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The War of Terror Started in 1441, one of the issues that comes from a…

- - - - Land and the relations it facilitates/engenders is core to indigenous thought. This is critical, but can be problematized by the diasporification of Africans.
        
        Plantation Futures
        
        There is a spatial continuum between life/death, science/stories, and past/present. Black geographies highlight this, as sites of (often) urban relations. The plantation (and its futurity) emblematize this with the ways in which it relates with itself and the development towards the city, modernity, and blackness. The core thing to understand is that we cannot reduce plantation imaginaries and experiences to the violence endured or the economic questions produced. They are intimately enmeshed; the goal should not be so much about going outside of them as it should be going through them, to find the life in spaces otherwise considered dead, disposable, subjectable, and exploited.
        
        I really like the idea that the plantation, as a self-sustaining system, would be able to produce something other what it makes and was made for. It can feel a bit tautological, in the sense that we can’t anticipate change coming from “outside”, but given the un-humanness of racialization in general and especially antiblackness, there has to be a recoking with that aspect. This facilitation of life is also an interesting concept; I wonder if it would be more effective with a more yes, and understanding. What would it look like, to move in a way that “appears” to be oppositional (and is, in a certain since), while being informed by the plot and the plantation? How can we adopt all of the things that we need to, and understand that some of the facets of understanding our own humanity cannot just come through thinking and wishing it to be so; this, to me, is part of what leads to the desire for acknowledgment or separatism. we have to both increase entanglement and be willing to fight (ie the possibility of instability and chaos). That is the greatest lesson the plantation logics have taught me; we can survive the unimaginable, so in a certain, movement ecological level sense, we should embrace a kind of (methodological and strategic) spatial uncertainty.
  - - - We should be careful to assume that “indigenous” = “good”, “pure”, or “correct” in a universalist sense. It is good to remember to see Indigenous folks as people, not deitic figures or irredeemable relics. Alongside this, we should not uphold a settler-native dyad (emblematized in the American context as cowboy vs. native iconography), as that forecloses an understanding of the whole of social dynamics at play (including indenture and chattel enslavement, alongside their imbrications), both “past” and “present”.
  - - - In settler societies, fighting against racism is seen as limited without an inclusion of Natives, leading to a non-response to settler colonialism at best, and an entrenchment of it at worst. Anti-racism is seen as a path towards black subservience in the civil project. It is said to leave in tact the colonizer for the sake of recognition and redistribution, which is why natives should avoid emulating black struggle. For emancipation to occur along antiracist lines, there has to be a return to the land. This necessitates a kind of counter-hegemony; one that is indigenous, rather than imperial and settler colonial.
        
        This counter-hegemony posits black solidarity in ambiguous terms. Rather than the usual implications of reciprocity, there is only hope that Black people “re-indigenize” themselves, and work along those lines specifically to “redress ‘the true horror of slavery’ – the loss of culture”, instead of the more representational modes that the civil society of the settler colony proposes. This idea presupposes a lack of historical awareness that isn’t any more extreme than other indigenous groups that would still be labeled as such. This cerates a double bind for black people though, as reconnecting is left to the realm of being something that is always grasped but never held, as the truncated analysis of (anti-)Blackness assumes a disjunction with history. Being removed from this history, Black folks aren’t in a dialectic with “loss and recovery but rather the loss of the dialectics of loss and recovery as such”.
        
        As this is all mediated through land, the state of landlessness can only fail when faced with the woes of settler colonial society. They are unmoored from the land and destined to become settlers. Settler decolonization thus becomes a movement, controlled by natives, buttressed with undiffienteriated immigrant allies.
        
        A more generative understanding of this frame comes from a rethinking of PoC that forms a tripartite structure of racial slavery, settler colonialism, and orientalism. The issue comes in the ways that slavery is instrumentalized, seen as either an extreme form of exploitation or an extreme form of colonialism. This elides the fact that trying to understand slavery necessarily includes trying to understand capitalism, colonialism, settler colonialism, communism, decolonization, and settler decolonization.
        
        This points us to an understanding that sovereignty might be the issue. the assumption of the ability to claim land, in the way that it happens, legitimizes the settler state through negotiating sovereignty away from them, towards indigenous folks, reifying “cartography”, “mapness”, and “coherence”.
        
        These issues are all heirs of slavery. The world owes everything to the enslaved. the only way that we can move forward is with abolition, the likes of which moves forward without a rootedness, fixedness, or claimant to anything that can be cleanly and discreetly known before hand, beyond the ways in which the present aren’t it.
        
