By Adam Mahoney
“Why do you have hair like us?” she asked, deeply perplexed. “I’m Black, too,” I replied with all of the self-assurance I could muster in the back of that taxi. “Oh? But one of your parents must be a Mzungu,” she said with such confidence that I instantly felt stripped of my Blackness—the only existence that I’ve ever known.
‘Mzungu’ is a term used by multiple countries in Africa to describe a white person. Nothing that I could’ve said would’ve made her reconsider my Blackness, because my lighter skin shade already told her all she needed to know; I wasn’t the same as her. The three months I spent researching and working with local government officials on waste management practices in southern Uganda changed my life for the better—undoubtedly altering my view on the world and my people.
I spent the next few days after that exchange feeling very confused, and just as angry, not at the woman, but at history—at my colonizers, who stripped me of my identity, my rights to my home, heritage and culture I was owed. Even though my ancestry most likely has no direct lineage to East Africa, I convinced myself that this trip was going to be my prodigal return—the first in my family to go back ‘home’ in 400 years. Yet with every interaction that minimized my identity—from my second day in the country when my host family was certain that I was East Asian, to when a child I walked by on a busy street stopped me to ask if I was Chinese—the more I felt identity-less.
It seemed like the harder I pushed, the larger the distance I felt from the region. But I asked myself: How could I be mad at any of them for not understanding what I was, and how I turned out this way, if America has failed to properly acknowledge the atrocities and optics of its imperialist slave labor system to its own citizens? Did I even have the right to be a visitor in their home?
I knew the answers had to be bigger than my individual experiences. There was a thread somewhere connecting their confusion over my physical presence, to how I ended up invading their space seen as a Mzungu. I continued to dig deeper, to learn, read and experience, and I became more aware of the fact that they all had the right to question my Blackness and to be angry, too.
In a country that receives 1.3 million tourists per year, and has entire cities focused on catering to white tourists, all they knew was that I wasn’t one of them—so I must be white. The British colonization of Uganda created an economy dependent on tourism, while the European colonization of the Americas created my unregistrable skin tone. Although the British colonization of Uganda didn’t lead to an immediate physical transformation of Blackness compared to in America, it led to just as big of a conversion in its heritage, culture and livelihood.
Initially the relationship between African nations and Europe was rooted in the slave trade, which didn’t initially lead to a large European presence living on the continent. It was, ironically, the suppression of the slave trade that led to the eventual conquest of Africa as attempts to replace this trade with new ‘legitimate’ commerce changed the status quo. In 1877, British missionaries first started arriving in Uganda, opening the door for Britain to start an imperial empire in the country, which lasted until 1961. With them they brought an intense anti-Black and anti-queer law code, an increasingly violent military state and an exploitative economic system.
In Uganda, their murderous police state was built out of a military system that ‘guaranteed’ Africans protection if they joined the British in maintaining colonial order across the region. Similarly, in America, policing was a byproduct of a vigilante slave patrol system that worked to uphold imperialistic slave labor—the backbone of the empire.
Uganda’s capitalist economic system was brought to fruition by the British, who used the region as if it was a Black supermarket; taking with them whatever they needed, including creating plantation style cotton and coffee farms that brought England millions throughout its rule. Sound familiar? Uncoincidentally, the Black American struggle and the struggles folx face(d) in Uganda are deeply alike—threaded together by anti-Blackness, colonialism and capitalism. That’s why liberation for Black folx must go beyond the imaginary borders enacted by white settlers in the nation-state we now call home.
My internal struggle with my Blackness while visiting a place I’ve daydreamed as my true home, comes from the same struggle that has led to the persecution of queer folx in Uganda, the lack of access to jobs, food and water in Palestine or the unsafe conditions in Central American countries—colonialism. Black liberation intrinsically means anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism. A world freed of settler-colonialism and global capitalism also means a world separated from the constraints of patriarchy, white supremacy and exploitative relationships between the West and the rest.
To me, Black liberation is synonymous with demilitarizing the murderous police state, abolishing the inhumane prison system and freeing folx from the constraints of our exploitative economic system. Our radical leaders of the past knew this: from W. E. B. Du Bois to Lena Gordon, Malcolm X to the Black Panther Party, and many others whose work often went unnoticed—but was just as vital.
They realized that although a domestic race problem existed, it could not be separated from the profound global crisis of white supremacy which birthed global capitalism. Malcolm said there was no Black liberation unless it “tied in with the overall international struggle.” Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party saw it as an international class struggle, innate to capitalism, “between the massive proletarian working class and the small minority ruling class,” not just a “race struggle.”
In 1942, at a time when the world was at war and Black American folx were risking their bodies for a country that didn’t want them, Black nationalist and activist Lena Gordon told her followers to not lose sight of the bigger picture. As Indians were being exploited and murdered under British colonial rule she said, “When India is free all colonial people and subjects throughout the world will be free… and the complete freedom of India will bring complete freedom to the American Black people, because the same men are holding them in slavery.”
I’m certain that Lena’s beliefs were correct, and although, sadly, we’re still not free and have watched colonialism manifest into global capitalism, further ingraining white supremacy. As we continue on this path towards global freedom, Black folx need to remember the work of our former and current radical leaders that so strongly saw the struggle as anti-colonial. We have allies all over the globe facing the same destructive existences and who deserve our love and allyship.
Reading Suggestions:
“Black Politics and Global Struggles for Racial Justice,” Keisha N. Blain (2015)|
“A Small Place,” Jamaica Kincaid (1988)
“Effects of Colonialism on Uganda,” Kenneth Ivory (2016)
Adam is a journalist from Los Angeles who cares about Black lives, Abolition and Decolonization. He’s reported internationally in Palestine, Uganda and Vietnam, and most recently with the Chicago Reporter.
