Black Lives Matter – A Trojan Horse for Conservative, Black Nationalism?

There comes a time when silence is betrayal. –Martin Luther King

As someone with a strong commitment and a track record, on and off the estate, of fighting for the interests of the working class (which is by definition multi-ethnic in composition), I want to offer a perspective that I believe has been omitted from the debate in the current climate of divisive, sound-bite, with-us-or-against-us rhetoric.

When the first Black Lives Matter protest for this area was advertised a week ago, I wrote a post on the Blackbird Leys social media page in which, I argued: ‘To change things for the better, we need to dump the politics of identity fostered by liberals and reactionaries alike, and pull together, regardless of ethnicity, to fight to improve our communities and our wider society.’ I then said that: ‘both Black and White nationalists aim to divide people along ethnic lines by denying the fact that class, not ethnicity, is the main fault line in British society’. 

I then pointed to the US civil-rights era Rainbow Alliance composed of Black, Latino and White working class activists as an historic example of cross-community, working-class solidarity; ‘a solidarity I believe needs to be rediscovered if we are to move forward, away from the blind alley of racial separatism.’ In a forum nearing one thousand members (including the protest organisers), my comments received no reply. 

I was going to leave it there, but then a video of a speech from last Thursday’s Black Lives Matter protest made by the current Northfield Brook City Councillor, Hosnieh Djafari Marbini of the Labour Party, was brought to my attention. As a proud anti-fascist activist of many years standing, I now feel morally compelled to publicly express my concerns at what I see as a rising tide of right-wing black nationalist sentiment. I feel that what could be considered, at best, ill-judged and ill-educated comments by the Labour representative, who conflates the United Kingdom’s social problems with those America currently faces, will only encourage this sentiment.

Hosnieh Djafari Marbini is a middle-class professional who lives in Headington. She claims, in her speech, appealing to black residents, to be a fellow victim of ‘British colonialism’ by virtue of her Iranian heritage. After some attempts to pay lip service to class (‘We are not interested in who is more or less racist, we are interested in structural change’), she made generalisations and offered uncontextualized statistics that left us guessing about the type of “structural change” she is calling for, and though linking the racial issues with the occasional “and class”, almost as an after-thought, she fails to put forward a cohesive argument and in fact entirely sidesteps the issue of class and its central role in society’s power relations.

Referencing British Imperialism in relation to the country of her birth is tenuous to say the least. Leaving aside the fact that British-born working class people tend to be embarrassed by our country’s history of Empire and especially the transatlantic slave trade (while, in contrast, black nationalists hark back with nostalgia to the slave-driven African Empires), Hosnieh, from her home up in Headington, doesn’t seem to know that the working class neither participated in, nor benefited from, the ruling class’ colonial conquests – unless you consider it to have been a benefit to have experienced a life slaving away in fields, factories and coal mines for a crippling subsistence before dying as cannon fodder in the colonial wars or of poverty, disease or as a victim of the Industrial Revolution’s countless workplace disasters before reaching adulthood. 

However, Hosneih has nothing to say about the ongoing political situation in the land of her birth. Iran’s current, home-grown regime – the 20th century’s first Islamic fascist dictatorship – is hardly a paragon of virtue when it comes to the rights of minorities and women, or indeed anyone who refuses to tow the line of the religious police. If racism is the issue, why this omission? Does she oppose discrimination and oppression of black lives only? Is police brutality fine, so long as it’s practised on others?

Hosnieh invokes Malcolm X in her speech, eliciting the expected whoops and applause. 

As with all truth-seekers, Malcolm’s ideas and practices evolved over time and with experience, so to which Malcolm does the Labour representative refer?

Malcolm who saw the black middle class as the enemy of the black working class and who served his community well by driving drugs and crime from the streets of Harlem? 

Or maybe Malcolm the anti-semitic spokesman for the far right Nation of Islam? The Nation of Islam teaches that white people are devils and promotes black supremacy, racial segregation and ultimately race war (where they intend to be the victors of course). In the true black nationalist tradition of the self-proclaimed ‘first fascist’, Marcus Garvey, the Nation of Islam has fostered alliances with white nationalist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Is this the Malcolm she refers to? 

Or are we talking about the lesser known and even less promoted Malcolm X/Malik el-Shabazz? A man of immense integrity. A proud, courageous man who grew, with experience, to reject racial hatred and seek alliances with white progressives. That’s the Malcolm who served as a stepping stone to the development of the pro-working class politics of Black Panthers such as Bobby Seal, Huey P. Newton and Fred Hampton. The man so admired by that towering intellect, James Baldwin, who, while respectfully disagreeing with Malcolm’s methods, loved and respected him all the same. Arguably she could not have made that speech, in good conscience, if she knew anything about this Malcolm.

Or this very same Malcolm who, after hearing of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad’s sexual improprieties with his young female disciples (to whom he fathered a number of children), stood alone against his former mentor? Instead of turning a blind eye and siding with “his people” in the name of racial unity, he patiently listened to the powerless victims and, without a second thought, placed their welfare above his own safety and stood up to Elijah Muhammad and the organisation to which he had dedicated a dozen years of his life, in the full knowledge that he was, in all likelihood, signing his own death warrant. 

