… but a beating in a totalitarian country.
I would like to testify to an incident which occurred in 1973 in Louisiana, where I was teaching French in a non-integrationist black elementary school, that is to say, composed of mixed black and white teachers, but with strictly Afro- descendants. Many were considered “social cases” by the surrounding society, because they were children of Black Panthers or black Muslims.
One day like the others, during recess, I saw one of the children calling another nigger “. I immediately asked him why he was treating him that way, and he replied, “You saw his skin, he’s black!” Amazed, I pointed out to him that he too was black, although his skin was a little lighter, and that was precisely the crux of the matter. This paler-skinned youth made that color an overwhelming quality of superiority over his dark-skinned comrade. This event coincided with another, which started in the Harlem ghetto at the time, and which consisted of certain parents certifying to their children that they would become white when they grew up. This terrible absurdity clashed head-on with the arrival of an already difficult adolescence and reinforced an inferiority complex and an almost indelible despair.
It was in Louisiana that I was able to experience the complexity of American racism, and these five police officers revived my memory, where it was not just children who despised a scapegoat so much and let off steam on him.
In 1973, I could have believed in progress, but lo and behold, the decline continues and reaches heights that we let pass, almost subjugated. Ron DeSantis, tipped to be a presidential candidate in 2024, bans a course on African-American history. An openly racist law. No credible Democratic candidate for 2024. So, I think back to this man, who knew the abyss and whose voice resonates with more and more topicality:
” […] It may be that a new fascism, with its procession of intolerance, abuse and servitude, is born outside our country and imported there, perhaps surreptitiously and camouflaged under other names; or that it is unleashed from within with a violence capable of overthrowing all barriers. So the advice of wisdom is no longer useful, and we have to find the strength to resist: in this too, the memory of what happened in the heart of Europe, not so long ago, can be a help and a warning. (Primo Levi, If it’s a man)