ITS JANINE BTW!

The chaos of whiteness cost Black lives

On Sunday 23 August 2020, a number of people witnessed the shooting of Jacob Blake, some of these witnessed included his own children. One can only (or rather not) imagine the deep-rooted trauma sustained when watching your own parent being shot at and you are rendered powerless to do anything, unable to speak or take action, just in case they might shoot you too. Jacob Blake was yet another unnecessary shooting of a Black person at the hands of a white police officer, there have already been several this year, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Toni McDade and these are the ones we know about. The year 2020 has show that Black death is a state-sponsored affair, from Covid-19 to the already piling police shootings of Black people; Black people across the world are being forced-fed images of our own death or what Teju Cole refers to as death in the browser tab. Our legalised killings has proved that not only is white supremacy a global system of power that functions on chaos, its chaos is powered by annihilating Black life. Admittedly, this is not a new phenomenon. There have been countless Black deaths facilitated to us via technological devices over the last 100 years, from lynchings to political assassinations, racism is a technology that is both ancient and futuristic, that constantly updating itself for the next generation.

In 2014, Patrice Cullors, Opal Tometi and Alicia Garzia (three Black queer women) created the hashtag #BLACKLIVESMATTER in response to the unlawful killing of Michael Brown. The creation of this hashtag ignited a global movement that organised to dismantle white supremacy and its foot soldiers: capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy. In 2015, the #rhodesmustfall campaign began in South Africa and caught momentum in the UK and rest of the world, sparking not only debates about the memorialisation of statutes in public spaces, but also the need too #decolonisethecurriculum. Whilst I prefer not to discuss these movements within the linear timeframe they supposedly occurred in because they are both bounded up in decades if not centuries off global Black thought and activism. We cannot ignore how two of the biggest social movements in our current zeitgeist has occurred as a result of Black people challenging white supremacy. Highlighting that Blackness is not only a global diasporic identity connecting African descended people through our shared history of colonialism, but also showing that Blackness exists ahistorically and cuts across temporalities and our transnational collective activism are deeply tied to how our bodies move across space and time, which Gilroy would describe as “[…] the transcultural formation of the Black Atlantic.”  What unite these various movements is their demand for justice: the politics of epistemic violence and the politics of state-sponsored-violence. Both are inherently connected, Black Lives Matter because Black knowledge production matters, providing visibility for Black scholarship means providing visibility for Black lives. 

In May 2020, the death of George Floyd disrupted the techno cultural flow of whiteness. It was as if white people had “discovered” police brutality for the first time and the last six years of Black Lives Matter existing just simply did not happen. white supremacy is very chaotic this became more and more apparent in how white people reacted to George Floyd’s death. I saw how white people experienced a temporary glitch in their psyches, their previous ability to consume Black death without guilt was compromised. It strange observing white people and whiteness re-orientate within lockdown and being physically being disconnected from other white people watching their collective psychic bonds weaken. I personally believe white people responded with such furore because they were vulnerable, white panic and despair was so heightened with white people re-evaluating how whiteness could possibly work without them physically taking up space, their attention was briefly diverted to something they perceived as being far worse off than them. For many white people they were confronted with a video that lasted for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in content, but really watched 400 years of anti-black racism. In some way, Derek Chauvin (the white officer who killed George Floyd’s) reminded them of all the times they literally and metaphorically strangled the life out of a Black person. Perhaps it was the guilt, shame, embarrassment, anger, shock, that one of their own, (like the countless times before) was so candidly caught committing such a heinous act they needed to distance themselves from that kind of white patriarchal power and lockdown meant there was no unseeing it. George Floyd’s death (and others) consumed all of our technologies devices, we were all confronted confronted daily with Black death, they was no excusing it, un-watching or un-reading of it, the ugliness of racism a stink that would not pass. I like to envision white people have a global whatsapp group for themselves, where they constantly redefine the borders and behaviours of whiteness. I suppose that is how whiteness works, whiteness is a set of psychic bonds that get subconsciously activated in number ways where they decided what the appropriate response should be and how it should always remain in their favour. This time it was collective outrage. A collective outrages so powerful that it was able to colonise Black pain. The coopting of Black trauma galvanised some of the UK’s largest cultural and academic institutions to produce for the first time public statements in support of Black Lives Matter. Many of these institutions wrote about responding to the “moment,” as if it were the first time an “moment” of this kind had happened. Many wrote self deprecatingly statements, that acknowledge a public statement did not concede itself as action, and they had previously been slow in delivering their diversity and inclusion plans but deeper action is required now. They all pledged action to anti-racist work and practices and to better serve Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff, artists and audiences, even though the person/people who died were Black. None of them explained what any of this truly meant or how they would be materialising any of these actions. For instance, inherently racist institutions were making public declarations about actions they should have already been doing. Whilst white supremacy is serious as it is ridiculous, the whole performance felt like a really shit round of charades. white cultural and academic institutions colonising #blacklivesmattter, not only flatten the movement by de-centring Black lives, it also reproduces the politics of the plantation, Black bodies become equated to set of measurable outputs which benefit the same white power structure, a strategy to declare non-committal action, responsibility or accountability for everyday and institutional anti-black racism. The real crux of the matter is, it is near impossible for white people to ever be able to deliver justice for Black people when their entire racial identity and social structures are designed in their favour. How can inherently racist institutions quantify the immeasurable impacts of anti-black-violence into deliverable actions? How can white people even think they could possibly determine what racial equity should be to Black people? Surely that is racist in and of itself?

