What do you think of this review: Afropessimism and Its Discontents
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Here is what I think:
Optimism comes more naturally to people who have been at the bottom for too long. The flaw in pessimism is that it sounds like self-pity, especially when the person offering this view does not regard himself as a human being, only a Slave professor who works for Humans and their junior partners. However you may feel the pessimism of the mind and the optimism of masses at the same time.
There is nothing essentially African about slavery because ancient slavery existed in Europe while Africans never adopted a slave mode of production, according to Walter Rodney. Moreover, poor white workers are also known as wage-slaves to show that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
African Americasns are human beings and not slaves, Brother Malcolm called them ex-slaves but optimistic Malcolm also called them men (and women) contrary to the pessimistic view. Race-Class-Gender articulation in societies structured in dominance is a reality also in the alliance-coalition-solidarity strategies of resistance (despite the existence of dominant ideologies even among the oppressed who may have their own individual coping methods) which are different but never completely separate because racism-sexism-imperialism threaten everyone intersectionally, not only poor people of African descent.
They are problems for all to tackle together in different but interrelated, intersectional, or articulated ways. That is why many white people join the struggle against racism, many men join the struggle against sexism, and many bourgeois professors join the working class struggles because we are all connected in a bundle of humanity - Ubuntu. It is not a sisters of mercy work of charity to be rejected with performative pessimism because no one seeks the permission of a pessimist before engaging in the struggle for social justice.
Biko
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