It’s easy to parrot a few soundbites and shoehorn them into one’s own agenda, but how many of those that regurgitate the historic slogans of great US black leaders and thinkers such as Malcolm X, Bobby Seal, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, actually take the time to listen to their real message and actually take up the challenge that earned these revolutionaries their stripes? 

It should go without saying that I no more hold every black person responsible for the actions of black antisocial criminals than I hold every white person responsible for the actions of white antisocial criminals. I have consistently stated that, on our estate, I hold that there is no black community or white community, only a Blackbird Leys community, a community to which, I am proud to say, I have a long record of activism and service to. Unfortunately, a handful of black nationalists and their supporters beg to differ. For them, the life of a North London drug dealer killed by the police ‘matters’ because he happened to be black, while the combined lives of working class people of every other ethnic group killed by police officers on this island don’t (or at least matter less) because they are not black. UK Black Lives Matter propagandists appear desperate to convince themselves and anyone else that will listen, that the UK is actually the USA, yet, regardless of the attempts by these careerists to impart an undue sense of grievance within black citizens, the statistics do not support their case. The inconvenient truth remains that deaths of white people in police custody over the last decade proportionately far outstrip those of black/ethnic minorities, and reflect US rapper and actor Ice T’s assertion that: ‘When it comes to the poor, no lives matter’.

As I have mentioned, Malcolm X stood against pushers and gangsters to rid the streets of Harlem of drugs and anti-social crime. The Black Panther Party was at war with black cultural nationalists and black lumpen criminals, including of course heroin dealers. Even rapper, actor and cultural icon, Tupac Shakur, (seemingly a hero of two-bit wanna-be gangsters everywhere), spoke openly about crime within black communities: ‘The main thing for us to remember is that the same element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of, the same people that white people fear, we fear, so we defend ourselves from the same element that they’re scared of, but while they’re waiting for legislation to pass, we’re next door to the killer. Just because we’re black we get along with the killers? We get along with the rapists because we’re black and from the same hood? What is that?! We need protection too’. https://www.facebook.com/uniladsound/videos/294984744658509

Speaking at Cambridge University in 1964 (where, in common with Malcolm X, who spoke at Oxford University in the same year, he received a standing ovation), James Baldwin, who pulled no punches when it came to confronting racist white America, stated what for most would be regarded as the obvious, yet in the light of recent events is probably worth repeating: ‘Black people are just like everybody else. One has used the myth of colour to pretend and assume that you were dealing with essentially something bizarre, and practically, according to human laws, unknown. Alas, it is not true. We’re also mercenaries, dictators, murderers, liars. We are human too’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUBh9GqFU3A

Northfield Brook, which is overwhelmingly white in constitution, is the only ward in Oxford that ranks within the top 10% of the most deprived areas nationally in the English Indices of Deprivation. While admittedly many proud, hard-working families would not recognise this description of their neighbourhood, the issues of material and educational poverty do very much exist and are crying out for attention – as is the anti-social crime that often accompanies it. The poverty score is derived by combining the figures for income, employment, education & skills, health, crime, housing, living environment, child poverty and pensioner poverty. The ward scored favourably on only one point, the living environment. All other scores were woefully low. If we consider that, at the last census, 76% of the Northfield Brook population was recorded as ‘white’, 12% ‘black’ and 12% other mixed ethnic minorities, there seems to be more at play than ethnic disadvantage here. Rather than racialise and thereby ignore these social problems, the elected representatives of the area should be working to help the community come together to tackle them. 

So, I do not hold all black people responsible for the crimes of the black criminal minority. However, according to their own logic, Black nationalists and their political allies, if they are honest and consistent, should. When I say ‘we’, I refer to the working class – of all creeds and colours. But for black nationalists ‘we’ translates exclusively as ‘black people’. If ‘we’ insist on rights, then surely ‘we’ should also be willing to accept responsibilities? If ‘we’ insist that the police unfairly target ‘our’ community, maybe it’s time to step up to the mark and deal with the anti-social element within that community that makes everybody’s life harder than it already is (regardless their skin pigment)? 

Appropriating the aesthetic and slogans of 1960s US radical groups without any intention of shouldering the enormous responsibilities and commitment that underpinned the aesthetic and slogans of these movements is fraudulent, insulting and self-serving. There is much to admire and much to learn from the giants of the US Civil Rights Movement and we could do worse than to take inspiration from the community self-help projects of the Black Panthers (who, rather than sow division, rolled up their sleeves and with the slogan: ‘All power to all the people’, never far from their lips, organised across the whole community, for the benefit of the whole community). The Panthers didn’t stand in fields mouthing empty slogans or moan into the wind that the community’s needs were not being met. Under infinitely more challenging conditions, they ambitiously organised to meet the community’s needs. This included successfully setting up community hospitals, breakfast for children programmes, education classes and a self-defence network that addressed the issue of anti-social crime. There is much to be done in our community, and indeed working class communities everywhere. My door will always be open to any activist willing to take inspiration from these historical examples and disregard ethnic nationalism to work on programmes that lift our communities, for the benefit of the vast majority of decent people who live in them.