Everyone seems to agree that Priti Patel is a horrendous , rabid right-wing politician who particularly is offensive because she is an Indian Ugandan who betrays her very identity as she chases away brown and black peoples from Great Britain's borders. Her name has cropped up a lot in various conversations here in London.
If you really think about it , Priti Patel's crazy racism can't be understood without context. How does she even get away it? Isn't there a whole racist structure, a state, that she is part of? Has the state held her hand? No. Why ? Because she is merely a mirror to this rabid, racist and violent society. Also, it is not as if right wing ideas and atmosphere are only limited to the West. It is not as if the West has not promoted dictators, despots and neoliberalism abroad. It is not as if progressive ideas were not allowed to flourish and take root. Must brown and black people immigrants be card-carrying communists?
Should Priti Patel be held to account? Of course. She has agency. But, let's never lose sight of the system and its machinery.
More generally, if you let your mind wander a bit and think about various conversations you've had with the brown diaspora in the UK or US, you will realise how much racism and political conservatism has been internalised by your cousins and friends. They will talk about being good immigrants, hard work and how certain people manipulate the welfare system.
I've been thinking about the process of becoming American or British or French for some time. In recent times, the conversations around Islamophobia have illuminated and helped me understand the limits of so-called 'integration' in the West. The French are the worst in hiding their racism as they openly say that Islam is simply not compatible with French secular values. The Americans and British celebrate multiculturalism and human rights but their policies, especially foreign policies, betray their so-called rainbow paradise.
The French position outrightly states that religion has no place in their society. So, people from their former colonies have no space to express their religion , through dress, through places of worship and so on. This doesn't leave them with any space to begin with and, it seems their lives are about negotiating their identities and identities. How does one prove one is secular?
The British have multiculturalism and, it seems everyone can be their authentic self as long as you are good. These days of post Brexit what does it mean to be good? It means you have to be a Priti Patel. White British friends express shock at her rhetoric but miss the point that Priti holds a mirror to their society, that many immigrants internalise right-wing ideas and, most importantly that the price of integration and success is to do perform the work of an inherently racist and colonial state.
Remember that Pakistani American family that Trump started picking on in his war against Muslims? This is the family that the Democrats brought out as examples of good Muslim Americans who sacrificed a son in the "Iraq War" which Americans still call a war instead of an invasion, instead of one of the greatest American crimes?
If you remember the Pakistani Americans could appear as Pakistanis, dressing in shalwar kameez, showing their Pakistani roots and all. In fact, all cultural aspects are celebrated, enjoyed, commodified in Western capitalist states. You can enjoy the best cuisine from all over the world where I'm sure many decades ago, food, clothes, and language were looked down upon along with the black and brown human.
So, what does it take to become an American and what is negotiation that takes place? Can you truly ever become an American? British? What does it mean to be American or British, even? Is it being a good Asian ? Good African? Allowed to dress and eat as you like as long you are not violent? Or too religious? As long as you believe in a violent capitalist war machine?
What is an American? Believer of human rights? Believer of democracy? Which type of rights and what type of democracy? Is being an American an honest look at how that country was created and, reparations to peoples whose blood and lands were taken? Is being British truly an acknowledgement of its imperial past?
Of course, very few modern states address any contradiction and, myth making is part of the indoctrination of being a citizen. Many tools from Western toolkits are frequently used by our states to deny citizenship rights: the plight of Muslims today in India; plight of minorities in Pakistan; plight of workers from neighbouring states in South Africa, etc. Who gets to be us?
Looking at it from another angle - whiteness - Western imperial states put on a show of 'becoming more black and brown and Indigenous.'
Justin Trudeau came with a cabinet of so many Asians and women. America elected a black President, a black Vice President, appointed the first ever black female judge to the Supreme Court, awarded the first Oscar to an Asian, and so on. The British elected son of Pakistani bus driver as mayor of London. All these gestures are meant to show us that space has been ceded to non white people and things are becoming more equal.
As with feminism, things will simply not become better if you appoint a female CEO or Prime Minister if the system remains the same. Equality is a distraction. It is a betrayal of women who will be crushed by the same system. Likewise, putting a nonwhite person into a place power or giving them an Oscar doesn't mean the system has been overhauled.
In fact, it seems that the work of system is simply outsourced to black and brown people. Priti Patel is doing the work of white supremacy while white people express shock at her racism.
In America, did white people express shock that Barack Obama dropped all those bombs on non white people? Or that Hilary Clinton is an unbearable war monger? No, in America the Democrats, the liberals still haven't made a connection between imperialism, capitalism and rights at home.
Representation and equality are seductive but misleading ideas. Do we want to be represented in inherently racist and violent systems? Do we want equality within those systems and structures?
Liberation is the word is never used by these power structures. They will never say, we liberated black people from legacy of slavery and racism by electing a black VP. They will never cede space to Indigenous peoples in the state to return lands, make reparations.
Can you become truly British or American? What is it anyway ? America is a white settler colony and the state and its machinations reflect that. Is whiteness the true definition of being American or British? Can you become white? And, if you cannot, do you perform the function of a white colonial settler colony? The function of a former Empire? If you are not white, is obedience the prerequisite to citizenship to white capitalist imperial states?
