THE GLOBAL RECKONING WITH RACE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 september/october The World 2020 Trump Made • volume 99 • number 5 • the world trump made FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM FA_S/O_2020_cover.indd All Pages 7/17/20 1:11 PM THE GLOBAL RECKONING WITH RACE Anti-BlackAnti-Black racism racism and white supremacy are global scourges. – Keisha Blain Civil Rights International Keisha N. Blain 176 The Fragile Republic Suzanne Mettler and SIPA Robert C. Lieberman 182 USA / AP To Protect and to Serve Laurence Ralph 196 17_SecondaryPackage_div_BLUES.indd 175 7/20/20 3:09 PM Return to Table of Contents internationalism. Indeed, Black Ameri- Civil Rights cans have always connected their struggle for rights to Äghts for freedom in Africa, International Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Although surges o Black interna- tionalism have often been led from the The Fight Against Racism top—through the eorts o politicians Has Always Been Global and diplomats—some o the most dynamic and enduring movements have Keisha N. Blain developed at the grassroots, often led by Black women and involving working- n June 13, 2020, Black Lives class and impoverished Black people. Matter (ª®) activists gathered During the twentieth century, Black Oin London’s Trafalgar Square internationalists organized on the local to call for the eradication o racism and level, frequently in urban centers, to white supremacy. With their Ästs raised give voice to the concerns o ordinary GLOBAL RECKONING WITH RACE high, the activists, mostly dressed in people. Utilizing diverse strategies and black, chanted, “Black power!” Were it tactics, they articulated global visions o THE not for the face masks, which they wore freedom by working collaboratively and to help stop the spread o ¥¨¢´-19, the in solidarity with Black people and scene could have been taken straight other people o color across the world. from the 1960s. In that earlier era, Bª® activists have carried on this activists around the world connected tradition, often using social media as a their own struggles to those o African vehicle to forge transnational alliances. Americans who challenged segregation, Although much has changed since disenfranchisement, poverty, and police the 1960s, racism continues to shape brutality—just as their successors do every aspect o Black life in the United today. Meanwhile, Black American States. The troubling pattern o police activists agitated for human rights and killings o unarmed Black Americans called attention to the devaluation o sparked the current uprisings, but it Black lives not only in the United States represents only part o the problem; but all over the world, including in such killings, horriÄc though they may places under colonial rule. be, are merely symptoms o the deeper Many tend to think o that era’s push diseases o anti-Black racism and white for civil rights and Black power as a supremacy. As ª® activists have distinctly American phenomenon. It emphasized, these problems are not con- was, in fact, a global movement—and tained within the borders o the United so is ª® today. By linking national States: they are global scourges, and concerns to global ones, ª® activists are addressing them requires a global eort. building on a long history o Black FOOTSTEPS TO FOLLOW KEISHA N. BLAIN is Associate Professor of Bª® was launched in 2013 by the activ- History at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist ists Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom. Opal Tometi after the acquittal on 176 ·¥¡§¢µ¦ ¯··¯¢¡ Book 1.indb 176 7/17/20 6:07 PM Civil Rights International murder charges of the man who killed massive demonstrations that erupted in Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African the wake of the police killings of American boy, in Florida the previous Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony year. Following the 2014 police shooting McDade, and other Black Americans of another Black teenager, Michael earlier this year. Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, blm In establishing such links, blm is evolved into a nationwide and global very much following in the footsteps of protest movement. In a matter of previous movements against racism. In months, activists had established blm the early twentieth century, civil rights chapters in several major cities outside activists often called on African Ameri- the United States. In Toronto, for cans to see their interests as tied to example, Janaya Khan and Yusra Ali those of people of color elsewhere. In co-founded a chapter in October 2014 January 1919, for example, the Black following the police killing of Jermaine journalist John Quincy Adams pub- Carby, a 33-year-old Black man, in lished an open letter to U.S. President nearby Brampton, Ontario. A few Woodrow Wilson in The Appeal, an months later, a diverse group of activists influential Black-owned newspaper, in Japan launched an Afro-Asian solidar- demanding that the United States seek to ity