RACISME, CAPITALISME : LE LIEN QUE PERSONNE NE VOIT - Seumboy

Second part of a discussion between LIMIT and Seumboy, creator of the Histoire Crépu channel dedicated to popularizing French colonial history.

• Understand the mechanics and contradictions of colonial history to comprehend the contemporary world • Address topics around racial questions, exploitation of the living, and destructive globalization

Seumboy works on antiracism and colonial history, aiming to make this complex history accessible to a wide audience.

Call for donations via Tipeee and PayPal to fund LIMIT's productions and discussions, filmed at the Académie du climat.

Racism is a special form of xenophobia based on the idea of hierarchizing and separating humans into different 'races'.

• The concept of race emerges with the evolution of natural sciences in Europe • Carl von Linné classified living beings and then humans (white European, red American, yellow Asian, black African) by hierarchizing them

Racism legitimizes coloniality and slavery by justifying the use of certain people as exploitable economic production factors.

• The Black Code and police control of Black people in France • The conquest of Indochina based on white supremacy • The construction of 'whiteness' as a unifying identity born within colonial exploitation

Anti-white racism does not exist because it is not structurally organized or supported by a state, unlike historically constructed systemic racism.

• Individual assaults motivated by being white can occur • But these acts of violence are not institutionalized and lack systematic exploitation objectives

In traditional racist assaults, the racialized person is more often convicted and this affects their entire community, whereas assault against a white person has no such collective effect.

In working-class neighborhoods, white people may be more targeted because they embody, in the eyes of racialized people, the sole direct contact with 'whiteness' (police, educators, school).

White working classes, particularly in neighborhoods, serve as a protective 'barrier' between the white elite and racialized people, thus experiencing racial violence that extends far beyond this individual frame.

The book 'Des électeurs ordinaires' by Félicien Fory, which studies the sociology of the RN electorate.

• The white elite exploits its own white proletarian population while remaining protected from racialized people • This anxiety fuels hatred of Muslims, immigrants, and RN voting

Racial violence is also class violence, functioning like the relationship between employers and workers, serving an economic system.

Unlike organized white supremacy, there is no organized Black supremacy aiming to enslave whites or create a 'great replacement'.

The old colonial argument is that if we do not dominate the colonized, they will take revenge and dominate in turn.

• When transitioning from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic (1958), colonies propose a genuine federation as equals • French deputies refuse, fearing becoming minorities facing the colonized, and prefer colonial independence over equality

The book 'Français et africain' on citizenship and decolonization, and historian Bernard Lugan associated with great replacement theory.

The feeling of anti-white racism can arise from sudden confrontation with one's own racialization and unconscious privileges, generating a 'white fragility' reaction.

Seumboy explains perceiving himself as 'straddling' white and Black depending on context: seen as white ('Tbab') in Africa due to his Western lifestyle, seen as Black in France.

Being white already corresponds to a superior social class position; criticism received in Africa relates more to denouncing class dynamics than racism.

• The far right (Trump, Zemmour) uses a victim posture to protect white supremacy • White 'victims' are more easily heard than others, as shown by American support for Afrikaners

Was slavery abolished due to evolving moral values or because industrial revolution machines replaced Black workers?

• Moral values evolved but this argument alone was insufficient • Machines were not yet efficient enough to replace agricultural labor (cotton fields) • The main factor was the growing difficulty maintaining colonial order against slave revolts

Slaves in Saint-Domingue (three times more numerous than masters) revolt, forcing the French Republic to accept their freedom; Haiti becomes the first nation born from a successful slave uprising.

After Napoleon restored slavery, new revolts (Martinique, Guadeloupe) achieve freedom before the official decree signed in Paris even arrives.

• Slavery continues in other forms today, notably in Lebanon with West African workers • Forced labor and indentured servitude persisted in French colonies after the official 1848 abolition

• France: 1848 (final abolition) • United Kingdom: 1834 • United States: 1865 • Brazil: 1888

Belgium did not practice slavery on metropolitan territory, but Leopold II caused approximately 10 million deaths in the Congo under the guise of fighting the slave trade, for rubber production.

Some African kingdoms (such as Dahomey) participated in the slave trade, but there was no project of Black cohesion or supremacy at the time, racial categories being a European construction.

Technology has not eliminated modern slavery forms (human trafficking, sexual exploitation) and even fuels new forms of forced labor.

Extraction of rare minerals needed for cutting-edge technology causes modern slavery in the Congo, with hundreds of thousands of people working in mines without equipment.

As great colonial fortunes (example of Antoine Crozat and French Louisiana) were built on servile exploitation, great tech wealth accumulates today through exploitation of non-white nations.

Fighting racism means fighting an entire global system of domination tied to a constructed racial unit, not just isolated incidents; ecology must be thought decolonially.