on colorism, the instability of racial identity & discomfort with the word “Black”

The refusal to name and identify colorism remains one of the great stumbling blocks to dismantling white supremacist systems. People don’t want to address how racism, as a hierarchy of power, is based on *physical appearance* more than ancestry. 1/

They don’t want to address how chattel slavery was fundamentally a flesh trade or how racial capitalism, which is built upon it, is the same by extension. Or how human value is assigned & denied based on the color of our skin (as well as hair texture & facial features). 2/

People frequently gaslight whenever the issue of colorism comes up by claiming that “we’re all Black” as if that fact exists independently of how structural racism operates within a white supremacist system. 3/

That’s why the definitions & boundaries of race are in constant tension with definitions of ethnicity & nationality. Race is never a stable identity. It’s built around categorizing people based primarily on visual assessments of their appearance. 4/

People’s discomfort w/ the term “Black” is precisely b/c it’s a word that traditionally referred to those who are unambiguously African in appearance & who are therefore positioned lowest in the hierarchy of race w/n the white supremacist system of the European colonizers. 5/

To be called “Black” or “African” was long considered an insult to one’s physical appearance & place in the racial hierarchy. Over time, new race categories & terms were created for people to claim other-than-Black identities & to be socially positioned above blackness. 6/

The white supremacist ordering of the world is built upon European subjugation of the African continent. The dominant, mainstream culture still views Africa as “the dark continent” that has yet to achieve any form of civilization on par w/ Europeans (a false & racist belief). 7/

This translates to how ppl regard anything associated w/ Africa or blackness as being opposite of what they imagine whiteness to be. So “Black” is never simply a race but also an idea, often negative, about what it means to be positioned opposite to idealized white identity. 8/

“Africa” & “African” are terms European colonizers gave to the continent. It’s not any more or less valid a term than “Black” when we choose how to self-identify, as we deconstruct white capitalist & colonialist systems built upon the erasure of our ancestors’ cultures... 9/

...The discomfort with the word “Black” is specifically about that word—“Black”— and how it exists relative to that other word, “white” and the uncertainty about what it means for “Black“ to exist in any way that’s independent of “white”. 10/

How can “Black” be capitalized but not “white”? How can Black people make any such declarations around identity at all without approval from white people, institutions and news outlets? These are the things that distress people as being disruptive to the rules of race. 11/

We need to sit with this word, “Black”, and all of the associations with it. Why is this word so frightening to people that they say “people of color”, “urban”, “African-American”, “minority” or “underserved” as a means of avoiding the word “Black”? 12/

The phrase “Black Lives Matter” frightens people. They feel compelled to replace “Black” w/ “All”. It allows them to picture a person who isn’t dark in complexion w/ racially black features and in this way they can keep feigning unawareness of anti-Black racism. 13/

This is why we can’t deconstruct race without confronting the physicality of how colorism & anti-Blackness operate, including how it carries material consequences for individuals living within racial capitalism & also operates as a form of gender-based violence. 14/14

I’ll add that anti-Black racism is arguably the stabilizing force w/n the racial caste system & that’s why ppl cling to it. B/c while all other categories are in constant flux, incl. who can access whiteness, uniform discrimination against racial blackness anchors the system.

Related thread on the term “white” https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1179753770558922752