march called “Tokyo for Ferguson” protect the rights and recognition of in the wake of a grand jury’s acquittal of people of color everywhere. “Through the police officer who gunned down the centuries,” Adams noted, “the colored Brown. Displaying signs in both English races of the globe have been subjected to and Japanese, hundreds of protesters the most unjust and inhuman treatment marched through the streets of Tokyo. by the so-called white peoples.” In the months that followed, blm At around the same time, Madam C. J. demonstrations swept cities across Walker, a business pioneer who rose to Europe, including Amsterdam, Berlin, fame after making a fortune marketing London, and Paris. beauty and hair products for Black In 2016, Tometi delivered a speech people, established the International before the un General Assembly and League of Darker Peoples with several issued a statement emphasizing an other well-known Black activists, “urgent need to engage the international including the Jamaican Black national- community about the most pressing ist Marcus Garvey, the labor organizer human rights crises of our day” and A. Philip Randolph, and the Harlem pointing out that by internationalizing clergyman Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. the movement, blm was following “in During World War I, the ildp provided the footsteps of many courageous civil a platform for Walker and her associates and human rights defenders that came to advocate for the rights and dignity of before.” Over the past several years, marginalized groups across the world blm activists in the United States have and to tap into surging anti-imperialist indeed forged meaningful alliances with and anticolonial fervor. In January 1919, activists and human rights campaigners Walker coordinated a historic meeting elsewhere. The movement’s internation- in New York City between a delegation alization was made visible with the from the ildp and S. Kuriowa, the September/October 2020 177 18_Blain_pp_BLUES.indd 177 7/20/20 4:12 PM Keisha N. Blain publisher of the Tokyo newspaper of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, the Yorudo Choho. At the meeting, members largest Black nationalist organization of the iLdP asked Kuriowa to encourage established by a woman in the United Japanese officials to advocate racial States. Founded by Mittie Maude Lena equality at the Paris Peace Conference, Gordon in Chicago in December 1932, which was scheduled to take place the PMe advocated universal Black several days later. They received a liberation, economic self-sufficiency, favorable response from Kuriowa, who racial pride, and Black unity and assured them: “The race question will attracted around 300,000 supporters be raised at the peace table.” Western during the 1930s and 1940s. Deeply officials ultimately sidelined the issue of attuned to developments elsewhere, racial prejudice at the conference. But Gordon sought out alliances with Walker’s actions laid the groundwork activists from abroad. In December for a new generation of Black activists 1940, for example, after reading in the and intellectuals who sought international Richmond Times about Akweke Abyssinia support in the decades that followed. Nwafor Orizu, a Black nationalist from The 1930s saw the rise of a number eastern Nigeria, she invited him to speak of grassroots political organizations before an audience of PMe supporters through which African Americans built in Chicago. For ten days in March 1941, alliances with activists of color from Orizu held a series of public meetings other countries in the global struggle with Gordon and her supporters, against white supremacy. During the addressing African nationalism and the early 1930s, Pearl Sherrod, a leader of emigration of Black Americans to Africa. an organization called the Development Like Sherrod, Gordon saw a direct of Our Own, became an early propo- link between manifestations of white nent of solidarity among poor nations, supremacy in the United States and identifying the common interests those in Asia, arguing in 1942 that the between Black Americans and non- “destruction of the white man in Asia is whites in colonies across Africa, Asia, the destruction of the white man in the the Caribbean, and Latin America. In a United States.” In particular, she 1934 editorial in the Detroit Tribune emphasized the connection between the Independent, she reminded readers that challenges facing Black Americans and “the greater part of the colored world is the plight of Indians under British today under white political control,” colonial rule. “The complete freedom of even though the majority of the world’s India will bring complete freedom to inhabitants were nonwhite. Echoing the American black people,” she wrote, Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others, “because the same men are holding Sherrod called on people of African them in slavery.” descent in the United States to forge transracial political alliances. “Then, and FREEDOM IN THE MOTHERLAND only then will we get power,” she wrote.