so-treu:

guerrillamamamedicine:

i have no idea how people who support the arab spring (or at least have witnessed it on the ground) and know about all of the horrific, murderous, torturous acts that libyans took against black africans, scapegoating poor black immigrants, how can anyone think that race, and more specifically, blackness, is not a relevant category of inquiry when talking about the arab spring.

and that all the leading news agencies, including al jazeera, kept referring to the immigrants as ‘africans’ even though libya is in africa, as if the black folks were from a different continent, and not just a neighboring country.  and gadafi a few years ago was head of the african union, and was crowned king of kings of africa because he, at the time, was the longest reigning state leader of an african country. 

especially considering the fact that it is referred to as the ‘arab spring’ which hides or shadows the fact that tunisia, egypt, and libya are in AFRICA.

okay ive said all this before, but what struck me today, really, is that stating that blackness is not relevant to talking about what it means to be a foreigner on/near tahrir, is basically saying that all of many and diverse sub saharan african immigrants and refugees who live in cairo, many of whom came to cairo because their homelands are being destroyed by war.  who are stuck in cairo, in the mazes of un bureacracy and live in ghettos on a pittance, and are super-marginalized in this country and denied access to basic services.  that all of these people, who are foreigners, these people, who are the most vulnerable in this city, are not relevant to the egyptian revolution. 

if you, in some way, feel vulnerable because you are white and on tahrir, think about for a second what the experience must be for some one who looks black african and thus is considered to be, by sight, an ‘illegal immigrant’ who has no social or state (foreign or local) power backing them and thus their corpus is open to any and all violence, with little to no ramifications because who the fuck is going to side with a black woman against well…anyone…  or *shrug* you could not think about that and be a self-centered asshole.  

srsly for anyone, esp. expat, to make the claim that in EGYPT, of all places, an analysis of race and power, a critique from the perspective of blackness, is derailing a conversation, only shows WHOSE story is considered to be worthy of listening to. 

and it is seriously embarrasing to me that people, i actually had some basic level of respect, have turned out, in their attempts to defend themselves, to be anti-black racists (yeah i said it, racist, racist, racist) who think that only white and arab folks’ stories are relevant to the conversation of revolution in africa. 

tl;dr not. all. foreigners. are. white.  and not all revolutionaries are arab…