While racism in Western Europe has been extensively documented, the experiences of racism in Eastern Europe remain underexplored, particularly from the perspective of Black individuals born and raised in the region. This book, written by a Polish author of African descent, sheds light on the racial struggles in Poland, situating them within a broader global context.
The first part of the book delves into the historical dynamics of racial relationships between Black individuals and white Poles. It highlights the lives of Black Polish citizens and residents from the 18th century to the fall of communism in 1989, including figures like Katarzyna Rohoczewska and August Agbola O’Browne. It also celebrates the contributions of two prominent Polish anti-racists: General Tadeusz Kościuszko and the poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid. This section further examines Poland’s colonial ambitions, from Maurycy Beniowski’s attempt to colonize Madagascar in the late 18th century to colonial expeditions in the 1930s. Additionally, it analyzes the paradoxical nature of anti-racism in the People’s Republic of Poland, exploring the government’s official stance alongside the attitudes of its white citizens.
The second part offers a deeply personal account of the author’s experiences as both a student and a teacher, revealing the pervasive racism within Poland’s education system. It critiques the anti-migrant rhetoric propagated by Polish and European Union politicians, exposing their hypocrisy during the EU refugee crisis. A central chapter focuses on the tragic murder of Maxwell Itoya in May 2010, framing it within the global context of police brutality against Black individuals.
The final part of the book examines the racist undertones in Polish culture, particularly in literature and mass media, with a critical analysis of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s In Desert and Wilderness. It also pays tribute to James Baldwin, the author’s literary hero, exploring how Baldwin’s essays have profoundly influenced the author’s own writing and worldview. The book concludes with a reflection on the absence of a cohesive movement among Black Poles and poses the urgent question: What is to be done?
USD $ 12.00 USD $ 28.00Price range: USD $ 12.00 through USD $ 28.00
Christian Kobluk — Polish-Burundian essayist and public speaker. Author of Zapiski czarnego Polaka [Notes of a Black Pole] (Instytut Wydawniczy Książka i Prasa, 2022). Contributing editor in Wobec. Former refugee rights advisor in the Member of Polish Parliament's Office. He…
| Book Format | Print Book, EPub |
|---|
There are no reviews yet.
Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.
In the early 1970s, Donald Barnett — who worked with Karari Njama to produce Mau Mau From Within (published by Daraja Press) — also worked with three militants of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army to enable them to tell the story of their experience in fighting for freedom and against British colonialism. These rarely acknowledged militants were Karigo Muchai, Ngugi Kabiro and Mohamed Mathu. Their stories were published in 1973 by LSM Information Center (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) as part of a series entitled Life Histories of the Revolution, as The Hardcore: The Story of Karigo Muchai; The Man in the Middle by Ngugi Kabiro; and The Urban Guerrilla by Mohamed Mathu.
As part of its mission of Nurturing reflection, sheltering hope and inspiring audacity, Daraja Press is please to republish the three booklets as a book that will help a new generation of activists — Kenyan and international — reflect on a history that might inspire audacious struggles to continue the struggle for freedom that was the goal of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.
Donald Barnett’s introduction to each booklet contained the following text:
The life histories in this series have been recorded and prepared as historical documents from the revolutionary struggles of our time. The techniques and methods employed at each stage of the process, from initial contact to final editing, have therefore been chosen or fashioned with the purpose of guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of the life history concerned. These stories, then, to the best of our ability to make them so, constitute a body of data and testimony as revealed by a few of those history-makers normally condemned to silence while others speak on their behalf.
[Spanish edition of Jackson Rising]
Mississipi; el estado más pobre de los EEUU, el que tiene el porcen- taje más alto de población Negra y con una historia dramática de terror racial y de resistencia Negra. Este es el contexto de la resistencia presentada en este recopilatorio de escritos.
Sin desanimarse por la incertidumbre, el miedo y la an- siedad causadas por el constante deterioro del orden ne- oliberal, la respuesta de las activistas Negras de Jackson ha sido organizarse. Inspiradas por la rica historia de lucha y resistencia en Mississipi y comprometidas con la Estra- tegia Jackson-Kush, construyen instituciones arreladas en el poder comunitario, que combinan política y desarrollo económico y que satisfacen necesidades reales de la gente para crear un model social alternativo.
Las experiencias y análisis recogidas reflejan el poder creativo que se genera cuando la lucha política se basa en una visión del mundo liberada de las contradicciones y li- mitaciones inherentes al liberalismo. Esta es, en definitiva, una historia sobre un porceso decolonial y socialista, orga- nizado y dirigido por personas Negras.
There was nothing but darkness in the spring of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic raged and shut down the economy. But as right-wing protesters demanded an end to the lockdown, a much bigger social conflict was brewing under the surface. A rebellion exploded in Minneapolis in response to the brutal police murder of George Floyd in late May, during which a police station was overtaken and burned down. The uprising quickly spread across the United States as protesters looted downtown urban centers, set fire to cop cars, vandalized government buildings, and fought the police. The Black proletariat led the charge, but white, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous proletarians also joined the fight, demonstrating new possibilities for building alliances. While anti-police rebellions continued throughout the summer and fall, the uprising receded with the start of the winter. But this conflict is far from over.
In an effort to think through the experience of the uprising and prepare for the great struggles that are coming, The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising provides an in-depth analysis of what exactly happened during the 2020 uprising, its potentials, internal limits, and strategic implications.
