I never realized how deep racists’ obsession with Black people went until I began voicing support for Palestine of all things. I just kinda assumed the only real targets of Israel and its supporters were Arabs, most Palestinians, and that I could be this untouchable ally or whatever. I was wrong.
These last few weeks have made me even more aware of how much imperialists weaponize anti-Blackness. Even when Black people aren’t directly involved in a conflict, we’re targets. While talking about Israel with some friends online, I basically said that child death is more tragic than soldiers dying while performing their job (i.e. indiscriminate killing, in the IDF’s case). I made this one supposedly apolitical person mad but they pretended not to be as they made edgy jokes about the Arab slave trade and buck breaking. The shit he said was so cruel that I had to break off all contact to preserve my sanity.
Even the people pretending to be leftists are using the genocide in Palestine to be racist to Black people. Lee Fang literally thinks that BLM is like the Israeli government. There’s also currently a post on TrueAnon complaining about how there isn’t a Palestinian Lives Matter, how unfair it is that libs just looooooove Black people so much, blah, blah, blah, wah, wah, wah—all while completely disregarding the many, many ways this country intentionally brutalizes and kills us. It’s fucking tiring, man. I’m so sick of this shit. Like, fine, we get it, you don’t like BLM or Black people—how about LBPFA (leave black people fucking alone) instead?
I never asked to be the permanent focal point of every awful loser’s convoluted political worldview. Literally everything I do triggers psychos. Honestly, sometimes I want to be reincarnated as a rock and just chill without any thoughts.
White guy pro tip: any white person who brings up the Arab slave trade or “white people were slaves before black people” is actually waaaaay more racist than (they think) they are letting on. Like, bringing that up is not something white people who aren’t racist do in response to whites enslaving blacks (you may already know this, but it’s something I have seen firsthand).
I once knew a guy who said the arab slave trade was wrong because slavery by kidnap violates the rules based international order unlike voluntary sales which were ok
That guy I think was an actual nazi and from what he told me I think he has family that were in the SS
he also suggested that we put the Irish in concentration camps (yes he called China authoritarian)
How did they think the Africans who sold them the slaves got the slaves? Its like saying if you bought a slave from an Arab it would be OK.
indentured servitude and slavery as a punishment for a crime
they believed you can be born a slave and that’s fair and square
Raiding and kidnappings neighboring tribes/kingdoms has also been the other form of slavery for just as long. Which version do you think can scale to meet the demands of the Atlantic slave trade?
yeah I agree the nazi who wanted to put the Irish in concentration camps had some bad and inconsistent ideas
It’s false equivalency. Things like thralldom and the Arab slave raids are not on the same scale of inhumanity as the Atlantic slave trade. There is a reason that abolitionism became a large political movement in those times and not before.