{"id":1258,"date":"2016-10-05T10:46:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T10:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackissuesblog.com\/?p=348"},"modified":"2020-09-26T10:07:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T10:07:47","slug":"is-it-because-i-am-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/is-it-because-i-am-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it because I am black?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Adriana Dorsett<\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-10-02-at-13-05-48\"To cut a long story short, this Summer I found myself watching a film in a sweltering hot tent with about 5 dozen wet wipe washed campers; collectively emanating a whiff of Olympic intensity. I love festivals for that. The plot of the film was a classic comic book chronicle: the world as we know it on the brink of immanent collapse. Two self styled protagonists, after having successfully launched their careers in the big smoke, burn-out – becoming broken and soul destroyed before giving it all up in search of permaculture, self-sufficiency and pastures new. The film was a remake, but it was both sweet and moving.<\/p>\n

The next day I awoke in my tent at 5am<\/a>, sweating and with a bright light in my eyes, but more than that, a vision was taking shape before me. Perhaps, underneath this tale of white people trying to unearth personal freedom there was deeper\u00a0Matrix<\/a>\u00a0style story lurking. Do you know the way each eye sees a single image and it\u2019s when both eyes see together that a 3rd dimension is formed? Well it felt like that.<\/p>\n

You see the Afro-Caribbean\u00a0slave trade<\/a>\u00a0ended between 1750 and 1865, more or less the same period that the\u00a0Industrial Revolution<\/a>\u00a0kicked into gear. Can you imagine, a new mechanical metropolis and all the forced labourers set free to walk away. Anyway, with one eye I could see white and black people united in their crusade to end slavery, and with the other eye I could see poverty-stricken, uneducated workers driven from the countryside into a brutal, exploitative, industrial hell.<\/p>\n

It was like the\u00a0Fat Controllers<\/a>\u00a0of that era had been informed by a system of bloody exploitation, and that was condemned, they simply switched their inhumanity onto their own people. In wiki it spells out the trajectory between slavery and the modern workplace much more succinctly.\u00a0\u00a0It describes Sharecropping, which largely replaced slavery, as having\u00a0more than a passing similarity to\u00a0serfdom<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0indenture<\/a>. This is associated with large living costs and debts that effectively tie down the workers into\u00a0wage slavery<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to depreciate racism by saying this \u2013\u00a0racism is\u00a0an ugly jostling war for status and dignity, it\u2019s hideous and it\u2019s heartfelt; but I now wonder if there is more to it. Maybe the catalyst for racism was that it provided a convenient system of carving a social divide; and our current racial conflict is the guilt and grief, shame and blame of a historic\u00a0psychic wound<\/a>\u00a0that wont close together enough to heal. With the the crux of the issue, which seems like it could be more about the labour market than skin tone, continuing to fester within. This idea is not new, The Black Panthers\u00a0put equality\u00a0forward,\u00a0calling on Peace Through Unity. This included women, gays, transgender: even joining forces with red neck\u00a0hillbillies; and when you read about the\u00a0prejudice\u00a0and\u00a0“culturally transmitted traumatic stress syndrome<\/a>”\u00a0the\u00a0Appalachian\u00a0people experienced it’s not surprising why.<\/p>\n

This version of our reality has all kinds of connotations. Most horribly that social mobility might be just a way to offer \u2018the clever ones\u2019 a chance to escape deprivation, rather than being disgruntled and disrupting the status quo by initiating social change. \u2026and of course that racism might have been induced\u00a0and aggravated\u00a0in order to distract the masses from consolidating – internationally – and securing constitutional and human rights.<\/p>\n

Okay, I\u2019m aware that I\u2019m sitting here quaffing a latte, and I don\u2019t actually feel like a slave. But,\u00a0as Brexit drives foreigners out, college fees rise to \u00a39k P\/A. Wages are almost at a standstill, while rental rates are on the rise; I feel a bitter twist might be in the making. I can’t believe the\u00a0Brexit<\/a>\u00a0backlash will end up offering disillusioned anti-EU voters a way to \u2018get their own back\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0With the current race war consuming the West’s freedom fighters, no more Unions or EU, the press no longer free to serve the public’s interests; Corporate business\u2019s capability, once again includes, but is not limited to, recreating modern slavery and causing major ecological destruction, with\u00a0an insatiable appetite. I think we know this. However, who is out there to help, that’s the question? So when I saw the film\u00a0WeTheUncivilised<\/a>: A Life Story (2015) by\u00a0filmmakers Lily and Pete Sequoia,\u00a0I was touched. I know not everyone wants to knit their own carrots, but perhaps, dare I say it, the \u2018get off the grid\u2019<\/a>\u00a0permaculture movement is really a race-blind, modern day, anti-slavery movement; and a place where all open minded people can unite, not only with each other to form an international civil rights movement, but with our true nature. Just a thought\u2026<\/p>\n

NB. I should mention that: I\u2019m mixed race. The Festival was\u00a0Green Gathering<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0time is now.<\/p>\n

Try these clips, and ask yourself ‘were these people chosen because that are black’, or was it more to do with their lack of legal representation?<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/neonnettle\/videos\/853713501394822\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/m.youtube.com\/watch?v=_pvNp9gHjfk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Adriana Dorsett To cut a long story short, this Summer I found myself watching a film in a sweltering hot tent with about 5 dozen wet wipe washed campers; collectively emanating a whiff of Olympic intensity. I love festivals for that. The plot of the film was a classic comic book chronicle: the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":1259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,33],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-05-05 21:25:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baatn.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}