The Fire Now

Anti-Racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial Violence

Azeezat Johnson, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Beth Kamunge, Azeezat Johnson, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Beth Kamunge

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781786993809
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786993823
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Social Sciences

Not so long ago, many spoke of a 'post-racial' era, claiming that advances made by people of colour showed that racial divisions were becoming a thing of the past. But the hollowness of such claims has been exposed by the rise of Trump and Brexit, both of which have revealed deep seated white resentment, and have been attended by a resurgence in hate crime and overt racial hatred on both sides of the Atlantic.

At a time when progress towards equality is not only stalling, but being actively reversed, how should anti-racist scholars respond? This collection carries on James Baldwin's legacy of bearing witness to racial violence in its many forms. Its authors address how we got to this particular moment, arguing that it can only be truly understood by placing it within the wider historical and structural contexts that normalise racism and white supremacy. Its chapters engage with a wide range of contemporary issues and debates, from the whiteness of the recent women's marches, to anti-racist education, to the question of Black resistance and intersectionality. Mapping out the problems we face, and the solutions we need, the book considers how anti-racist scholarship and activism can overcome the setbacks posed by the resurgence of white supremacy.

PART I

TRANSFORMING ACADEMIA

1 | I AM NOT A WRITER

Muna Abdi

My tangled thoughts creep in silence,

Quietly contemplating what ought to be,

And I wake to see this world through different eyes,

Telling the story of each morning’s light,

But, I am not a writer.

I breathe heavy at the thought of staining the page,

Stuttering through stages of hope and rage,

Pieces of me captured on a stage,

Exposed and elated by this coming of age,

But, I am not a writer.

These euphoric moments of holding a pen,

Are followed by shudders and shards,

Like shattered glass we can never be whole,

Like gaps between words we can never be told.

I, I am not a writer.

Our histories were stolen,

Our languages lost,

The earth was our canvas,

Our blood was the art,

And we have not forgotten,

We carry this pain,

Our lives have been written with the blood of those slayed,

So I am not a writer.

This pen is a symbol,

Not of words but of wars,

Of pain we have lived through,

Pain you adore.

Our histories made romantic,

Our psyche enigmatic,

Our stories told by you,

Are chilling and yet static,

I am not a writer.

And yet, I read your words as you continue to write me,

Hold me in ivory spaces only few can reach,

And I have been taught your theories of me,

Read tales of my toils,

As you pierced through my heart and used my blood as ink,

Every movement of that poisoned pen, caused me to ache.

You have been the writer, and you have held the words.

But your pen cannot carry the weight of all that I hold,

You cannot know the stories I have yet to tell.

Why must I breathe underwater?

Pushed down by the lead pens that continue to write me,

W...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for the book
• About the Editors
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Foreword: The Heat and the Burdens of the Day
• Changing Our Fate in The Fire Now
• Part I. Transforming Academia
• 1. I Am Not a Writer
• 2. An Academic Witness: White Supremacy within and beyond Academia
• 3. Understanding Racism within the Academy: The Persistence of Racism within Higher Education
• 4. Black Study
• 5. Confronting My Duty as an Academic: We Should All Be Activists
• Part II. Intersectional Identities, Intersectional Struggles
• 6. Majority Monitoring
• 7. Crippin’ Blackness: Narratives of Disabled People of Colour from Slavery to Trump
• 8. Intersectionality before the Courts: The Face Veil Cases
• 9. Colour-Blind Racism and the 2017 Women’s March: White Feminism, Activism and Lessons for the Left
• 10. ‘The Climate Crisis is a Racist Crisis’: Structural Racism, Inequality and Climate Change
• Part III. Lessons from History, Connections Across Spaces
• 11. Beware the Northern Fox: Keeping a Focus on Systematic Racism Post Trump and Brexit
• 12. This Ain’t Nothing New: Contextualising Black Responses to Trump’s America
• 13. Understanding the Present through the Past: Struggles against Racism
• 14. Fighting for Survival: Lessons from the Pan African Resistance
• 15. Could It Happen Here? Canada’s Multicultural Oasis and Global Right-Wing Drift
• 16. Domesticating Trump
• Part IV. Understanding And Reframing Oppression
• 17. Writing in the Fire Now: Beth Dialogues with Wambui and Osop
• 18. Movements through Trauma: How to See Ourselves
• 19. Fundamental British Values: Moving Towards Anti-Racist and Multicultural Education?
• 20. Teaching White Innocence in an Anti-Black Social Order: British Values and the Psychic Life of Coloniality
• 21. ‘Be Exactly Who You Are’: Black Feminism in Volatile Political Realities
• 22. Laughter and the Politics of Place-Making
• 23. Demanding the Impossible: Responding to The Fire Now
• Afterword
• Index