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        there are also further complications once we understand that Black folks in the states have long understood themselves to be an internal colony alongside Native populations, and were very attuned to the risks of neocolonialism, especially insofar as it relates to: issues with the dependency of peripheral countries to the core, the related lack of freedom that sovereignty would bring, and the great issues that come from the (un)thought of Black folks.
- - - - Regardless, I think that we can devour this idea, excavating its essence from the jurisprudence of Statecraft. Otherwise, allowing this vector of struggle to appear feasible, alongside putting the “social and economic” concerns outside of identity as primary seems to be a stepwise move rather than a leap away from stale socialist, and therefore Eurocentric, orthodoxy. The useful tidbits are the acknowledgement of the importance of national autonomy and pride… cultures should not have to be assimilated into some dominant paradigm for them to be valid. Rather than treating the state as a benevolent benefactor, we should do away with it, opting for a decentral assembly-and-council structure (if there is a need for legible forms to interface with across communities) that collaborates with respective bioregions to steward social life. So, one one hand, you might have bioregional associations that are based in and make decisions around geography/space, and non-territorial associations that allow people to collaborate in their interests based on specific (Black, Indigenous, Gay, Trans, Disabled, etc) or intersectional (Black maGe, etc) identities that they have needs around. Either way, the state should be our enemies as much as our respective bourgeoisie is, as states are tools of domination.
        
        Some of the imaginal cells of what this structure of national autonomies, whether territorial, semi-territorial, or non-territorial may look like a more radical take on the J-K Plan
- - - - African Laborers for a New Empire: Iberia, Slavery, and the Atlantic World
        
        Iberia established the slave system in the new world, creating a racial hierarchy (at the expense of specifically "sub-saharan africans") in the process.
        
        Good to keep the feet to the fire of the Iberian imperials, it seems to be lost in the sauce here in the US since people think that Iberia focused on the Deepest South (LatAm). Colonization was a European family affair! I hope that this helps elucidate the “exceptional” (or at the very least unique) nature of chattel slavery of Black africans. There is a lot to untangle in the fact that modern slavery overdetermines the imaginary of slavery writ-large, such that people don’t see that modern slavery is a different, definitely worse thing than premodern slavery. Or, if they do, the actual terms of that difference and its meaning are lost. However, I’m worried that this might lean into a “labor theory of slavery” that is necessary but insufficient lens to understand what enslavement meant.
        
        The slavery of the early modern period in Iberia was contiguous with the traditions of their wars with Muslim and the general Mediterranean society they were situated within. Slavery was seen as a byproduct of war and was governed by 14th century legal codes called the Sietie Partidas, which saw them as temporary prisoners hit with a bout of misfortune. Nevermind the impossibility for ransom for these new slaves; at least they weren’t legally seen as property (yet).
        
        This kind of proves to me that legal codes i.e. policy, is epiphenomenal… if a “captive” of a “war” (against who? how did non-Northern Africans even factor into this?) is able to exist in a legal limbo and be subjected to labor against their will, and they just so happen to be Black, that feels like a sad consolation… it is useful to know that it didn’t start racist. I think an easy way to imagine it becoming racist is these “POW” style slaves procreating and not having anywhere to go and ending up as a bottom tier class just by virtue of their starting position.
        
        It also seems like more energy needs to be put into analyzing the trans-saharan slave trade and the ideas that those folks had… how does this connect to the Zanj and various Muslim ideas of antiBlackness? it feels like this is underplaying the role that race could have already played in why Black people were coming to Portugal in 1440s to begin with… how were they decided to be taken???
        
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      - The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History
        
        The slave trade happened in the modern era due to historical convergences in Europe’s technology that allowed them to traverse past Iberia and down Africa’s Atlantic coast. The Portugese-made caravel was the crux of this change, as, in 1434, it led to Gil Eannes down past Cape Bojador. The First Africans were captured and taken to Africa soon after. This facilitated steady growth (and inflation), as Gold and silver came from Africa and the New World. The trade also spurred sugar growth, moving it from its base in the Mediterranean to the Americas. These slaves came from West/Central Africa, with a few from Southeastern Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar, whereabouts).
        
        Contrary to popular myths that see African systems of slavery as a “reservoir” that Europeans “tapped”, what was labeled as slavery in African societies was, in actuality, an institutionalization of marginalized peoples. It brought those people “into the fold”, so to speak. Due to the variance of these societies, it is hard to say what shape this “institutionalization” took, in any general strokes. The shift occurred as Europeans used economic domination to supplant the political order and greater political control of Africans.
        
        There was also a clear dislike for the Blackness of Africa, from superstitions about boiling African seas and the sun darkening skin, to the literal dislike of Black skin. There was a sense of moral “ambiguity” for Natives, revolving around nobility and a connection to/example of the past that didn’t exist for Africans. As the French West Indian proverb put it: “To look askance at an Indian is to beat him; to beat him is to kill him; to beat a Negro is to nourish him.” Material conditions and morals were stacked against Africans. Even the deadly conditions of settlement and enslavement were papered over due to the early drive to import people for economic growth. In all, at least 9.4mn people were transported from Africa to the Americas.
        
