Agwu Okali: My Petition to British PM is to End Systemic Racism

The Black History Month celebrations have just ended but the founder and Chairman Society for the Elimination of Racism in All Languages (SERIAL), Agwu Ukiwe Okali, did not let the celebration end without  making his impact. The former UN Assistant Secretary General under  Kofi Anan and Registrar of the United Nations International Criminal  Tribunal for Rwanda spoke with  NDUKA NWOSU on the implications.   Excerpts:  

Agwu Ukiwe Okali wrote a petition to the British Prime Minister duringthe celebration of the Black History Month, last October, while alerting UK Academics and some top influencers of the society, urging them to join him in the fight against systemic racism.

The black history month, which started as Negro History Week in 1926 is an event that celebrates black people in the Diaspora especially the offspring of slave trade, and black people whose names resonate with the history of black struggles. It has also gone the extra mile of persuading the people of the world to do a rethink regarding attitudinal trends towards black people in Diaspora. In the US where it is known as the African American History Month, the US Presidents use the opportunity to remind Americans the need for racial equality and justice even if the wheel is grinding slowly but surely.

President Joe Biden has a black American woman Kamala Harris as his vice while nominating a black woman to the US Supreme Court, with many black men, women, and people of other colours gaining huge presence in his administration. During the last African American History Month, he made allusions to how much his administration values the pride and progress of blacks as US citizens, a welcome relief from the monstrous experience they had under former President Donald Trump.

Yet we know blacks in the Diaspora suffer unbelievable discrimination for being black. Our own 39-year-old Alika Ogorchukwu, was given the George Floyd treatment in July this year; he was beaten to death in Civitanova Marche Italy, by a man who claimed he touched him. The list is endless.

Said Biden: “Judge Jackson (his Supreme Court nominee) is part of an incredible group of Black women who I have nominated to the federal bench. We have nominated more Black women to the federal bench than any administration in the history of the United States of America. I am more optimistic about our chances to bring equity to this country than we ever have before now.”

While acknowledging these great strides recorded by history and good people, Okali believes there is need to fast forward the progress being made. Okali, who was a former UN Assistant Secretary General under Kofi Anan and the Registrar of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, had argued that there should be an intellectual conversation on racism. His take: “Beyond Black History Month, beyond Black Lives Matter and Taking the Knee, beyond government commissions and action plans against systemic racism, it is important to erase the foundation of racism. Language, certain aspects of the English Language in particular, need to be revisited.”

Specific aspects of the English Language that promote racism, need to be expunged, and be replaced with something that dignifies the black race. They should be re-written as a step in the right direction. In drawing his allusions, the former Harvard and London School of Economics scholar remembers the British have been at the forefront for human rights and racial equality.

Okali is impressed with this and reminds the Prime Minister that in recent times the United Kingdom through the football association sanctioned the highly regarded captain of Chelsea and England John Terry, following his racist remarks on a fellow player, the same way Luis Suarez was sanctioned when he made his own racist remarks on another player.

Britain has set a strong example for the US and other countries in this direction.

Okali said: “First, everyone would agree that this whole campaign for racial  justice and racial equality have been going on for a very long time indeed and, even more worryingly, that the end of the struggle does not seem anywhere in sight! As even President Joe Biden himself acknowledged upon his election, despite the undeniable progress that has been made in this area, there remains an underlying systemic racism in society that refuses to go away and so continues to manifest itself in various ways on the ground: consider the George Floyd and George Floyd-type incidents that persist, not to mention the near-legitimization and “mainstreaming” of “white supremacy” ideologies and movements, showcased in the January 6th Capitol insurrection in the US.

Where then does the problem lie? He says it has to do with the mindset of those who villify the black man for being who he is. “Racism is, in reality, a mindset issue, the outward expression of a racial bias mindset.

He stresses, “racist behavior becomes largely accidental or coincidental, as when someone unwittingly uses a racially derogatory word. Consequently, to successfully address the racism problem, one must focus, not on clamping down on acts of manifestation of the mindset, but on eradicating the racial bias mindset itself.”

 Quite obviously, he insists, unless the mindset goes, its manifestations will only keep popping up continually, as the “police brutality” cases in the US have shown, despite adoption by the authorities of many post-George Floyd preventative measures.

