Of Keloids, colonialism and eternal racism
I have a keloid, right in the middle of my chest. No small amount of steroid injections have proved to be effective in removing it.
While it can be a nuisance when it itches, it feels minor, in comparison with the 1863 photo of Peter, who fled from a Louisiana plantation.
The photo of Peter’s back, full of keloids, as a result of whippings who almost cost his life, can resonate with any Afrodescendant in the world.
Colonialism is the key in this conversation, but open discussions on colonial crimes are not part of mainstream conversations in European countries.
In my country, Italy, colonialism is brushed off as something minor ( forgetting all the colonial crimes of both Fascist and post-unification liberal Italy) while, where I live, in the UK, colonial crimes are also easily brushed off.
The roles that the British monarchy and the country’s elitès played in establishing the transatlantic trade, on the back of the pain of millions, while benefitting British cities, ports, universities, financial institutions, and more, are also easily brushed off.
Bristol was a city that benefited immensely from the transatlantic trade, and the statue of Edward Colston stood proud, as the city’s benefactor.
Colston was not just any slave trader; as British historian David Olusoga explained, Colston was deputy governor, “chief executive officer” of a company that enslaved the most Africans, the Royal African Company, which shipped 84,000 Africans into slavery in the Americas, including 12,000 children.
Olusoga shared these facts, as an expert witness, during the trial of Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Sage Willoughby and Jake Skuse, more known to the public collectively as the Colston 4, for their role in toppling Colston’s statue.
Conversations on race, racism, and colonial crimes are becoming more widespread in Britain, thanks to the voices of historians and academics like Olusoga and Kehinde Andrews, writers, journalists, and broadcasters like Benjamin Zephaniah, Emma Dabiri, Afua Hirsch, Gary Younge, Nadine White, and Reni Eddo-Lodge.
Similarly in Italy, voices like the ones of writers like Igiaba Scego, Esperance Hazukwimana Ripanti, Djarah Kan, academics like Angelica Pesarini, journalists like Adil Mauro, Oiza Q Obasuyi, Bellamy and Francesca Moretti are promoting different conversations, and a monologue by Black Italian actress Lorena Cesarini on racism, during the famous music festival Sanremo this year has generated many headlines in the media.
It is important to consider this context, as well as the global and local dimension of the Black Lives Matter movements.
In my Belpaese, a Neonazi wounded, and tried to murder Black people in Macerata just four years ago, a young man of Capoverdian descent, Willy Monteiro Duarte was murdered, almost two years ago and many other Black men have been murdered over the years, from Idy Diene, Abdul “Abba” Guibre to Soumaila Sacko, not to mention all those who died in the Mediterranean or are brutalised in the Lybian camps, financed with Italian taxpayers’ money.
While the United Kingdom would always seem to me, a mixed Black-Latino-Italian who grew up in a village, a multicultural paradise, Black Britons have endured incredible pain, from the brutal racism of the 60s-70s, the ongoing police brutality and overall institutional racism, exemplified by the Windrush scandal, with the deprivation of rights and the deportation of British citizens of West Indian descent.
If we think about Colston’s statue instead, the Conservatives’ reactions of contempt which followed the verdict for the Colston 4’s acquittal and the fear that other statues, like Winston Churchill’s one in Parliament Square, might be in “danger” highlights the issues with a political class that cares more about marble than the lives of minorities.
It is not about tearing down all the statues, as we cannot escape the conversations on race, history, and heritage; what happened with the Colston statue reinforced that conversation, as well as action on this front.
History is articulate, and while Churchill was a protagonist in the defeat of Nazi-Fascism, it also cannot be denied that the British Empire that he stood for, was entrenched in white supremacy, just like the French one.
The decision of Barbados of becoming a Republic, removing the British monarch as head of state is a crucial part of all of this, as Barbados was the first British centre of slavery, in the New World.
The pain and suffering that Black people suffer all over the globe is always minimised and diminished, as we have seen in the middle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the racist abuse experienced by Africans, as well as by Asian students at the hands of the Ukrainian and Polish border forces both something that many brushed off as “Russian propaganda”, while it was in fact true.
The borders are now open and you will find a warm welcome, but the White and Christian credentials are mandatory though.
The testimonies of those who experienced that racist abuse feel chilling if we compare to the comments that we have seen, expressed also by the Ukrainian Ambassador in the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, who told the following to the Home Affairs Select Committee "It has been raised many times. Ukraine is a very homogenous society and not many people with different races on the streets. Foreigners do stick out of the crowd (but) it doesn’t mean we are racist”.
That was not all though, as The Independent’s Nadine White pointed out, and the fact that Prystaiko was answering to MP Diane Abbott, who experiences the most abuse as a Black woman MP just gives the measure of how out of touch so many are and on how to so many the pain and suffering of Black people just does not matter, or at least not that much.
The crucial problem is based, when it comes to the UK, in the fact that nostalgia of the Imperial past dominates the conservative debate, but it is, truly, a toxic, elitist nostalgia, and it is time to embrace, here and elsewhere, a different path, for racial and social justice.
Black voices need to be heard and we need our own megaphone, as we will not leave our stories to others, we will tell our own experience and share our perspective.