        I feel like the framing of Africans being “better able to handle” the subjection is anitBlack in itself. Many people perpetuate these ideas… it seems to stick like the land bridge shit for Native folks… even though genealogy for many folks tracks from South up. Otherwise, it is clear that Black abjection is a core part of modernity (or, it is at least coterminous)… because that fact is indistinguishable from slavery. Another point to note is that many a historical framing talks about how technology (in this case the caravel), in the physical “invention” sense is often seen as enabling this-or-that sociopolitical shift. I wonder what a more rooted exploration that tries to historicize, acculturate, and philosophize the meaning of seemingly paradigmatic technology proliferations would look like. That is to say, technology may change society, but from where does it come? We tend to start stories in ways that show them as turning points, which is surely at least consequentially true, but it doesn’t call us to understand the real impacts it has on the society because it ends up gaining a false protagonism, ignoring that protagonists need a world ready for them to lead.
- - - - the liberal framing of the 1619 is sus as hell! patriotism… yuck! I’m also not sure with the disconnect with some indigenous caricature was, given that, at least in the way that it’s written here, 1619 doesn’t claim that america is the first democracy on this land… and even if it did… democracy as discussed here is kind of a sloppy framing already. The author of this book seems to agree, though. Either way, the liberal democratic form is not something to aspire to or idolize, in my humble opinion. I’m also skeptical of the texts framing of the “lack of ability to reach their potential” that an antiblack society imposed on the exceptional people that this chapter discusses. Like, that’s horrible, don’t get it twisted… but people should not have to work at all, let alone embodying the adage of “2x as had to get 1/2 as much”.
        
        Looking at various Indigenous Africans shows that there can be tensions, like in the example of Lucy Terry crafting an oral poem that gave cover to settler ideology. This section in general raises questions about who gets claims on indigeneity. it feels like a lot of them refer to cultural things… so what does that mean from people who are alienated from their culture, due to colonialism? Another tenison is the indoctrination of society… indeigenous folks (maybe up til the 1830s) had a diferent quantity (if not variations in quality) of proximity to the settlers than Black folks, so it is reasonable to assume that Black folks in a general sense had settler colonial ideas… along with internalizing antiBlackness.
        
        It is critical that we don’t use the identity of indigenous people (or settlers for that matter) as moral categories… they are labels that point us to social conditions. At most, we can talk about certain interests tied to this-or-that group and how those things may have “ethical” character.
        
        Natives and Africans were left out of many of the early imaginings of the US liberal democratic project. The propertied, homogenous freedom of white folks was not only diametrically opposed to the freedoms (even if they meant the same thing) of Africans and Natives, but was built off of the denial of their own concepts of freedom. While Africans and Natives were understood to be fundamentally different from each other (and each of them decently different from whites), they shared the experience of oppression under whites in the form of inferiority and tyranny.
        
        It really seems like this author is a liberal (though is critical of other Liberals like lin manuel miranda) which sucks lmaoooo… the lack of criticality of bourgeois democracy is somewhat surprising given the understanding of sovereignty that Indigenous folks advocate for and the critical stance on the specific form that US democracy takes. Regardless, it is useful to have some awareness of how even supposed allies like Tocqueville had misapprehended ideas about the plight of Africans and Natives.
        
        In a general sense, I would like for us to think through what ties might lead to lasting solidarity and peace between New Afrikans and Natives. Like, our shared struggles give us tactical and even strategic reasons for working together, but ideologically/culturally/spiritually/philosophically, we can’t stop there. I think that building a new world of bioregionalism, sovereignty, etc requires making commitments to other ways of being.
        
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- - - - There’s also a big issue in how this article seems to see assimilation as not a horrible thing to try and create, and that any difficulties that come from resisting it are caused by the state and not the Native nations. It begs question about non-White immigrants as well; what were the conditions of the earliest Chinese immigrants, and how do they factor into these restrictive ways that the government and wider civil society imposed on the relations to and of space?
        
        I get that the scope of this is smaller, but I do wish there was more thought put into rural Black life and urban Native life, as those are important to think about on their own, and as they might help build a better understanding of what those geographies are actually like to be in. It is very easy to imagine them in their most paradigmatic (essentialized) forms, rather than as the much more rooted shaped they actually take, where you can have things like farm plots in between skyscrapers, or stuff like Forest Park and Central Park. I am really just longing for better tools to think about “the country” and “the city”, I guess.
- - - - Often (usually euro-american) people try to recuperate oppressed people into the American “democratic project” through their participation in its revolutionary struggles. In reality, the oppressed, while having and understanding their interests to be opposed to these colonial empires, found themselves tactically allied with them to try and gain freedom. Democracy and oppression were dialectically welded, as white democracy was fueled by exploitation of oppressed peoples.
        
        Good to reframe the early struggles in the US around people trying to free themselves from the so called burgeoning democracy. It does us well to not assume unity, but to assume the opposite, and understand that many historical moments of alliance were perceived to be tactically useful, even if the strategies animating them were incompatible.
        
        The Slave society had a problem; the quantity of enslaved, and various insurrections (along with a revolution in Haiti) led planters to be very fearful, leading to a bunch of different plans for how to address it. Some places, even in the core of the society, wanted to deport or remove Black folks, and others wanted to import more whites. this tension around what to do to maintain settler society and continue to grow its wealth and power is what kind of feeds into the unrest of the Civil War era.
        
        I need to do more research into why slavery “ended”… framing it as a choice the society made itself seems wrong… my thought is that it was a concession to stave off further Black revolt.