Sara Salem

“In light of recent events—genocide in East Africa, the collapse of democracy throughout the continent, the isolation of Cuba, the overthrow of progressive movements throughout the so-called third world—some might argue that the moment of truth has already passed, that Césaire and Fanon’s predictions proved false. We’re facing an era where fools are calling for a renewal of colonialism, where descriptions of violence and instability draw on the very colonial language of “barbarism” and “backwardness” that Césaire critiques in these pages. But this is all a mystification; the fact is, while colonialism in its formal sense might have been dismantled, the colonial state has not. Many of the problems of democracy are products of the old colonial state whose primary difference is the presence of black faces. It has to do with the rise of a new ruling class—the class Fanon warned us about—who are content with mimicking the colonial masters,”
― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

“The process occurs in two stages. The first step is to grant law enforcement officials extraordinary discretion regarding whom to stop, search, arrest, and charge for drug offenses, thus ensuring that conscious and unconscious racial beliefs and stereotypes will be given free rein. Unbridled discretion inevitably creates huge racial disparities. Then, the damning step: Close the courthouse doors to all claims by defendants and private litigants that the criminal justice system operates in racially discriminatory fashion. Demand that anyone who wants to challenge racial bias in the system offer, in advance, clear proof that the racial disparities are the product of intentional racial discrimination—i.e., the work of a bigot. This evidence will almost never be available in the era of colorblindness, because everyone knows—but does not say—that the enemy in the War on Drugs can be identified by race. This simple design has helped to produce one of the most extraordinary systems of racialized social control the world has ever seen.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Pointing to a trend in Western democracies, Agamben posits that the declaration of an emergency state of exception itself has gradually been replaced by a “generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government” (2003/2005, 14), that is, the state of exception or emergency has become integrated in the normal functioning of the state.”
― Nicholas De Genova, The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement

“The slave-trade and slavery were the economic basis of the French Revolution. ‘Sad irony of human history,’ comments Jaurès. ‘The fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes, by the slave-trade, gave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty and contributed to human emancipation.”
― C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution