5. The privilege of amnesia 5/5:
I had this written as the privilege of history, but then I thought amnesia was more snarky and petty, and I am in a petty mood, so let’s go.
This specific privilege is key and one of the most important, for it may be the one to give us a way out of system we currently live in. It’s the privilege of amnesia from one’s own history.
Two years ago, I brought my sons to the “musée Grévin”, which is the French equivalent of Madame Tussauds, the wax museum. The “musée Grévin” has a section focused on French history. Once there, I spotted the sculpture of a slave breaking free of his chains. Below the sculpture, was written: « abolition de l’esclavage, la France patrie des droits de l’Homme. », meaning that the sculpture was celebrating the fact France abolished slavery, and they were the country of Human Rights. Huh ! I looked around, and that was it. Yay, we abolished slavery. And that was it. Nothing about the history of slavery, nothing about colonization, which should be part of this narrative, right? Did the abolition occur in a vacuum? There was nothing about why there was slavery in the first place, nothing about why it had to be abolished. And that, my friends, is how global history has been erasing white people’s less than stellar history for decades.
This is a reflection of white people’s ability to refuse to critically examine their past and its overall contribution to the world’s somber story. In history books, in the media, everywhere, we celebrate Western history, western great victories, progresses, advances, discoveries, heroes. It’s not a bad thing.
It’s however problematic because it completely obscures other perspectives from that history, the history white people share with other groups, other cultures.
My children history books completely gloss over the story of slavery and colonization. White people are never painted as the perpetrators so many massacres in the world. I have friends in the UK, who are just this past week, discovering the history of the British empire for example. Imagine that ! A country that has a queen as a head of state, a monarchy for Godsake ! The queen of England currently owns the biggest diamond in the world, which originates from South Africa. They don’t have diamonds in England, so how did she get it? The British monarchy is an institution that has built its power on the back of generations of millions of black and brown people. And we all know about France, its colonies, and the current farce they call the “Francophonie”, right ? I know about this history, because I come from a country that is both part of the Commonwealth and of the “Francophonie”. If you don’t know about that history, well…amnesia.
So overtime, white people have carefully created a narrative, where they are the dominating force, where their culture is above all other cultures and we all live by that ideology.
Why is it problematic ? We have all seen and heard those white people, all over Europe, North America, telling us black and brown people to go back to where we come from. They are shouting through their roofs at immigrants, to go back to their countries, wherever they are, while conveniently forgetting that the reason why they can even get on that roof is because some immigrant broke their back building it.
Sometimes, those people also tell us “why don’t you get over it, that history occurred so long ago!”
Now, if history books had presented the immigrants, the black and brown perspectives of the world events, if white people were taught from the very beginning the multidimensional layers of history, instead of that monochrome picture that is painted in history books and in the media, I truly believe we would have had more empathy and a better understanding of the multiple crisis that are now plaguing white societies, including immigration. Today, we live in multicultural societies, while teaching one-dimensional history. Make that make sense, please !
World events don’t occur in a vacuum, actions have repercussions ! The West has not produced its wealth out of thin air. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations, who died in 2018, once famously coined the sentence: “We are here, because you were there.” Yes, it’s was a while ago. But you where there. And you are still reaping the benefits from the time you were there, and we are still suffering the consequences of it. So…here we are.
Still, I am hopeful ! I am hopeful because I see you, my white friend, waking up…I hope you will wake up completely, and recover from your amnesia. Because all those issues you think you have today because of me, because of black and brown people, only you can resolve them. For us all to prosper and thrive, all you need to do is remember. Education is the key, use it.