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White minority goes bananas
published: Thursday | March 1, 2007
Melville Cooke
The nice word for racism, when practised by whites who feel they have the God-given right to hate those of darker skin but profit from their cheap or free labour, is xenophobia.[
And as those of that darker shade, to varied degrees, some with university degrees and some without, head towards the places their stolen labour and natural resources made First World, the sheen rubs off that nicely coated racism.
And the bananas and monkey calls go hurtling onto the football fields from England to Sweden, Football Against Racism in Europe is formed. And the police chase two African youths to their electric deaths, sparking five days of riots that are almost a rerun of the events chronicled in Linton Kwesi Johnson's 'The Great Insurrekshan'. In the United States the militias get militant and in Russia the skinheads 'nah skin teet'.
Multiplying
Whether it is a yellow fruit or a jackboot, these actions of the extreme white minority, carried out without extreme censure from the passive but not impassive majority, are reactions to a perceived invasion of the greatest threat of all to white skin - darker skin that is settling and multiplying.
I try to put myself in the position of a white person seeing more and more darkies coming into my country in droves, knowing that they have this nasty habit of doing the nasty and reproducing in droves.
I also consider that, even subconsciously, a white person must know that their skin colour, when mixed with another, is no longer white. Like the chalk on the blackboard, it is so easy to erase.
So, if this trend of a declining white population continues, what will happen? Will the white skin become more and more prized, as it gets rarer and rarer, with constant checks made for fakes (as it says in the X-News' glorious 'Buffer Zone', 'We check for authenticity'? (This is not over a decade or two; more like centuries). Will it get to the stage where, in 5,000 years, black children will be walking up to the rare white and checking if their skin colour can be wiped off?
Will the reactionaries get more and more violent, with stronger stuff added to the bananas? Or will there be quotas for white footballers in European leagues? When I look at the footage from the old days of professional basketball in the United States the players were all white. Nowadays, it seems that when the game is in the final seconds and one team is way ahead is when the black players get rested and some white dudes pop up off the bench for a few seconds of prime time television.
Or will the definition of white be broadened to include those who are not quite pure bred but can pass for the real deal, especially in dim lighting, much as how the bleachers (not the uncovered stands at the National Stadium) look wonderful in the dark of the dancehall, the cragginess being revealed if the dance goes on until daylight?
Or will the race erasure attempts of AIDS intensify?
Blackwashed
Where it will go as the white minority gets blackwashed into a corner is anyone's guess, but I tend towards the violence and the white pelt being more highly prized, much like the hide of a rare albino leopard.
And let us not forget, we have been through this process in Jamaica. In older pictures of schoolboys at Munro (which I am happy to have attended, whether the School's Challenge Quiz team gets beaten by Black River or not) the faces are all white. Then the black ones start creeping in as the years go by, until the white face is the oddity. A tiny minority, actually.
published: Thursday | March 1, 2007
Melville Cooke
The nice word for racism, when practised by whites who feel they have the God-given right to hate those of darker skin but profit from their cheap or free labour, is xenophobia.[
And as those of that darker shade, to varied degrees, some with university degrees and some without, head towards the places their stolen labour and natural resources made First World, the sheen rubs off that nicely coated racism.
And the bananas and monkey calls go hurtling onto the football fields from England to Sweden, Football Against Racism in Europe is formed. And the police chase two African youths to their electric deaths, sparking five days of riots that are almost a rerun of the events chronicled in Linton Kwesi Johnson's 'The Great Insurrekshan'. In the United States the militias get militant and in Russia the skinheads 'nah skin teet'.
Multiplying
Whether it is a yellow fruit or a jackboot, these actions of the extreme white minority, carried out without extreme censure from the passive but not impassive majority, are reactions to a perceived invasion of the greatest threat of all to white skin - darker skin that is settling and multiplying.
I try to put myself in the position of a white person seeing more and more darkies coming into my country in droves, knowing that they have this nasty habit of doing the nasty and reproducing in droves.
I also consider that, even subconsciously, a white person must know that their skin colour, when mixed with another, is no longer white. Like the chalk on the blackboard, it is so easy to erase.
So, if this trend of a declining white population continues, what will happen? Will the white skin become more and more prized, as it gets rarer and rarer, with constant checks made for fakes (as it says in the X-News' glorious 'Buffer Zone', 'We check for authenticity'? (This is not over a decade or two; more like centuries). Will it get to the stage where, in 5,000 years, black children will be walking up to the rare white and checking if their skin colour can be wiped off?
Will the reactionaries get more and more violent, with stronger stuff added to the bananas? Or will there be quotas for white footballers in European leagues? When I look at the footage from the old days of professional basketball in the United States the players were all white. Nowadays, it seems that when the game is in the final seconds and one team is way ahead is when the black players get rested and some white dudes pop up off the bench for a few seconds of prime time television.
Or will the definition of white be broadened to include those who are not quite pure bred but can pass for the real deal, especially in dim lighting, much as how the bleachers (not the uncovered stands at the National Stadium) look wonderful in the dark of the dancehall, the cragginess being revealed if the dance goes on until daylight?
Or will the race erasure attempts of AIDS intensify?
Blackwashed
Where it will go as the white minority gets blackwashed into a corner is anyone's guess, but I tend towards the violence and the white pelt being more highly prized, much like the hide of a rare albino leopard.
And let us not forget, we have been through this process in Jamaica. In older pictures of schoolboys at Munro (which I am happy to have attended, whether the School's Challenge Quiz team gets beaten by Black River or not) the faces are all white. Then the black ones start creeping in as the years go by, until the white face is the oddity. A tiny minority, actually.
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