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It needs to be stated that white people dictating racial equality with the absence of Black people is not only insulting, it is an act of epistemic and state-sponsored violence. In light of such fuckuries, I imagined what racial equity would look-like for Black people, along the lines of black-futurist, feminist and speculative thinking. Some of the below demands were dreamed in conjunction with friends, where I asked them, “if you could get reparations what would you want? Please note, it is not an exhaustive list but a starting point to initiative a real conversation about what institutional change and racial equity really means for Black people.

***

Black Lives Matter: Bitch Better Have My Money Statement 

Equitable Power and Accountability

1. All cultural and academic institutions need to produce an anti-black racism action plan and strategy which apologies to every single Black person that has set foot within their institution by accepting how they have perpetuated anti-black violence both consciously and subconsciously. This action plan will holistically compensate (money and therapy) every Black person who has experienced anti-black racism whether they have officially reported it or not.

2. All white directors, senior leadership team, trustees and those with institutional power must resign with the immediate effect of this statement being published. They have proven themselves to be ineffective in dealing with anti-black racism within their respective organisations, they have failed every single Black person that has ever stepped foot in their institution. 

3. In light point 2, white directors, senior leadership team, trustees and those with institutional power will not  have access to redundancy nor any other form of financial incentives, rewards or gains. All material assets will be seized and redistributed to Black communities in the UK and wider afield, foregrounding Black people who exist in financial precarity due to white supremacy.

4. In light of point 2, all academic and cultural institutions will be led by all Black staff in particularly those of intersectional identities this structure will exist temporarily, whilst transitioning to a flattened, non-hierarchal and equitably distributed with the most excluded group of Black people receiving power in relation to their historical and contemporary marginalisation.

5. If any white directors, senior leaders, trustees want to remain in employment, they will be expected to undertake the labour of those who worked at the very bottom of their institution’s hierarchy, i.e. as cooks, cleaners, waiting staff, invigilators, security and the other forms of precarious employment Black people find themselves in. They will also be expected to undertake this labour for free.

6. The salaries of all white people within the institution will be equitably redistributed amongst Black staff with the acute understanding that who experience the most percauity due to class, gender/ gender identity, immigration status, education, sexuality, disability, afrocentric features and phenotypes and any other indicator of marginalisation will receive the most materially and holistically. We know that many of these groups are not employed and when they are it is in the most precarious and disposable roles.

7. The white people who accept the conditions of the point above, will receive 80% reduction in their salary in order to fund Black people not working. This is to address historical bias of white slave owners receiving compensation for lost of “property,” and how this money enabled these families to build their wealth, whilst those who were enslaved African and their descendent are yet to receive reparations in any form.  As an addition, the descendants of slave owners must bequest all funds, assets and material wealth to the families their ancestors enslaved.

