. So, therefore, knowledge itself is racialized, but we are told this is not racist. Is it any surprise then when a “racist” says we have no history until Europeans colonised us? For all they know, we have no history because, from birth, they have internalised (regardless of where they have grown up) the history of one tiny patch of land as the only history necessary for all humanity to know. Though we have a history, they care not for it because our ancestors never felt the need to wipe out every other history except for their own. They are the product of racism; as Paulo said, this cycle of oppression only breeds more oppressors. So, to be anti-racist is not just to criticise the racist, but to criticise the cycles and conditions that have created the racist. To take an active stance against the production of more racists by tearing down the institutions that create them.

To be anti-racist is also to notice and help those who have internalised and repeated these cycles. We cannot be anti-racist while perpetuating the same processes of colonialism, which were inherently racist and oppressed our ancestors and continue to oppress us. In this way, it is an obligation on us to decolonise in order to be anti-racists, because, as Frantz Fanon said:

The colonized man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people . . . While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native; for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother.

If we are not cautious about who we direct our anger to, we will sooner attack another than attack those who formulated and perpetuated racism within racist societies for their own profits. To be anti-racist is to shake off the class-based shackles of racist rhetoric and to decolonise our racist minds; it is to refuse to see one’s brother as you have been told to see them by the person who invented these categories to fit us into to justify why they deserve more than us.

Why, then, must we centre anti-racism? Because it is the liberation for all.

To close, I have a quote from a Ghassan Kanafani short story that spoke to me and a verse that remains on my mind as to why we must love in the face of oppression:

It was in another country that I earned my harsh subsistence, a place that had everything and nothing, that same country which gave you everything in order to deny you it. In that remote place even the sunsets were colored with a frightening deprivation, and the mornings brought the glare of remorseless anxiety. I lived there, nurtured by the hope that I would put all this behind me one day, and begin with you anew.

Ghassan Kanafani, ‘In my Funeral’ short story, from the novella collection titled ‘All that’s left to you’

ٱذۡهَبَاۤ إِلَىٰ فِرۡعَوۡنَ إِنَّهُۥ طَغَى (٣٤)

فَقُولَا لَهُۥ قَوۡلࣰا لَّیِّنࣰا لَّعَلَّهُۥ یَتَذَكَّرُ أَوۡ یَخۡشَىٰ (٣٤)

Go, both of you, to Pharaoh, for he has exceeded all bounds.

Speak to him gently so that he may take heed, or show respect.’

Surah 20, Ta-Ha, Verse 43-44

And Allah knows best