Dany Laferrière: Racism is a virus

Racism is a virus, by Dany Laferrière
of Académie française. (French Academy)

Let's be clear, racism is born, lives and may even die one day. Highly infectious, racism could spread from one human being to another. The speed of contagion varies according to the place or the situation. The infected could create situations where scratching oneself could increase its propagation speed and power, while other scenarios could decrease it.

In a timely manner, there are new waves on the horizon. People are surprised of its warning signs, the imminent danger. Unemployment, poverty, urban violence, lack of courtesy, these are agents capable of accelerating the blossoming racism in a place where its presence was embryonic.

Racism has this peculiarity of never being born in the place where one is. Like a virus, racism always comes from elsewhere. A sudden rise on unemployment, and fingers are quickly pointed at newcomers who are wrongly accused, it seems, to carry the gene of poverty which allows racism to flourish.

It's only when a patient is admitted we learn of the existence of a virus, otherwise it remains invisible. That supports an old notion the patient is responsible for the disease. White folks thought Black people were the group who brought the virus to America, and Black folks believe, that it is White folks greed who want to exploit their energy to stay alive.

Black and White feed off one another, each for their existence. This is so true an American fact, as the hamburger. An identity created by a virus. We'd like to watch the birth in a laboratory. As for native Americans, they are still in confinement on the nation's reservations.

The historical moment

People wonder when it all started in America? 400 years ago with the slave trade. The time slave ships arrived on the American coast. That time may seem distant, but historically, it was like yesterday. Grandsons of slaves did everything to remember "these bloody centuries" while grandsons of settlers are doing everything they could to forget.

We don't always think of the same thing at the same time. We can trace the birth of the virus back when Europe began to fantasize about the free and inexhaustible energy of slave's labor power. The goal is to make money. Make others work for free, with the right to life and death over them. There are still people in the United States who think wishfully of that good old time.

I say United States because the last events took place there, but I smile when I see Europe being astonished by the violence of American racism, forgetting that they were at the origin of all this. That was essentially the first pandemic since three continents were involved: Europe, Africa and America.

The Mystery

A point which remains mysterious: racism is capable of appearing in the most remote regions, where there is no poverty, unemployment, or not even one black person.

We thought we knew how racism worked. Are its territory unlimited, and time infinite? There is so much that we do not know about the behavior of the virus, that we are sailing by the stars. The only evidence is the suffering racism produces on a single group: black people.

We could be surprised by the diversity of studies done on the behavior of the virus. For example: can the virus pass from humans to animals? You might think when you saw in southern United States, not too long ago, on public places where it was posted, "No Negroes or dogs allowed". You might think it’s the fantasy of a laboratory researcher, in reality it was part of a dehumanization process.

The dehumanization

For the slave to accept his beast of burden condition, requires the participation of all trades with some influences on society. The political, intellectual and religious elite at the time undertook the task to convince the slave he doesn't belong to the organizational structure in colonial society.

Who he is? A simple commodity that slave dealerships seek to sell to the highest bidder. The church taught the slave the understanding, much suffering is to be rewarded with a glorious place after death, in paradise. An article in the Black Code which governs all aspects of a slave’s life qualified "the Negro as property".

In the middle of the Age of Enlightenment. Yet slavery continues to flourish during this time of high philosophical and scientific progress. As a matter of wonderment, does a black person have a soul ? We noticed the more the virus settles in, the more powerful the police believes they were. Once the virus is there it's hard to get it out of the body. We seek or pretend to seek a vaccine to cure the disease.

This vaccine comes at the Age of Enlightenment who promotes the idea of progress across the board. The French Revolution tried for a brief moment to put an end to slavery ("perish the colonies rather than a principle!", Robespierre on slavery). But in fact, that was without counting on the centerpiece: money. Everyone seeks to enrich themselves by the slave trade. Even philosophers - Voltaire topped the list - he owned shares in the East India Company.

Money

It was money that allowed racism to spread. It feeds the insatiable desire of man to get rich at low cost. Workers you don't have to pay...

The French academician's thoughts went further, as saying that "slavery is harsh, but capitalism is no joke either."

Dany Laferrière
June 9, 2020.

Alexis de Tocqueville took European racism to another level. Let's take a look at what the former French aristocrat wrote and believed to be true
about the Afro-Americans in the "future of the races."

"If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we should almost say that the European is to the other races of mankind, what man is to the lower animals;--he makes them subservient to his use; and when he cannot subdue, he destroys them. Oppression has, at one stroke, deprived the descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity. The negro of the United States has lost all remembrance of his country; the language which his forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to belong to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges. But he remains half way between the two communities; sold by the one, repulsed by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to call by the name of country, except the faint image of a home which the shelter of his master's roof affords.

"The negro has no family; woman is merely the temporary companion of his pleasures, and his children are upon an equality with himself from the moment of their birth. Am I to call it a proof of God's mercy or a visitation of his wrath, that man in certain states appears to be insensible to his extreme wretchedness, and almost affects, with a depraved taste, the cause of his misfortunes? The negro, who is plunged in this abyss of evils, scarcely feels his own calamitous situation. Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of those who oppress him: his understanding is degraded to the level of his soul.

"The negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born: nay, he may have been purchased in the womb, and have begun his slavery before he began his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of enjoyment, and useless to himself, he learns, with his first notions of existence, that he is the property of another, who has an interest in preserving his life, and that the care of it does not devolve upon himself; even the power of thought appears to him a useless gift of Providence, and he quietly enjoys the privileges of his debasement. If he becomes free, independence is often felt by him to be a heavier burden than slavery; for having learned, in the course of his life, to submit to everything except reason, he is too much unacquainted with her dictates to obey them. A thousand new desires beset him, and he is destitute of the knowledge and energy necessary to resist them: these are masters which it is necessary to contend with, and he has learnt only to submit and obey. In short, he sinks to such a depth of wretchedness, that while servitude brutalizes, liberty destroys him."

Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America.

The book was revered by institutes of higher learning in America and around the world. Racism axioms were being taught from right under our noses to generations. Since no one was watching, twenty years ago, C-SPAN, the Cable TV Network, made a special pilgrimage to Alexis de Tocqueville's family estate in France.

Voltaire was not the only one.

Alexis de Tocqueville's manner of thinking, was widely adopted and taught racism in high places, principalities and academic institutions. Racism found root in Alexis de Tocqueville's views on race, and the virus spread like wild fire. It was legally being taught in our schools to generations in American society. Honest affluent people from around the world who attended these classes could attest to that fact...