Equitable employment and holistic working culture

8. No white person will be hired ever again in any academic or cultural institution to redress how the historic and continuous unemployment of Black people in particularly in cities where there are significantly large non-white populations. 

9. The outsourcing of labour will come to an immediate termination with effect of this statement being published. 

10. All cultural and academic institutions will provide full employment rights and benefits, lobbying governments and enact holistic equitable employment and working cultures to dismantle capitalist extractive labour practices. 

11. Black staff are not expected to work and any form of labour of emotional, intellectual and psychic labour will be duly compensated. Black staff will be allowed to rest and will receive a full-time salary and other financial perks.

12. Cultural and academic institutions will be responsible for providing comfortable, safe accommodation and travel for Black people especially precarious Black people for life. (Requested by Chloe Ayo  Deji Filani).

13. All Black people and their descendants will receive lifelong pyscho, somatic and embodied therapies facilitated by Black professional to undo the epigenetically inherited traumas from slavery and colonisation. 

14. Cultural and academic institutions will be responsible for maintaining the happiness, health and wellbeing of their Black staff with the understanding of how anti-black racial bias has disproportionately affected the quality of life for Black people. This includes unlimited holidays in particularly when our Vitamin D levels reaches a critical low. As well as those who experienced mensuration will have time off as designed and full assistance as required. (Requested by Chloe Ayo  Deji Filani and Dre Ferdinand).

15. All Black trans non cis-gendered people will receive compensated and fully assisted recovery for any surgeries, treatments, services they desire. (Requested by Chloe Ayo  Deji Filani).

16. All Black disabled people will receive compensated and fully assisted recovery for any surgeries, treatments, services they desire.

17. The physical layout and pyscho-geography of all cultural and academic institutions will be restructured for fat, larger, disabled and non cis-gendered bodies to comfortably move and navigate within. Communication, the working day and time more generally will be centre how neuro-diverse people understand and process the world.  

18. An official day of rest and mourning for Black souls. This is in addition to acknowledgement and tracing (Requested by Dre Ferdinand). 

19. FUCK HR. 

Dismantling the colonial nation-state and the hostile environment

20. Academic and cultural institutions will not participate in racist monitoring enforced by the Home Office.

21. Cultural and Academic institutions will ensure all Black people who are not British citizens will receive citizenship. Cultural and Academic institutions will successfully lobby the government to end racist immigration laws, borders and the nation state, thus ending notions of citizenships predicated upon racial exclusion and re-directing resources away from white bodies.

22. All cultural and academic institutions whose names denote allegiance to the concept of nationality and the nation states, empire, monarchy and other form of imperialism will be expected to abolish the concepts of these systems of power and redistribute wealth, resources, objects, artefacts and the myriad of other entities that stole from the countries, cultures and communities they colonised and looted. They will also need to apologise for how they benefited from the British Empire. 

23. Cultural and Academic institutions will successfully lobby the government to apologise for the existence of the British empire, its crimes, cultural and land theft, displacement, erasure murder and other unfathomable actions that has caused the current demise of Black people, cultures, countries and those in the Global South. The British government will also apologise and pay reparations to all Black peoples affected by the British Empire, colonisation and slavery.

Dismantling white supremacist arts institution and cultural production 

24. Cultural, curatorial and artistic produced by dark-skinned Black femmes, who are fat, trans, queer, working class, disabled or marginalised in any other way due to white supremacy will be the only work to be produced, curated or staged, pertaining to those past and present, living and dead.

25. No white artists will be collected, bought or exhibited or taught ever again. 

26. white artists and or art movements known to who have culturally appropriated the aesthetics, stylisations of African cultures and people and to have directly and or indirectly profited from Black pain or trauma, representing Black bodies or the absorbing, inferencing of Blackness within their works must bequest all funds, assets and material wealth to the community they have stolen content from, this includes cultural institutions who have celebrated, supported awarded their work in direct or indirect ways.

27. All white curators and cultural producers who have built their careers and expertise off Blackness, anti racism, decolonisation and post-colonialism must step down from their posts and or research and give up their positions to Black curators and or cultural producers, especially women, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people and those with other intersectional identities.

