Angela Davis has been a legendary figure in the feminist and anti-racist movements for 50 years. In 1970, she was accused of taking part in a hostage situation in a California court, during the appearance of members of the Brothers of Soledad, African-American prisoners linked to the Black Panthers.
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She will be put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. But a vast mobilization movement called Free Angela, to which Louis Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre and John Lennon will join, will get her out of this quagmire and clear her after 16 months of detention.
Last Monday, the 78-year-old African-American essayist was invited to the Royal Circus in Brussels to come and debate in front of young people, artists, citizen movements and militant associations. The meeting was to take place at the National Theater, but as the demand was too strong, it was moved to a room that can accommodate 1700 people.
A few days before his arrival, a group of “black feminist and queer activists published a text on social networks demanding that the moderator of this discussion, Safia Kessas, a Belgian-Algerian journalist for RTBF, be removed from her post.
Reason: the journalist is white.
In the published text, the ten signatories affirm that the choice of a “non-black person to dialogue” with Angela Davis represents a “new spit in the face of black activists”.
I’ll make a clarification here: Angela Davis saw no problem with a white journalist interviewing her.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RTBF
Belgian-Algerian journalist Safia Kessas
Safia Kessas is known for her reports and columns on inequality. Committed to colonial issues, she defines herself as “intersectional”. For several years, she has been presenting chronicles under the title “La grenade” (combined in a book) where she addresses various topics relating to equality, feminism, the reality of the elderly or diversity.
The event went as planned, but as the moderator had received threats, it was done under police surveillance. It seems that the group of activists has trouble with Safia Kessas who is accused of “negrophobia” without providing examples. It was not appreciated that she lodged a complaint with the police following the harassment of which she was allegedly the victim on the part of activists. She is now accused of having written dozens of texts on black women to supposedly “prove her tolerance”.
In the text published on Facebook, the activists write: “We strongly question the message sent back to black communities with the choice of Safia Kessas. Don’t we have enough skills for you? Aren’t we the best placed to discuss the liberation of black people from white and capitalist domination? »
Here we are, to the famous question of the ghettoization that some extremist militants seek to create. Because you’re not black, you can’t talk about black reality. Because you’re not a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you can’t understand what these people are going through. Because you’re not a woman, you can’t talk about women’s rights.
What happened in Brussels is reminiscent of the controversy that erupted in March 2021 when a publishing house considered entrusting the translation of the African-American poet Amanda Gorman (the one who had charmed everyone during Joe Biden’s inauguration) to white Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Activists quickly showed the translator the exit.
Angela Davis was of course invited to speak on this thorny subject. She believes that “the focus on identities” leads to shortcuts, the magazine reported Marianne Thursday. She also called the culture of banishment “disturbing.”
This doyen of activism finds that activism is adrift. It’s not going well.
That we take to the streets to demand greater diversity on stage, in television and in film, I agree 100%. That we favor people from minorities to repair a great imbalance in the world of work, I agree 100%.
But if we tell those who are not black, gay, trans or disabled that they cannot take part in the debate, especially when it is intended to move things forward, there, I am no longer on board. We are on the wrong target. We are completely derailed.
Extremist militants are putting latches on the floor. They are killing the debate.
By wanting to fight against cultural appropriation, they are accentuating it. These activists finally tell us that Angela Davis, on whose behalf they took a stand (without her consent), belongs to them. It is theirs and theirs alone.
These struggles waged in the name of progressivism harm real progressive causes. But the activists who lead them do not see it that way. That is worrying.
After academia, culture and science, now the left-wing extremists are attacking the world of ideas. In the name of what ? In the name of a utopian ideology whose project is to make society just, pure and upright.
There is no doubt that we all want to live in this world. But the problem is that this utopian vision rejects freedom of expression.