Events
Online via Zoom
Organizer:
Arnold-Bergstrasser-Institut (ABI) / Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT)
Onookome Okome: Contemporary Racism and the Rest of us
Recently, the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald John Trump, gave a speech during which he said among other incendiary things, “Why are we allowing these people from shit-hole countries come here?” Although not directly meant for the general public, this utterance, as always, questions Black presence in the US, more specifically recent Haitian migrants looking to make the good life in America, “the land of the free.” Describing people of African descent in this manner is common, uncensored. This is not unique to this President. Indeed, anti-Black sentiments have always been part of the linguistics map of the Americas for over 600 years. Perhaps, what is unique about President Trump’s declaration is the brazenness of the utterance of what has always been the dinner-table banter. Not surprisingly, the descriptor, “shit-hole,” comes with associations that are political and cultural; political because it panders to presumed sense of white superiority, and cultural because it is taken from the playbook of this history of linguistic violence against people of African descent.
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