28. Cultural institutions will be opened to white people on Mondays only. Cultural institutions will be closed on Mondays.

29. Cultural institution whose history connected are too slavery and or colonisation must financially, spiritually and culturally compensate the descendants of those communities. 

30. All cultural artefacts stolen from the continent of Africa or any place with significant Black population most be returned back with immediate effect along with financial compensation for the spiritual and cultural harm this act of theft caused. If the Black people do not want their cultural object returned back to them for whatever reason, you must still provided financial compensation for the spiritual and cultural harm caused. The white descendants of those who stole the objects (and or their estate) must bequest all funds, assets and material wealth to the community those objects originally belonged to.

31. Cultural institutions that depict, stage, curate any work that is directly or indirectly connected to slavery or colonisation (literally and metaphorically) will remove the work and redistribute funds gained to the descendants of the enslaved. The white descendants of the artists (and or their estate) must bequest all funds, assets and material wealth to the descendants of the enslaved.

32. Cultural institutions will provide free tickets to Black people to ensure equitable cultural engagement.

33. Cultural institutions will financially, strategically and politically resource existing and future Black cultural organisations and institutions.

Dismantling white supremacist academia and knowledge production 

34. No white authors will be bought  or read ever again.

35. white authors, academics and researchers whose knowledge-producing materials have direct and or indirect anti-black racist content, appropriated the aesthetics, stylisations of African cultures and people, representing Black bodies or the absorbing, inferencing of Blackness within their works and or have directly and or indirectly profited from Black pain or trauma, must all funds, assets and material wealth to the community those ideas originally belonged to. This includes academic institutions who have celebrated, supported awarded their work in direct or indirect ways who most recall these actions and equitably redress Black creators have historically and contemporarily been overlooked. 

36. All white academics who have built their careers and expertise off Blackness, anti racism, decolonisation must step down from their posts and or research and give up their positions to Black scholars, especially women, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people and those with other intersectional identities. This point also relates to white Ph.D students.

37. The curriculum, knowledge production will centre the works of Black people. Any literature produced by white authors regardless of its content will be disposed off.

38. All Black young people between the ages of 5 – 18, will receive a free annual trips to any African or Caribbean country of their choice. The trip will be fully compensated, including  accommodation and expenses. (Requested by Stella)

39. All Black people can attend any university of their choice for free regardless of their grades or lack of qualification, this is to address the current algorithm that has ruined the chances of some Black (especially working class) student to attend university.

40. All Black people will automatically leave with a first class degree. This is to close the supposed “attainment gap” aka assessment gap aka the racist under marking of Black students. (Requested by Stella)

41. All Black people will have access to any lifelong learning opportunities, free resources and materials, tuition. (Requested by Stella)

42. All universities must redistribute 90% of their profits to alternative Black education provisions rooted in political education.

Abolishment of Cultural and Academic institutions

43. Cultural and academic institutions will work towards abolishing themselves and will be led by Black people across multitude of roles to be told how they need to be reconfigured and centre Blackness as their modem operandi.

44. All national funding body will  towards abolishing themselves, disseminate all their funds to Black knowledge centres, scholars, researchers, artists, curators, cultural producers and other people who have previously been denied funds and or institutionally under funded.

45. All Black artists, researchers, academics, curators, cultural producers and or any other individual who produces cultural content will have their own working spaces independent of their homes or living space, will be financed and resourced by academic and cultural institutions taking into consideration those who want to work collectively and or individual. 

46. Cultural and academic institutions will actively address the impacts of colonisation and how their appropriations of cultural objects and racist knowledge products informs our current environmental crisis. All institutions will develop anti imperialist environmental strategies and practices funnelling money and resources to those in the Global South most impacted and affected by climate change as result of 500 years of white supremacist extractive capitalism.  

47. All white people will have to unlearn, dis-embody the epigenetically learnt entitlement inherited from their ancestors. They will commit to life-long deconstructing of white supremacy within themselves, others and society and actively work towards racial equity and dismantling of white supremacy.

48. Cultural and academic institution will be accomplices to abolish the police, prisons and any other form of  state-sponsored-anti-black surveillance culture and policing practices, including the hiring of Black security guards to police their spaces. 

