The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia http://libgen.li/item/index.php?md5=28C51308F215E77FA12EEA0E3A25F329
...But for many individuals, dreams of a Pan-African utopia in Liberia were tempered by complicated relationships with the Africans, whom they dispossessed of land. Liberia soon became a politically unstable mix of newcomers, indigenous peoples, and "recaptured" Africans from westbound slave ships. Ultimately, Clegg argues, in the process of forging the world's second black-ruled republic, the emigrants constructed a settler society marred by many of the same exclusionary, oppressive characteristics common to modern colonial regimes.
broke: read Settlers
woke: read Settlers but replace America with Africa and replace "white" with "black", and replace "black" with "indigenous black"
the woke "freed slaves should go to Africa" ethno-statists
Words that have never before been combined in this way.
So if you're aware of all of that then why the hell did you reply to me with the same shit that everyone else is saying and that I obviously already know? Jesus christ.
There has always been ethno-nationalist petite bourgeois tendencies within the black movement sadly. While white people really shouldn't condemn any efforts at black self determination, these tendencies do make a habit of openly opposing the broader socialist and communist movements. BMF is talking about a specific colonialist tendency in which black people in the US colonized what is now Liberia, but Garveyists, New Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, "Back to Africa", as well as other movements represent the petite bourgeois influence in the black liberation struggle. These tendencies plainly ignore the needs of the black working class (the overwhelming majority of blacks in this country), openly advocate either for black capitalism or impossible to return to African modes of production, and would ultimately end up reactionary.
If your question is still "who is calling them woke?" then fair enough. I think you would find that while their following is small, it is extremely dedicated and their ideas have some sympathy on the left and among the poorest blacks in the country (who are the people we want to be reaching). When your world is defined by the contrast of the white suburb and the black ghetto, the white condo and the black tenement, the white police officer and the incarcerated black, it is easy to fall into primordial ideas defining race as the basic contradiction (white people do this all the time to, just in reverse). Meanwhile the only other option is some pasty white DSA kid who only half understands Marx stumbling through an explanation of his ideas, suddenly the black militia proclaiming a New African Republic seems pretty cool.
As ever, the internet is about inventing a guy and getting mad at that guy.
There's people putting up Black Hammer flyers in the city I work in, in one of the whitest states in the country. A few days ago, a heavily armed black militant group got arrested crossing into Massachusetts. Last year this website was fawning over NBPP members who brought rifles to a protest (until they realized they were the New Black Panther Party). It's not like these groups don't exist among the radical elements of the black community.
Edit: also I'm not mad at them, black nationalism poses an interesting opportunity and unique challenges to the communist movement.
I assume that the "woke" people that are being referred to were abolitionists who believed in giving freed slaves a place where they wouldn't be under threat of being made into a slave again. It is fairly similar to the argument for Zionism or something like the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Doubt black mold futures will go on to call Stalin woke though.
You seem like a guy who knows his stuff. I'm admittedly not very studied on this topic, but I'm just gonna quote a little excerpt from the American Colonization Society's Wikipedia page that gave me a different impression if you'll allow me and if you want you can tell me what are the problems with what's being said.
There were several factors that led to the establishment of the American Colonization Society. The number of free people of color grew steadily following the American Revolutionary War, from 60,000 in 1790 to 300,000 by 1830.[1]:260 Consequently, slaveowners grew increasingly concerned that free blacks might encourage or help their slaves to escape or rebel. In addition, most white Americans saw African Americans as "racially" inferior and felt that "amalgamation," or integration, of African Americans with white American culture was impossible and undesirable. This reinforced the notion that African Americans should be relocated to somewhere they could live free of prejudice, where they could be citizens.
The African-American community and abolitionist movement overwhelmingly opposed the project. In most cases, African Americans' families had lived in the United States for generations, and their prevailing sentiment was that they were no more African than white Americans were European. Contrary to stated claims that emigration was voluntary, many African Americans, both free and enslaved, were pressured into emigrating. Indeed, enslavers sometimes manumitted their slaves on condition that the freedmen leave the country immediately.
Yes, just like it is with Zionism, it also meshes well with people who just want to get rid of black people. Zionism was seen as a way to deal with the "Jewish question" even among many literal Nazis.
There were some people who supported it for the reasons I listed, but they were hardly in the majority.
Look, I will stop playing cute: that is always the wrong approach in my opinion. The right approach to these race issues is to have them stay where they're from and intermingle with the local population. I'm Brazilian, I'm mixed, I believe this, my parents believed this, and it's silly to me that Americans are so resistant to this. When Stalin came up with the Jewish Autonomous Oblast solution, he was envisioning the Jews dropping their historically retrograde ethnoreligious sense of identification and developing a new one based on land and the Yiddish language like the people of Europe. This was progressive to him in a Marxist sense, but it is impossible for blacks in America because their culture is exactly the same as that of the whites and the only thing that separates them is skin color. They both speak English, live in America and are Christians, everything that separates them is meaningless aestheticism. That's just my two cents on this question.
it is impossible for blacks in America because their culture is exactly the same as that of the whites and the only thing that separates them is skin color. They both speak English, live in America and are Christians, everything that separates them is meaningless aestheticism.
Yeah, hard disagree on the cultures being the same.
Why? They speak the same language, live the same lifestyle. Seems to me like the only things that separate them are the remnants of segregation.
I don't think they are either, sorry if I didn't make that clear.
I feel like it's silly to act like there's any chance of that happening. Black people have only ever gotten progressively more integrated into American society even during Republican governments, and the trend is for that to continue. It seems to me like the observed trend is for mainstream Republicans to adopt a civic nationalist discourse that frames African Americans as an integral part of America and makes symbolic concessions to black identity.
Yes I'm well aware of that.
Who the fuck is calling those people woke?
Was it Malcolm X or Eldridge Cleaver who believed that Afro-Americans needed their own ethno-state? A place where they could live among their own kind and be safe from predators? Israel for blacks, basically.
Yes, and I am pointing out why this one, like most of the others, is wack.
“I’m not racist but if they hate the US so much why don’t they back to [african country]”
Just so the spectators are clear on this, this is racist. It is not woke. A racist thing does not become woke if you say "I'm not racist but" in front of it. It is still racist.
Okay, now I get what you were trying to communicate and I agree with you. Heads up: Linking back to that comment which was already unclear was counter productive, comrade.
Well, it felt to me like a lot of people were saying the same thing that I had already replied to, and I got frustrated. It would be nice if one could turn off inbox notifications for replies.
Anyway, thanks!
I mean yeah Africa is not a country. For instance there is more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined. There are so many different ethnic and cultural groups, each with their own motivations, traditions, languages and practices, just like any other part of the world. Your average American, regardless of race, would have to learn new languages and new cultural practices to actually live in most African countries.
Reminds me of Hispanic-Americans moving to Latin America for whatever reason and talking down to the locals.
