Most people view the concept of multiculturalism as a good thing.
They believe the term means that people from all races are able to live and work harmoniously, sharing each other’s food and music, and generally “understanding” each other’s cultures.
The idea behind multiculturalism, however, actually is used to maintain domestic colonialism.
In the context of the UK, maintenance of colonialism means that whites continue to hold power over Africans and other oppressed peoples. Divide-and-rule tactics are used, and this is how they do it:
1. Give oppressed peoples the illusion that they can achieve success in the colonial system.
This illusion is similar to the “American dream” concept.
The neocolonial government employed a few African figures in high public offices, including Trevour Philip and Lee Jasper, the ex-“Commissioner for Racial Equality.”
Jasper became the adviser to the police operation referred to as Trident, which investigates crimes in the African community that involve guns or knives.
The state now allows Asians to run most local governments and to obtain seats in UK parliament, by introducing African/Asian-only candidacy to compete in safe Labour voting areas that have high percentages of African or Asian residents.
The government funded Black History Month events, a carnival and granted pupils holiday for Eid (Islamic festival).
Aside from these political tokens, seeing Africans such as Levi Roots, with his Reggae Reggae jerk sauce, winning the TV show The Apprentice, and Alexandra Burke winning X-Factor 2009, gives young Africans false hope of success within the British colonial system.
The intense media propaganda and lack of resistance has meant that many young Africans now identify themselves as British citizens, and UK their home.
2. Destroy unity amongst oppressed peoples.
Recently, we saw a media- and government-supported campaign launched that portrayed Africans from the Caribbean as “troublemakers.”
UK police criminalised Africans from Jamaica, calling them such terms as “Yardies,” and even speaking in Partois, the contact language of that group, became associated with criminality.
In the Asian community, Pakistani youths had the highest crime rates and upper school drop-out rates, according to statistics.
The government also encourages separate groups—“Nigerians” or “Somalis”—to compete for money to resolve their problems.
The effects of our oppression have been ghettoisation and isolation.
Whenever the State or white nationalist groups murder or attack an African, Lee Jasper or another uncle Tom is there to direct our anger away from the State.
Instead, they want us to create more charities and foundations.
This is why we have the Damiola Taylor Trust—and others!—named after Africans whom the State murdered..
3. Destroy both self-determination and African resistance.
Since multiculturalism promotes the idea of equal opportunity, they have started explaining to us and everyone that the reasons our African children are being failed in schools, or being jailed, or being killed by the police, is because of our weaknesses!
They are telling us that the reasons our children have gotten into drugs and started killing each other is because of our behaviour and culture, rather than the truth, which is that our children are forced to attend colonial schools, and that the police plant drugs in our communities.
This colonial driven racist explanation has become the dominant myth.
History of Resistance and Unity
We need to understand that capitalism is a vicious system were a tiny minority live comfortably at the expense of the pain and suffering of the majority.
The capitalist system is a consequence of Europeans’ enslavement of Africans and looting of the wealth of the rest of the world.
Of course, violence is required to keep the majority under submission in maintenance of such a system.
There is a history of resistance in the UK, including rioting that occurred mostly from the 1950s through the 1980s and culminating with the 1981 Brixton rebellion.
These rebellions involved open battle between the British colonial police and African youths, who were defending their communities from constant State attacks.
White nationalist groups like the National Front, Combat 18 and others also attacked them.
Because of these attacks, during those decades Africans and other oppressed peoples were united.
African resistance around the world against direct colonial rule, particularly against the white settler regime in South Africa, fostered this unity.
Africans from the continent and from the Caribbean had a common affinity—a spirit of touch one, touch all—and a shared desire to return to our respective colonized homelands.
Thus residing in the UK was seen as a temporary solution for most Africans.
Roots of Multiculturalism
In short, multiculturalism is a term that was born from the failures of the conservative government to crush African resistance inside the UK during the 1980s.
As its colonial subjects continued to free themselves from direct colonial rule, the British economy was declining, and therefore Britain needed to intensify its attack on Africa and the Caribbean to maintain some control of its former colonies. But it could not maintain its control of its colonies abroad without dealing with Africans and Caribbeans then living in the UK.
In 1997, the Labour government developed a new approach that it called multiculturalism. Turning Point
Counterinsurgency tactics appear to achieving their aims within the African community but have failed within the Pakistani Muslim community.
The turning point was the UK attack on Iraq and Afghanistan, which radicalised many Muslim and Pakistani youth.
Some Muslims and Pakistanis burned poppy fields on the day those countries remembered soldiers who fought in imperialist world wars, as a way to openly express their hatred of the UK/ US-led occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some Muslims have begun to call for Sha’riah law instead of the British colonial judicial system.
In his first speech as British prime minster, David Cameron said, "Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," (February 5, 2011).
This is an indication that the state is preparing for a new open attack on oppressed communities, and it must be a sign for African to organise—not for a better ”multiculturalism,” but for African Internationalism.