49. Cultural and academic institution will act as accomplices to abolish white supremacy.

50. All cultural and academic institutions will stand in solidarity with all oppressed people across the world. 

I sent the below email today to my first year students explaining why I cannot deliver my intended ‘Afro-Futurism’ lecture just yet. It is important to be honest, direct and transparent with our students because as Black scholars, lecturers and educators we need to prioritise our mental and emotional health, even if that means withdrawing our labour.

The original email involved correspondence between a student of Colour and I, who then urged me to send this to their entire cohort.

Dear Stage 1,

I hope this email finds you well.

I would like to explain and respond to a query raised by a fellow student, asking, ‘where is the afro-futurism lecture? Part of my reply is in direct response to them but also to foster a culture of transparency to you all.  

In this current time of global unrest sparked by Black Lives Matter movement, not fully disclosing would be dishonest to hers and perhaps your own query. More importantly, I do not want to deny how I truly I feel; this is because oppression functions on dishonesty, lack of transparency and non-truth telling. Oppressive cultures also aims to disconnect you from your body and feelings as being divorced or existing separately from our social reality i.e. propagating ‘distance’ and ‘objectivity’ as positions to be upheld within academia.

So, why is the ‘afro-futurism’ lecture not yet uploaded, a completely valid question to ask? Truth be told, I cannot bring myself to teach a lecture that requires me to pretend or give the impression that I have hope for myself as a Black person and for Black people more widely. Afro-Futurism is lecture that aims to connect the historic and contemporary oppression Black people experience and to imagine/dream of a future where our liberation is possible. With the current events taking place regarding the disposability of Black life, I am genuinely concerned if there will be Black people in the future. In the UK Black people are 4 times more likely to die from Covid-19, in the USA Black people are 3 times more likely to die from Covid. I also live in the London borough of Newham, it is one of the most economically deprived boroughs in the UK, with one of the highest populations of People of Colour and also the borough with the highest Covid related deaths in the UK. 

And then we have police brutality and the gruesome death of George Floyd. George Floyd death and the countless others (Brazil has one of the world’s death rates of Black people by the police) have haunted me these last few weeks and many Black people. As your only Black lecturer, , to do a lecture which requires a suspension of  belief that Black people have a future where our current reality is dominated by our hyper mortality and necro politics. Thinking about doing this lecture literally fills me up with dread and anxiety because poor Black (and Brown) people are dying due to systemic racism. I am unsure what the threats on my life will be from a day to day basis will it be  medical racism or police brutality?

I know there is sentiment of disappointment regarding disruption to your learning this year due to the strikes and online learning, I am mindful I have now contributed to this feeling. However, I hope you can appreciate where I am coming from and apologies if you were looking forward to the lecture, in theory I was too. On Stage 2 there will be opportunities to teach this lecture (Unit 8 and 10) perhaps it will be best for a later date when I am in a much better headspace.

If would like to know more about either Black Lives Matter or Afro-Futurism, please see the resources below.

Thank you for understanding,

Kind regards

Janine

Afro-Futurism

 Pumzi [short film]

Ytasha Woman – Afrofuturism Imagination and Humanity [Lecture]

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter US: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/13O7yipKHeIF2-QJ_K9IKIdLQAlN8NgEOF62qQjUjEVM/mobilebasic

Black Lives Matter UK: https://www.lazyoaf.com/blogs/story/black-lives-matter-resources

Non-Optical Allyship: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/06/08/non-optical-allyship-meaning-how-to-be-an-anti-racist-ally-in-the-fight-against-oppression/

I exist in a time where Black Lives do not matter, where the Black psyche is under attack and our spirits are being ritually murdered. It is often in these times where Black voices are the most vocal, direct and unabashed and it is often in these times where white supremacy is its most violent. But we, Black people, will always push back, it is what we do and we know how to do it well.

