Religion permeates everywhere within and throughout the bourgeois, capitalist system. We know it is ‘there’ as it tends to turn the stark reality of material exploitation into something of an unfathomable ‘mystery’! The reality is, of course, that this crushing exploitation is quite deliberate and very much ‘here and now’ whilst being designed to keep the working-class in its place, whilst extracting as much profit from it as possible. There was a time throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the Black resistance to racism in the US was inherently linked to the working-class resistance to capitalist exploitation – but this is not the case today. Today, African-Americans want what they perceive to be their ‘far-share’ of the capitalist pie – rather than to participate in the overthrow of the capitalist system itself. This ‘about-face’ has been one of the major victories of the White bourgeoisie which runs America. African-Americans once developed a ‘true’ consciousness opposing the capitalist ideology that enslaved their ancestors and which generates the ‘racism’ all non-White people are subjected to – but now they have come into line with this very exploiting ideology itself. The Black community in the US has adopted the Trotskyite fallacy that teaches ‘capitalism can be reformed’ – even though there has been absolutely no evidence of this at any point in its long five-hundred-year history.
The quandary for the Black community with regards this new direction is that it must walk a tightrope which sees the necessity on the one-hand of continuously ‘proving’ its loyalty to the White system that has historically enslaved its ancestors and continues to racially discriminate against its contemporary population – whilst simultaneously ‘opposing’ that system at key-points of ‘over-lap’ and ‘friction.’ The former involves ‘co-operation’ with this White society, whilst the latter involves a measured ‘resistance’ to this White society. Where African-Americans ‘resist’ this White society is well-known and well-documented and is not the purpose of this article. Suffice to say, where the Black community ‘opposes’ White hegemony and White racism – I am in full agreement and adopt an attitude of full-support. However, where the Black community compromises its dignity and ‘co-operates’ with the forces of White hegemony – this is exactly where we differ and point at which we part ways. Why is this? It is because a major plank in the Black strategy of ‘co-operating’ with ‘mainstream’ White society involves the embracing of the anti-Asian (Chinese) attitudes held by the White community – and a mobilisation of the Black community in the direction of physically and intellectually ‘expressing’ that support. This ‘divide and conquer’ strategy is a far-cry from the ‘internationalism’ and ‘solidarity’ in the face of White racism which used to define the interaction between Black people and Chinese people.
Like most Eurocentric governments, the US government has been racially agitating against China for hundreds of years. The Chinese people are physically, psychologically, emotionally, culturally, spiritually and of course – ‘politically’ inferior to their racially ‘pure’ Western counter-parts. To curry favour with White society a certain proportion of the Black population ‘aligns’ itself with this interpretation of Chinese people. Black people – including Black intellectuals – verbalise this racism (in other words, Black mouths express ‘White’ racism), and Black individuals and groups act on this racism. Following the murder of George Floyd – African-American attacks (many of them filmed by the perpetuators) upon Chinese men and women soared – inspired by the false notion that the Asian police officer who was present when the murder of George Floyd occurred was ‘Chinese’ when in fact he is of the ‘Hmong’ ethnicity. (The ‘Hmong’ are an ethnic group that betrayed their country of Vietnam during the ‘White’ invasion and sided with the US invaders themselves – being eventually awarded by being airlifted to America following the US defeat). Two other reasons Black people are attacking Chinese people in America is because the US government has repeatedly broadcast the lie that Covid-19 was chemically engineered in a lab in China and deliberately ‘released’ into the world – whilst China is simultaneously keeping its ‘Uyghur’ (Muslim) population in vast concentration camps in Xinjiang province! None of this is ‘true’ just as all racism is predicated upon a lie – and yet this does not stop certain members of the Black community acting upon it as if it were real.
Iggy Azalea is a White woman who left Australia to further her career of rapping whilst mimicking the accent of a Black women brought-up in the Southern United States. Of course, she migrated to the US – where White racists would buy her records and make her very rich – and that is exactly what happened. She does attract criticism, but with each new wave of discontent, her record-sales boom! Black criticism of Iggy Azalea, despite the obvious appropriation, is half-hearted to say the least as her career continues unabated as she plays to sold-out venues. In the article referenced above, the journalist ‘Keith Neilson Jr’ continues the Black tradition of ‘attacking’ Asian (or ‘Chinese’) people by singling-out and ‘targeting’ one ‘Awkwafina’ – a person I personally know nothing about other than the ‘body-coding’ her public image offers. Her real name is ‘Nora Lum’ – with ‘Lum’ written as ‘林’. Within Putonghua her Chinese surname is pronounced ‘Lin’ – but the fact her family write it as ‘Lum’ suggests to me that her Chinese ancestors are from Fujian province and probably speak a version of the Hokkien dialect. They might also be of ‘Hakka’ origination and speak that dialect. Hakka people migrated into Southern China from the Midlands or perhaps further North of China hundreds of years ago. None of this is in Neilson’s article because his intention is to ‘humiliate’ Nora Lum because of her race and ethnicity and in no way demonstrate any understanding of her ‘ethnic’ identity. He does this, I feel, because she possesses a genuine ‘non-White’ identity – and unlike him – does not carry what looks like a Western or Northern European (or ‘White’) set of names.
The intention in the author’s mind is obvious for all to see – but he is operating from the false notion that no one will dare to confront the narrative and paradigm he is attempting to generate. To put it is simply and directly – this article is a prime example of ‘Black’ racism aimed at another ‘non-White’ group for all the reasons explained above. Even if we allow for the fact that it is ‘White’ racism being parroted by a Black person against another ‘person of colour’ – there is no excuse. Of course, all this is camouflaged – but this camouflaged is not particularly effective or compelling, as the supposed ‘moral outrage’ is a rhetorical device used to justify the anti-Chinese racism when it is deployed by a Black person. As for Nora Lum’s antics – America is full of all sorts of capitalist stupidity and continuous anti-intellectualism as that is the nature of predatory capitalism. My simple point is this; when Black people attempt to make a journalistic career by deploying ‘White’ anti-China racism – then it is the duty of every ‘internationalist’, ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ to confront this racism with clarity and vigour!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 