To successfully eradicate the racial bias mindset, Okali persuades his audience to first identify those factors that create and/or sustain that mindset. Regrettably, Okali notes, looming large among such factors is, in fact, an aspect of the English Language and the thought processes deriving from it: “One refers here to the aspect of the language, also present, incidentally, in other major European languages that portray what may be described as a systemic denigration of ‘blackness,’ and corresponding glorification of whiteness, that is exemplified in such expressions as black list, black sheep, black spot, painting someone black, etc., and white knight, white magic, white lie, whiten something, such as a reputation, etc.”

In effect, anything negative is associated with the word black while the positive elements of creation are white and benevolent in content. That means we have, according to his research, which has attracted critical acclaim, with an interesting book: Of Black Servitude without Slavery, The Unspoken Politics of The English Language, among scholars of anthropology, sociology, psychology, language, and the humanities.

He summarises this as a veritable “blackness of bad/whiteness of good, badness of black/goodness of white narrative,” a narrative which, imbibed over a period, often from earliest childhood, and sustained throughout life in everyday language, must surely create “a mindset conditioned, whether consciously or not, to shun or react negatively to ‘black’ things, while embracing or favouring things categorised as ‘white.’

Okali continues: “Under this scenario, and in a process aided by the phenomenon of ‘word association’ well-known to psychoanalysis, a black person easily becomes subsumed, even if subconsciously, into the general category of ‘black,’ and, therefore, ‘bad,’ things. This, in turn, triggers the preprogrammed negative reaction in the other person, regardless of intentions, prompting that person’s conscious mind, if aware and so inclined, to counter by separating the black person from the other ‘bad,’ ‘black’ things.

“It may even be that the psychological inability to make this separation accounts for much existing racist disposition. Maybe, and incidentally too, this fear of subsumption is the reason even mainline African American organisations, such as the NAACP, decidedly themselves shun the ‘Black label!’

One further advantage enjoyed by the white person in this scenario, says Okali, can be logically surmised by the same process of ‘word association’ operating with respect to black people, white people would also get subsumed, subconsciously, or otherwise, but this time into the category of “good” things, which, in turn, implicitly ‘entitles’ them to what may be called ‘sympathetic treatment.’

“In fact, this reality is actually part of the psychological underpinning to the long-observed phenomenon of decidedly unequal treatment of black and white persons in law enforcement, not just by the police and prison authorities, but often even by judges.”

According to Okali, what is going on here, is the phenomenon American sociologists identify as ‘labeling, or stigmatisation.’

Incidentally, in other major European languages – that portray what may be described as a systemic denigration of ‘blackness’ and corresponding glorification of ‘whiteness,’ that is exemplified in such expressions as black list, black sheep, black spot, painting someone black, etc., and white knight, white magic, white lie, whiten something, such as a reputation, etc. Emerging from this, then, is a veritable ‘blackness of bad/whiteness of good, badness of black/goodness of white narrative,’ a narrative conditioned, whether consciously or not, to shun or react negatively to ‘black’ things, while embracing or favouring things categorized as “ ‘white.’ By associating ‘black’ in the mind with ‘bad’ things, and ‘white’ with ‘good,’ this ‘conditioning’ process becomes profoundly consequential to racial attitudes and race relations. Under this scenario, and in a process aided by the phenomenon of “word association” well-known to psychoanalysis, a black person easily becomes subsumed, even if subconsciously, into the general category of ‘black,’ and, therefore, ‘bad,’ things.

It may even be that the psychological inability to make this separation accounts for much existing racist disposition. May be, this fear of subsumption is why even mainline African American organizations, such as the NAACP, decidedly themselves shun the “Black” label!

One further advantage enjoyed by the white person in this scenario can be logically surmised: by the same process of ‘word association’ operating with respect to black people, white people would also get subsumed, subconsciously, or otherwise, but this time into the category of ‘good’ things, which, in turn, implicitly ‘entitles’ them to what may be called ‘sympathetic’ treatment.

In fact, this reality is part of the psychological underpinning to the long-observed phenomenon of decidedly unequal treatment of black and white persons in law enforcement, not just by the police and prison authorities, but often even by judges.

Solutions Having taken us round on a voyage that explores the good and bad of blackness, and of white knights who live in an elusive world of being God’s chosen ones, Okali asks: “What then is to be done and what actually is the solution to this quandary?”

 He provides the answer: “A simple and effective solution to the problem under this theory, is to find a way to delink race-designating terms like ‘black’ and ‘white’ from any value-conferring functions in the language, specifically eliminating the current figurative use of the terms ‘black’ and ‘white’ as qualitative assessment adjectives, as in the expressions cited above. “One possibility could be to simply replace those two terms with other ‘colour’ words that have no racial connotations, as, for example, ‘red’ list for “black” list, or ