Archive for the ‘CLR James’ Category
‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by CLR James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938.
This is a remarkable CLR James essay from 1938, where the writer explains that a proposal to deport Jews from Nazi Germany to Africa is a form of racist European colonialism :
The transference of Jews from Germany to Africa means the extension of the Palestine policy to Africa, the strengthening of European imperialism in Africa, with the additional crime that the emigrant Jews will be forced to occupy the position in Africa in regard to the Africans that the Nazis occupy in regard to the Jews in Germany. That is how the ordinary African will see it. He could not help seeing it otherwise.
Yes, one of the ideas floated by the Roosevelt administration when it was turning away Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution was to send them to Ethiopia or Uganda. ‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by C.L.R. James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938. New “Panacea” Put Forward by World Imperialists […]
‘An African “Homeland” for the Jewish Refugees?’ by C.L.R. James from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 51. November 26, 1938.
Among Africans, as all over the world, there is widespread sympathy for the Jews and detestation of this latest brutality of the Nazis. Africans, more than most other social groups, can understand what it is that the Jews are being subjected to. They are ready to take common action against the imperialists, Fascists and “democrats” who have for generations subjected them to similar persecution in their own country. But the land situation in South and East Africa makes inevitable a wide-spread resentment among Africans at any proposal to send Jews there.
Wherever whites have been able to live in large numbers in Africa, there exists an economic, political and social situation of the most acute tension. The accepted policy is to take the best land for the whites and to segregate the Africans in areas too small for them. This is one of the means by which black labor is assured. Unable to earn a living and money for the Government tax in the restricted areas assigned to him, the African must go to the settler and seek employment at whatever terms the settler offers.
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 