Criticizing black people while in a relationship with white people is a contradiction
Neither can you critique white power.
I say this from the deepest place of love for African people. You’ve lost that right and you need to accept it.
Because for all the contradictions that African people experience, it’s nothing compared to the contradiction of you entering into a subjective romantic relationship with the oppressor. And no matter how you justify your relationship, you cannot resolve the fact that your booty is the actual booty gained from hundreds of years of imperialist plunder of Africa.
In conversation with a group of African women about dating white men, a few of them tripped over themselves to confirm that they have had or have no problem entering these types of relationships. What was scarier than that was that these women fancied themselves as champions of social justice and ending racism.
Herein lies the contradiction when fighting racism rears its stupid little head. The fight against racism – getting white people to like us – got us messed up.
The end goal is to win in the minds of white people that “we matter” or that we are “human” and for some of us, this signals victory. This may manifest into seeking out relationships that exemplify the victory of acceptance – love wins, right.
These Africans’ understanding of power and oppression often sees racism in ebbs and flows, believing that at some point we were nearer to freedom than other times because we were granted the right to sit in the front of the bus, vote, or live in a “white” neighborhood.
They gauge our equality by our proximity to white space, including the private parts of white people.
Obviously this should not be our goal, since it leaves white people still holding power.
This point escapes even the most politically astute of us. For example, Frantz Fanon, one of my favorite revolutionary philosophers, dedicated his entire first book, Black Skin White Mask” to justifying the black man’s [his] “conditioning” for white women by providing the basis for the black man’s insecurities and ways to psychologically reduce white women’s fear of the black man.
It was pages and pages of subjective, self-serving, pandering on behalf of black men [himself] and at the same time he uses the book to log deep criticisms of African women who enter into relationships with white men. He contributes nothing to the reparation of relationships between African people.
I say this with the utmost respect for Fanon’s analysis on colonialism; but the brother was a walking contradiction since he married and had children with a white woman.
His failure to even use his findings on the psychology of colonized people, in his groundbreaking book Wretched of Earth, to correct his earlier work, is another avoided opportunity.
How can you say F white power and then go home and F white power. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a given that within a subjective romantic relationship you to compromise and yield power to a partner from time to time.
There is no way that you can truly fight against white power when you concede to it every day, intimately.
And I don’t want to hear that white women don’t have power in a white patriarchal society, blah blah blah, because they do, I wrote a whole entire article about it called “White Women are the White People of White People.”
How can you fight for black power — the total destruction of the parasitic capitalism, the socialist unification of Africa, Africans changing our objective reality — when you don’t acknowledge that the subjective relationship that you are engaged in is parasitic to its core?
That white people have what they have because they’ve stolen it from everyone else. That African people live in THE worst conditions in the world, because white people continue to exploit African people and lands until this day.
That white people sit on the pedestal of oppression that has turned the world into warring factions and people into commodities. And that your relationship is part of that parasitism.
Even if the socialist unification of Africa, is not your jam, how still can you fight for black freedom, when you are sleeping with a white person whose only “contribution” to your liberation is essentially through your private parts?
I mean, are they paying reparations to African people? Are they fighting for black power (your power)? Even if they are, it still doesn’t mean it’s open season on white peen.
C’mon my sweet African jelly beans, you have to demand more for yourself. These types of relationships can obscure the core contradiction, which is that white people have power and they maintain power through colonial oppression and they benefit collectively from our oppression.
Did you not see how Africa France won the world cup? Colonialism and capitalist exploitation my people.
Because, don’t you know that white people can and will use their relationship with you to launch their attacks against the rest of our people.
White women swirling their necks attacking African women. White men, conservatives, coddled by African women, attacking African men.
It’s that flippant response to the video of the police shooting of an African man, “I’m sure that’s not the whole video,” or the when she says, “that’s why he’s with me, you’re too loud.”
But still, what’s more despicable than white folks being white folks, are Africans– steeped in the contradiction of being in relationship with oppressor– blaming African people for the conditions that have been created by the oppressor.
I say with love, shut up and sit down! You have no credibility here.
There was this one particular African woman who joined ANWO, who was in a relationship with a white man and had two children by him. While dipping in and out of her contradictory emotions regarding this white dude and participating in the organizing work of ANWO, she’d frequently get on social media and provide all types of opinions on black men and violence.
No critique of white people [men], however.
I’m not opposed to African women critiquing black men from a place of love and reparation, but the only love this sister had was for the white man who served as the breadwinner of her household–which is another contradiction. She was instead contributing to the deepening rift that colonialism created.
She soon found that she could not be in organization with us because she did not unite with “African” liberation. Instead she sought credibility for her non-aligned positions about our community through her association with a black liberation organization. She is not alone in doing that.
Take for an example how media is used. In the movie, Dear White People, the mixed African woman has a conflicted sexual relationship with a white man, which we discover is the main point of the movie.
Here we were, prepared to watch a movie that marketed itself as a powerful indictment of white people, but come to find out it is really a movie about portraying “radical” Africans, as the irrational bad guys. The black woman runs to the safe, soothing arms of the white man who confirms for her that she is being too “radical”.
And what’s with Franchesca Leigh, who started as a hair vlogger but is now an MTV social justice activist, chosen talk about all things racial. All from the perch of white power’s peen.
Kanye West… [i don’t think i need to elaborate here]
It’s a completely fantastical notion that someone who does not understand white power and dialectical materialism – the unity of opposites, and that contradiction is found in those opposites- could help other people understand why things are the way they are.
So I am throwing my pen into the fray to provide some clarity.
While ultimately this article is an indictment on interwhite-cial relationships, it is also rooted in the understanding that until black people wrests power from the hands of our exploiters to ensure that we have the power to determine our own trajectory, to defend our choices, to protect our people; there will not be any equality in these relationships. Whiteness is inherent to parasitic capitalist exploitation, war, imperialism and neo-colonialism.
So boo boo, you just are not capable of even broaching this subject until you deal with your subjective contradiction.
Once you figure out how to wrestle yourself from the exploitative relationship you have “chosen” for yourself, then you might be better equipped to contribute to criticisms and strategies for African liberation, equality or social justice.
Until then, have several seats.
