race
Information about race, racism and anti-racism.
We are not all like that: the monster bares its fangs
Black consciousness militant and activist in the Landless Peoples' Movement Andile Mngxitama responds to the May 2008 pogroms in South Africa.
The sms’s came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. The front pages are a festival of beastly pictures of the victims of the negrophobic blood letting which has gripped South Africa in the past weeks.
On the pogroms in South Africa
An essay on the May 2008 pogroms in South Africa by Richard Pithouse.
The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear.
The Pogroms in South Africa: The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics
A response to the recent pogroms in South Africa from the anti-authoritarian militant intellectual Michael Neocosmos.
by Michael Neocosmos, 5 June 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo statement on the xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg, 2008
In recent days the shack settlements around Johannesburg have been torn apart by appalling violence against foreign born squatters. More than 20 people have been killed and many more raped, wounded and left homeless. This press statement from Abahlali baseMjondolo, the militant shack dwellers movement with more 30 affiliated settlements in the cities of Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Pinetown, responds to the horrific outbreak of anti-foreigner violence and notes the culpability of the state.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Unyawo Alunampumulo
Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg
There is only one human race.
Our struggle and every real struggle is to put the human being at the centre of society, starting with the worst off.
Britz, dir. Peter Kosminsky, Channel 4, 2007. Television review – Tom Jennings
Juggling simplistic stereotypes, Channel 4’s Britz illuminates neither the attitudes of UK Muslims nor the motivations of homegrown jihadists, concludes Tom Jennings.
A Bipolar Exposition by Tom Jennings
The Ninety-third Division - Black US soldiers' struggles in World War II - Nelson Peery
Extracts from Nelson Peery's Black Fire - The Making Of A Black Revolutionary. Peery describes here the racism and segregation encountered by black soldiers and their militancy in opposing it during WWII.
Labour Rebellions of the 1930s in the British Caribbean Region Colonies - Richard Hart
A brief overview of the numerous struggles which occurred in the British Caribbean during the 1930s, which led to the introduction of many trade union rights across the region, written by Jamaican trade unionist Richard Hart.
Published in 2002 jointly by Caribbean Labour Solidarity and the Socialist History Society.
About the author
Building Worker newsletter - Autumn 2007
Newsletter containing articles on organising site workers ahead of the Olympics, fighting the blacklist in Manchester, pay and holiday pay, a recent strike against racism and the dangers of trusting union officials.
If you want or need help organizing and would like to meet rank and file union members with enough experience of how to help and advise you. Phone UK R&F BWC on 07942 252280. We’ll gladly meet you in a pub or anywhere else you choose after work near your site for a chat.
300-strong wildcat in Milford Haven ends
Workers at South Hook LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) have gone back to work following a 26-hour stoppage in support of a colleague who claims to have suffered from racial abuse on site.
The Western Telegraph reports:
Three hundred men working for Shaw stopped working at 10 am on Thursday, and marched on the offices of main contractors Chicago Bridge and Iron. The men came out in support of fellow worker, Omar Mohamed, who alleges that he has suffered racial harassment from workers from another company sub contracting to CB&I.
The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape - Slavoj Žižek
Philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek examines the racist reaction to Hurricane Katrina, and argues there is a deeper logic at work, reflecting globalisation's simultaneous freeing of trade in commodities and segregation of people.
According to a well-known anecdote, anthropologists studying “primitives” who supposedly held certain superstitious beliefs (that they descend from a fish or from a bird, for example) asked them directly whether they “really” believed such things. They answered: “Of course not—we ‘re not stupid!
