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Famous Akala Quotes

“In marked contrast to the wars we can always afford you will frequently hear the same people talk about not having the money for any number of things that affect the lives of poor people, such as adequate fire safety, decent pay for nurses and teachers and winter fuel for the elderly: this is classism. The state makes choices about the interests in which collective resources will be spent. Poor people have no real voice in British politics, but we do have an unelected second chamber of ‘lords’ influencing policy. None of this is conducive to having a truly democratic society and we may not be able to substantially change it, but it is important that we at least understand what’s going on. Class affects everything - culture, confidence and worldview - and the class system is so entrenched in Britain that even a person’s accent carries with it implications about their social background.”

PoliticsClassPovertyBritish Politics
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“State schooling in Britain both today and when I was a child seems stuck in a Victorian-era paradigm, guided by notions of discipline, obedience and deference to ones betters, of becoming a good worker and getting a good job. The idea that we go to school to find our passions, our calling, to learn to be happy, to ‘draw out that which is within’, as the root meaning of the word ‘educate’ commands, is almost entirely absent. Let alone any sense that we plebs should contemplate participating in the governing of the country.”

SchoolEducation SystemBritish Education
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“We judge the street corner hustler or working-class criminal - from East Glasgow to East London - but we see a job as an investment banker, even in firms that launder the profits of drug cartels, fund terrorism, aid the global flow of arms, fuel war, oil spills, land grabs and generally fuck up the planet, as a perfectly legitimate, even aspirational occupation.”

PoliticsRaceClassLogic
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“The pressure to accumulate, the understanding that poverty is shameful, the double shame of being black and poor, the constant refrain of materialism coming from every facet of popular culture, the empty fridge, the disconnected electricity, the insecurity of being a tenant with eviction always just a few missed paycheques away, the stress and anger of your parents that trickles down far better than any capital accumulation, the naked injustices that you now know to be reality and the growing belief that one is indeed all of the negative stereotypes that the people with the power say you are. These are the factors that aided my own ego in turning me from a wannabe Max Planck to a wannabe gangster. I ultimately take responsibility for my own actions, but there is still a story there and being treated like and presumed to be a criminal for years before I ever contemplated actually carrying a knife is part of that story.”

ClassRacismStereotypes
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“Racist insults leave you feeling dirty because, even at five years old, we already know on some level that, in this society at least, we are indeed lesser citizens with all the baggage of racialised history following us ghost-like about our days. We are conquered people living in the conquerors’ land, and as such we are people without honour. At five years old we are already conscious of the offence caused by our black body turning up in the wrong space, and have begun to internalise the negative ideas about blackness so present in the culture.”

HistoryRacismBlackness
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“Nelson Mandela was already a name synonymous with freedom and wisdom, justice and principle, by the time I took my first steps. However, it was not until over a decade later, when in my late teens I started to do a little reading and research of my own, that I even heard mention of Cuba's contribution to anti-apartheid. This obvious omission, along with the simplistic narratives that surrounded Mandela and Castro, was a valuable lesson to me about how the powerful craft history and news media to their own ends.”

PoliticsEducationMediaSocialismPropagandaSouth AfricaBiasCubaCastroMandela
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but 'rather that Britain had come to us'. They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of the colonies.”

ColonisationRacism In Britain
Book:Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire / Black Listed / Black and British: A Forgotten History
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“Prior to colonialism, black Africans seem to have found their blackness perfectly beautiful and normal, unsurprisingly. But also, by making whiteness the colour of oppression, the colour that defined a person’s right to own other human beings, to rape and kill and steal with impunity, white supremacists had paradoxically opened up the way for blackness to become the colour of freedom, of revolution and of humanity. This is why it’s absurd to compare black nationalism and white nationalism; not because black people are inherently moral, but because the projects of the two nationalisms were entirely different. This difference is why the black nationalist Muhammad Ali could still risk his life, give up the prime years of his career and lose millions of dollars in solidarity with the non-black, non-American people of Vietnam. It’s also why Ali could show as much sympathy as he did to the white people of Ireland in their quarrels with Britain, despite him saying, somewhat rhetorically, that 'The white man is the devil’.”

ColonialismWhite NationalismBlack Nationalism
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“So if the ending of apartheid is now universally agreed to be a good thing, and Cuba played such a central role, how is it still possible to have such differing views of Castro and Mandela and of Cuba and South Africa? The short answer is that the mainstream media has been so successful in distorting basic historical facts that many are so blinded by Cold War hangovers that they are entirely incapable of critical thought, but the other answer is rather more Machiavellian. The reality is that apartheid did not die, and thus the reason so many white conservatives now love Mandela is essentially that he let their cronies "get away with it". The hypocritical worship of black freedom fighters once they are no longer seen to pose a danger or are safely dead - Martin Luther King might be the best example of this - is one of the key ways of maintaining a liberal veneer over what in reality is brutal intent.”

PoliticsRacismSocialismSouth AfricaCubaApartheidCastroFreedom FightersMadela
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“You see, for much of Britain, America is where racism happens, and Britain is then by definition not racist because, you know, 'it's not as racist as America.' This is a totally moot and rather idiotic point, as no two countries have the same systems of social control, thus no two countries in essence have the same racisms. While British liberals may praise all the Dr Kings in the world, this does not necessarily stop them from reproducing and/or administering the domestic racial hierarchy effectively.”

AmericaRaceBritainSocial ChangeBlack HistorySystemic RacismRacial Hierarchy
Book:Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire / Black Listed / Black and British: A Forgotten History
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“Even at five, I had somehow figured out that there was a group known as ‘white people’ to whom it was now clear my mother belonged and that many of these people would get offended at the mere mention of their whiteness. I somehow knew instinctively that whiteness, like all systems of power, preferred not to be interrogated.”

PowerRacismSystematic Racism
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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