I also exist in a time of a global pandemic, where Black people are disproportionally dying due to medical and systemic racism. Many of us are using social media to convene and speak out against anti-black racism. However, witnessing the countless cultural and academic institutions co-opting the #blacklivesmattter as a way to perform their “allyship” all whilst not hiring Black people and or centring our work, was a massive slap in the face. Performative allyship is the worst kind of behaviour because its gaslights Black people, we know our lives do not matter to them, but they are trying to convince us otherwise. Performative allyship propagates lying as solidarity. This co-opting also dissipates the urgency and abruptness of a statement like #blacklivesmattter when it is a strategy used to avoid responsibility for everyday and institutional racism. At least with white silence it punctuates with its directness: they do not care, had never care or will ever care about Black lives, so why change now?  After seeing so many of these flimsy and worthless tweets circulate, I was raging. I was livid. I was fuming. I wanted answers. I felt a heat rise from my shins to my collarbone, a heat I intimately know, a heat I call justice and so I decided to tweet the below:

An important aside: I often notice white people re-tweeting me as a way to shift responsibility. I follow Janine, she is outspoken, I am onboard with what she says, I am not the problem. However, this is just another strategy to avoid accountability, they are micro performing the same macro performances white cultural and academic institutions do: performative allyship.

Whilst contrary to popular belief, time is not linear, it’s an abstract process informed by racialised social conditions that intercedes across historical and transnational temporalities. The twitter timeline is perhaps the best embodiment of this. Before writing my above tweet, I had witnessed a violent exchange on twitter, involving a white woman onto a Black Woman. I knew neither of them nor had come across them before, remember time is not linear. So, now my above tweet is picking up traction, it’s also gets retweeted by Daniela Nadj. In the grand schemes of things, Daniela re-tweeting me would be meaningless. However, it did mean something because it was Daniela who was the white woman who engaged in this dialogue with Tana Joseph, the Black Woman. Tana had simply critiqued Daniela for centring Mexico/ US relations within the lenses of Black Lives Matter. Since we are all academics, twitter is our platform and critiquing is what we do, this shouldn’t have been a problem for Daniela, but clearly it was. I found it bizarre she would re-tweet me, considering the above encounter and so I a decided to call it out:

Black Women as “bullies”

What spewed from this engagement were behaviours I and so many other Black and Women of Colour are all too familiar with. What is important to understand about racism, is that it is a system of power that white people have constant access too and can weaponise it whenever they feel like. I want you to imagine racism as free-floating levers that orbit our metaphysical space. white men constantly hold on to their levers with a firm and tight grasp, violently yanking on it to display their power. Whilst white women pretend they do not have access to leavers, they are always somehow just out of reach. Black and Women of Colour know white women well, we see how they sneakily dance their hands around it rims, flirting with it and threatening us with the pull.

Daniela Nadj pulled on many levers to exert her whiteness, she threatened, stereotyped and was abusive to me and countless other Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOCs). The first act of her racism (and it was racism) was the clear disparity in how she engaged with the Black and Women of Colour critiquing her versus the white people critiquing her. Her second action was deploying racist signifiers of “bullies” who had “attacked her” and “jumped on her,” not only did she repeatedly say this about me and others she never referred to her white challengers in the same way. This language draws on racist stereotypes of Black and Women of Colour as being violent, aggressive, criminals and deviant. Tweets are not superficial activities because they speak to and on the behalf of our societal inequalities. They are our digital mirrors to our “real world” and a reflection of what people truly think. The problem here for Daniela was who was doing the tweeting/critiquing and why this was such an affront to her? Clearly, she does not think Black Women have the right to critique her. After all knowledge is power in academia. Black Women demonstrating our knowledge was a challenge to her power. When a whole group of people are systemically denied entry into academic, a setting that thrives on knowledge production, when Black Women critique (and speak) we are always disrupting this racial boundary. white people like Daniela are often used to our absences but engage with our work as disembodied words divorced from the realities and minds that have produced them. Or as cannibals, only liking Black celebrity academics who can endlessly feed them. Not as agents who can respond and speak back in real time to their aggressions. And so, Daniela pulled a lever to remind me of my place: the aggressor, an anthropological position in which she can locate and understand me from. Therefore, our critiques were not ones of inspiring discourse but was intentionally perceived as inciting violence. white people can only register Black Women’s “speech” as acts of aggression, even though aggression is predicated upon power. I was not being aggressive neither did I cause her any harm (nor did anyone else) and when pressed for such evidence none was provided. This is all immaterial because her myth making process was about bestowing virtuous qualities on to herself, the aggrieved party, the wronged victim: these are the levers which white women pull on to execute white supremacy. This explains why we see countless videos of white women calling the police on to Black people.  Within this myth making process, archetypes are produced, the white damsel in distress and the ogre-like Black person. This racialised myth-making is used to harass Black Women like Serena Williams by depicting her as a “hyper-masculine ape” and Maria Sharapova as a dainty whimsical wall-flower. This wider dehumanisation fits Daniela’s myth-making project well, she gets to play the perfect victim in a problem she created. It is why she consistently employed the racist language of “bullying” or “attacking,” she was trying dissolve herself of responsibility and re-centre herself as the victim, she was crying electronical white tears.