This was Tariq Mehmood’s first novel, published by Penguin Books in 1983, charting the experience of the second generation migrants to the UK. Set in the declining textile industry of the North of England, it is a raw story of pain and anger at the relentlessness of British racism, from the street to the state – a story of an unquenchable desire for justice, and reclaiming human dignity. A dignity that is wrapped around new questions of Identity, a crossroad between religion, language, history and resistance. It is a little big story, that talks to the extremities of social, political and literary issues today? Can stories of a generation be appropriated? How important is religion in identity? If all you have is a story to tell, who should you tell it? Are the issues of today, just the issues of today or can we learn something from the past? In these stories, friendship is not defined by religion or colour, but by humanity. And racism is much more than skin deep. It is an exhilarating read that bears witness to the urgent 80’s battles against state and popular racism. As important now as then. In this new edition, Mehmood provides a Foreword that describes how the novel came to be written and the lives of real people on whom the characters were created. In the Afterword, Mehmood revisits some of the characters who are now 40-years older, and reflects on how the book would have been written today where the conditions of mass mobilizations no longer exist in neoliberal Britain.
We hear for the first time from the internationalist secretly working for the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tons of weapons into the country in the most creative ways. Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face great danger. The internationalists reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries: they gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause. Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key people in the international Anti-Apartheid Movement and its public mobilisation to isolate the apartheid regime. These include worldwide campaigns like Stop the Sports Tours, boycotting of South African products and black American solidarity. The Cuban, East German and Russian contributions outlined those countries’ support for the ANC and MK. The public, global Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigns provide the dimensions from which internationalists who secretly served MK emerged. Edited by Ronnie Kasrils. First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2021, ISBN: 978-1-4314-3202-8, this Daraja Press edition is available in North America and East Africa.
Editors and Authors: Daniel Bendix, Chandra-Milena Danielzik, Franziska Müller, Lata Narayanaswamy, Juan Telleria, Miriam friz Trzeciak, Aram Ziai
Artists: Hangula Werner, Roshni Vyam, Michel Esselbrügge, Qi Zhou, RotmInas – Rotmi Enciso & Ina Riaskov, Maite Mentxaka Tena, Lena Ziyal
Postcolonial critique reveals the traces of the colonial past in every corner of our present lives and exposes the colonial violence inherent in global inequality. This collective comic project illuminates the coloniality of everyday life as well as the decolonising potential of everyday struggles in the spaces, discourses and practices of so-called global development.
What an absolute impertinence! My lawyers are already involved. It’s just as well that I was able to use tax money for the purchase.
—Queen Elizabeth II
I love true crime books, but this one got a bit boring after a while. It could do with more bloodshed.
—Lothar von Trotha
I added this book to my list to burn. Just saying.
—Diego de Landa
A waste of time. So glad I didn’t buy it, but stole my copy.
—Christopher Columbus
I didn’t get it. Are they suggesting colonialism is not quite over?
—Harry S. Truman
In his introduction to this new edition of From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain, Mahmood Mamdani reminds us that long before 1972, most Ugandan ‘Asians’ had already been disenfranchised by law, both Ugandan and British. Despite a global industry that insists otherwise, Uganda Asians are a poor fit as victims: there was no large-scale loss of life during the expulsion, nor were there massacres of Asians, only of ‘indigenous’ peoples. Asians in Uganda, as in East or Southern Africa, he argues, were immigrants, not settlers: immigrants are prepared to be a part of the political community, whereas settlers ‘create their own political community, a colony, more precisely, settler colonialism.’ Mamdani insists that there is no single Asian legacy. there are several and they are contradictory. The Asian question in Uganda remains, but it is no longer the original Asian question. But it does allow us to think more broadly. Just as US law recognizes African Americans as Americans of African descent, so too must those of Asian origin in Africa consider themselves, and be considered, Asian Africans. It is in his bittersweet and touching book on the Asian expulsion from Uganda that one can trace the beginnings of author and intellectual Mahmood Mamdani’s world-view.. … In From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain Mamdani offers portraits of people reduced to a vegetative existence in refugee camps, feeling the burden of not being fluent in English and struggling with the uncomfortably cold weather. Not surprisingly, these few months played a pivotal role in shaping Mamdani’s theoretical and political leanings, and it is here that one can locate his preoccupation with the formation of racial, ethnic and class identities during the colonial era and his overarching concern with issues of citizenship.
Nikesha Breeze has taken pages from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, taken his words, and forced them to leave his colonized mind. She has made the words her own in poetic form. She illuminates the invisible Black voices inside, a radical, surgical, and unapologetic Black appropriation, at the same time as a careful birthing and spiritual road map. The resulting poems are sizzling purifications, violent restorations of integrity, pain, wound, bewilderment, rage, and, sometimes, luminous generosity. This is a work of Reclamation. The author, Nikesha Breeze, has slowly, page by page, reclaimed the text of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This racist turn-of-the-19th-century book was pivotal in the continued dehumanization of Black people and in particular of African people, as it painted an image of bestiality on the Congo people and the continent. It is laced with racist imagery and language. The author has reappropriated the book, page by page, making “BlackOut” poetry for each page, isolating methodically the words to create new poems of power and black voice within the text —stealing the language and reappropriating the power.
