Learning from BLM
The writer is a development anthropologist. He can be reached at ali@policy.hu
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement against police brutality in the United States has instigated a much broader wave of protest movement around the world. BLM’s ability to help draw attention to glaring forms of oppression in rich and poor countries alike is indeed encouraging, and a sign of hope for our divisive world, which has recently seen a surge in populist sentiments.
BLM has led different countries to reflect on varied forms of historical injustices. In Australia, BLM has drawn attention to structural forms of violence against aboriginal communities. Elsewhere, BLM has led to questioning other symbols of oppression. For example, monuments and statues commemorating controversial colonial figures around the world have become the focus of renewed scrutiny.
Citizens of former European colonial powers tore down a statue honouring a slave trader in the UK, they defaced statues of Leopold II in Belgium for his brutality in the Congo. Despite push back against the removal of confederate statues in the US under the guise of ‘heritage’, many American cities have removed statues valourising Columbus. Princeton University has decided to remove the name of Woodrow Wilson from its school for public policy. New Zealand has similarly decided to remove the statue of Captain Hamilton, who is infamous for slaughtering the indigenous Maori population. The valourisation of Winston Churchill is being questioned in England, alongside that of Gandhi, for their overt racism.
It is not only former colonizing countries where this needed questioning of history is taking place. In fact, the University of Ghana had taken down Gandhi statues a couple of years ago, and similar efforts are afoot in Johannesburg, catalysed by BLM. Kenya was actually a forerunner in the movement to get rid of colonial statues when a statue of Queen Victoria was torn down in Nairobi back in 2015. In South Africa, the University of Cape Town has removed the statue of Cecil Rhodes from public viewing, for his support to the apartheid system.
Some argue that removing statues which memorialise problematic figures in history is not enough. BLM merits deeper reflection. BLM needs to instigate introspection amongst diasporic communities, such as Pakistani and Indian migrants, who themselves are no strangers to experiences of xenophobia. Yet, South Asian communities have also been complicit and have benefited from anti-Black racism. Internalising and seeking acceptance as the ‘model minority’ has indirectly served to justify and sustain racism against historically subjugated minorities for being miscreants. Challenging anti-Black racism within diasporic communities is also very important to build solidarity movements and push back against xenophobia in general.
Within our own part of the world, it would have been heartening to see BLM spark wider questioning of deep-seated forms of structural violence and discrimination against our own religious and ethnic minorities. Instead, BLM has mostly served as a cudgel to try and bash the US over its hypocrisy of trying to be a global moral watchdog, or else, it has become a fashionable cause to be endorsed via social media.
Bollywood actors or socialites posting support for BLM aside, hashtags like #MuslimLivesMatter and #DalitLivesMatter are at least trying to echo the real message of #BlackLivesMatter. One has not seen much evidence of similarly reflexive attempts in Pakistan. A significant proportion of Pakistan’s intelligentsia is not only elitist, but also colonial in its mindset. Consider, for instance, how a new Pakistani think-tank recently hosted Niall Ferguson, an imperial apologist, and someone who openly disagrees with the removal of colonial statues.
It thus remains vital for post-colonial countries like our own to not only empathise with the BLM movement, but to use it as an opportunity to also question or own racism, and other problematic forms of oppression, ranging from patriarchy to classism.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 17th, 2020.
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