
Moving to Ghana to 'escape US racism' - bundze
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49394354
======
chewz
> In 2018, he successfully led a campaign to force the University of Ghana to
> remove a statue of India's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Standing at the empty plinth, he gave the Black Power salute, and called for
the recognition of African heroes rather than a man who had once referred to
black South Africans by a highly offensive racist slur - and had said that
Indians were "infinitely superior" to black people.

~~~
kranner
Those statements were made as part of a legal petition when he was a young
lawyer in his early 20s, freshly arrived in South Africa, and one who'd had
little contact with the Africans.

He later came to publicly support African rights and gave many more speeches
which asked Indians to draw inspiration from Africans.

Even Mandela forgave him:

> Mandela was well aware of the racist statements made by Gandhi when he was
> young. He wrote in an article in 1995, “Gandhi must be forgiven those
> prejudices and judged in the context of the time and circumstances. We are
> looking here at the young Gandhi, still to become Mahatma, when he was
> without any human prejudice save that in favour of truth and justice.”

Source: [https://thewire.in/history/gandhi-and-
africans](https://thewire.in/history/gandhi-and-africans)

------
hprotagonist
As, famously, did WEB DuBois, who went so far as to renounce his Us
citizenship.

------
bundze
Sad to see my submission flagged! Posted it because I came across this story
on a reputable site (BBC) and I was wondering what people abroad, especially
US, might think of it. I've lived my whole life in Europe so I don't have much
context about the issue.

------
einhverfr
The structural racism that my family faces because of the fact that I am
married to a non-citizen SE Asian is a big reason I don't relocate my family
back to the US. And this is a bipartisan issue. The issues discussed in the
article there or that I have experienced have very little to do with one party
alone.

The US built its industrial base on the backs first of slaves then of the
freed slaves, poor immigrants (particularly from China) and dispossessed
Latinos whose land claims were not recognized post-annexation. Until we
understand that racism in the US is a tool of classism and we address the
underlying economic injustices, there will be no social justice. But there is
no political party willing to take that on and no real hope for the
foreseeable future.

~~~
wil421
All these things never have happened in SE Asia correct? I mean it’s not like
the largest country in that region didn’t have a caste system with a huge
population of untouchables with no mobility.

~~~
ben_w
“Everyone else is doing it” is a _terrible_ argument. Individuals are not
averages of the nations or regions they come from — an Asian in the USA is not
one third Indian, one third Chinese, and one third Other; an Indian is not 16%
Dalit.

Even though I don’t know of any history of SE Asian slaves in the USA, I can
easily believe that a specific individual Indian with dark skin and Muslim
religion might find America unwelcoming both on religious and racial grounds —
if that person was rich enough to even try to move to America, I’m going to
guess they’re probably not one of the untouchables. Other people’s pain
doesn’t invalidate theirs; it only becomes hypocrisy if they turn a blind eye
to it after experiencing it, and I have no evidence of that here.

~~~
deogeo
But it's not an argument - it's giving context. The USA is not uniquely guilty
of all the injustices in the world, and refusing to go along with this
narrative should not be framed as an attack.

~~~
einhverfr
The US is uniquely guilty of a particular kind of racism used to build a
particular kind of economy. Racism in Europe is different than it is in the
US. Racism in SE Asia is different than it is in the US. In the US, racism is
solely about economic exploitation of working classes by a small group of
mostly white (though with some token individuals from other groups)
executive/investor class and it has always been this.

Europe's industrialization was built on the back of religious divisions rather
than racial ones for example, which makes the problems somewhat different.

~~~
deogeo
> Europe's industrialization was built on the back of religious divisions
> rather than racial ones for example

Is this something you just casually throw out, or do you have some data
showing that... countries with greater religious divisions industrialized
faster?

In any case, "built on the back of" seems overstating things. Find some sin in
the past, and claim that it is the source of all the success of a country, for
which it must feel eternally guilty. That there are similar, successful
countries without this sin, or unsuccessful ones that share it, are details
best ignored. E.g. slavery was widespread in Africa and the Ottoman Empire,
with wildly different outcomes than in the US, and imperialism _certainly_
wasn't unique to Europe or the US.

~~~
env123
Jesus, your obsession with data... Just read history...

~~~
ben_w
The history lessons that I grew up with told me that my country was great, and
that everything which was bad in the world was the fault of some other nation.
Asking for data is one way to get past that.