“Sisterhood” as white women’s defence

Another strategy Daniela to tried to use was “sisterhood” and how Black and Women of Colour were being un-feminist. white women weaponise “sisterhood” as a tactic to tone police us. This imaginary “sisterhood” that Daniela believes to exist between Black and Women of Colour, functions on white woman speaking and Black and Women of Colour being silent. It is a “sisterhood” that replicates the racial hierarchy between white and bodies of Colour. It is a “sisterhood” that that upholds white supremacy which white women are invested in. It is a “sisterhood” that is for white membership only. Since I and many other Black and Women of Colour challenged her visioning of this “sisterhood” by speaking, she had to put us back in our places. This would also explain her racialising us as “bullies” and “attackers,” and more personally, tweeting me to “shut up.”

This history runs deep from Audre Lorde critiquing second wave white feminists right back to Sojourner Truths “Ain’t I a Woman” speech to the white suffragettes. There has never been any “sisterhood” between Black and white women, not when they were slave owners, complicit in upholding Apartheid and Jim Crow laws and more recently being the 50% who voted for Trump. “Sisterhood” is a myth-making project for white women to exert white supremacy. Daniela demonstrated this “sisterhood” when levelling threats to report Black and Women of Colour to their respective instiutions. We all know how scarcely absent Black and Women of Colour are within the academy, so why would she try to jeopardise our positions? She was pulling on a lever.

An “Apology” without Accountability

Daniela has issued an apology that I do not accept. Firstly, it is an awful apology that does not even begin to recognise the psychic harm she has directly (and indirectly) caused on to me and the other BIPOC. I personally do not believe she is genuinely sorry, she might be sorry for getting caught and for being so public, but it is likely she will do this again, privately. Secondly, she is an academic whose field is in Human Rights, Gender and Social Justice, one would pressume she would have better access to the vocabulary and frameworks to truly reflect on her accountability and reparative actions. The problem here is there are many white academics who are masquerading their racism within social justice discourse where much of this labour and criticality are produced by BIPOCs who are also shut out from the academy. The recolonisation of decolonial discourse by white academics is not only testimony to this but is the face of this cannibalistic culture white supremacist capitalist patriarchy creates. I demand that Oxford Brookes investigates what took place because I and many others were deeply harmed by Daniela’s conduct. More importantly, I have access to recourses of power to raise my concerns about her, this is something many BIPOC students at Oxford Brookes do not have.

I look forward to being updated about upon your outcomes

Signed

Janine Francois, Academic, Activist and Agitator

In January 2020, I met with Ellie Pennick, Gallerist and Founder of GUTS Gallery to discuss how my varied communities has been adversely affected by Tory Cuts. Click on the link below to find out what I had to say.

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We met up with the inspiring Janine Francois and asked her a few questions as part of our Grafting Under Tory State campaign! Pre-order a tee now via the link in our bio! A special thank you to our photographer @fraserhn and @izzy_gb for helping with the shoot and @everpresshq Designed by the talented illustrator @ellarosefox #everpress #janinefrancois #graftingundertorystate #gutsgallery

A post shared by Guts Gallery (@guts_gallery) on Feb 15, 2020 at 8:33am PST

From London to Flint, Michigan to Brazil to India, white colonialist capitalism is to blame for our climate crisis – I just want white people to accept responsibility.

Read the full article here at Huffington Post