“Anti-Racist Racism” Is Still Racism

One of the fundamentals of (evil) Political Correctness has been that: “when we do it, it’s not evil, but righteous’. Unbeknownst to these criminally PC fools, evil men have always said that, when they did it, it was not evil.

The ideology of Négritude” (“Blackness”) appeared in France in 1931. Jean-Paul Sartre had plenty of time to contemplate it. In the 1950s, Sartre called Négritude an “anti-racist racism”.

“Anti-racist” here is an adjective, racism is the substantive. Substance versus adjunction. 

In the preceding essay, I observed that:

‘Aimé Césaire was from Martinique, not Africa. So he did not know that, in Africa, qualifying people by skin color is viewed as racism.’

Césaire was first of all a French intellectual posing as a rebel. This judicious observation of yours truly, that qualifying people by skin color is viewed as racist in Africa, ticked off François Luong. Luong wrote: @Tyranosopher An utterly ridiculous claim. & I’ll take 1 Aimé Césaire over 10^6 Patrice Aymé. The former made the world a better place.

Whereas, I suppose I am working hard to make it ever worse… Luong has never been to Africa. I grew up there.

That Luong implied insult was of course a much appreciated gauntlet thrown. I am an African philosopher, talking in the name of the Africa which brought me up. Aimé Césaire was not an African, and he talked in the name of skin. Not just this, but when he talked against colonization, he was also talking against civilization. By this I am not saying that colonization as it happened, was optimal. It was not. Yet, consider this:

.

Africa Enjoyed Slavery For A Full 1200 Years After the Franks Made It Unlawful In Europe. Actually One Of The Argument For Imperial European Control (“Colonization” Without Colons) Of Africa, Was To Stop The Slavery & Cannibalism There. I don’t Object To That Lofty Goal.

Analyze this: For Césaire’s (1913–2008), the concept of Négritude is historically derived from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the slaves’ plight in the New World. In his own words, “Négritude is not a cephalic index, or plasma, or soma, but measured by the compass of suffering.”

In other words, Africa as pathos. Africa as a pain. Well, F you, Césaire and your followers. As an African, I stridently object. Africa is neither a pain nor a pathos, except in the eyes of deranged racists. Africa is rather a quickly changing hope.  Césaire’s blackness has to do with “blacks” as found in the new World… Who often have, in part, slave master ancestors (as FLOTUS Michelle Obama does; it was actually probably a love story between Irish owner and colored slave… don’t laugh.). Nothing to do with Africa.

Insinuating that Césaire was racist is not new: “Even then Communists would reproach me for speaking of the Negro problem— they called it my racism. But I would answer: Marx is alright, but we need to complete Marx. I felt that the emancipation of the Negro consisted of more than just a political emancipation.” [Discourse on Colonialism.]

In other words, “the Negro” is a child. The Negro child needs to be emancipated some more.

The argument can be made that making “blackness” as a noble goal, forged the way for the Nazis to make “aryanism” (“whiteness”?) as a noble goal too. This Césaire, who insisted very much after WWII that Hitler was not dead, could be viewed as a fellow traveller of Hitler. Thus, indeed, Hitler was not dead. Césaire angrily denounced “colonialism”, although he was a pure product of it, in more way than one.

Trump has campaigned against Political Correctness for a long time, and me for even longer. I have a total objection for not saying things as they are (except to a dying child, of course!)

Even Socrates practiced Political Correctness: he was deadly set against total democracy, but he refused to admit that he was just that, DEADLY set against democracy… If he had admitted to himself and others that he was deadly set against total democracy, Socrates could have had healthy debates. Instead, he went around like a sting ray, injecting venom which caused a torpor, as was pointed at the time.

Until Socrates was in front of a jury for his life: then he had to either show himself to be a coward, for all of society and posterity to contemplate, or he had to drink his own medicine. He famously did the later; but it may be viewed as an admission that he had to commit (assisted) suicide.

Some will say, some have said: anti-racist racism is OK. Right… Until one knows history well. Racists are generally loudly claiming to be anti-racist: or so they claim to others, and, often, to themselves.

For example the Nazis were out to protect (“German”) minorities from assault, or even holocausts (Eastern Europe was full of German Settlements, just as it was full of Jewish settlements, and the settlements of various Natives, let alone Gypsies). In India, the hyper racist, hyper violent upper crust (the upper castes) viewed itself as an endangered minority (of superior beings).

In Antique Greece, as all Feudal regimes, the best people (“Aristos”) viewed themselves as an endangered race (the Aristos looked racially different, be it in Japan or Europe; interestingly modern genetics revealed that the Japanese Aristos genetically mixed with their own slaves, the original Natives of Japan, hence a different, more “European” physical appearance).

There is good colonialism, there is bad colonialism. Most of humanity descend from colonialists, not just Césaire. The latter wrote a whole discourse on colonialism, influencing generations of parrots thereafter.

Suppose Eurasia were still in the Middle Ages. What would Africans be doing? Besides enslaving other Africans? Well, eating other Africans of course. It is still going on, from conflict zones, to expensive restaurants..

(Notice that I am not trying to apply indignantly degenerate Euro philosophy to robust African wisdom. The philosophical strength of Africa is precisely to contradict a lot of Euro-American received ideas. African barbarity has a wisdom that even American barbarity does not possess).

There is fake news

There is fake history

There is fake wisdom

There is fake knowledge

There are fake intellectuals

If we want hope that really work, we have first to learn to distinguish what’s real, from what is not so. Self-justifying racism is the paradigm of hell paved with good, self-glorifying intentions. As an Asian proverb has it, nothing worse than a tiger who thinks it is in the right.

Patrice Ayme’

Tags: anti-racist racism, Césaire, Sartre, slavery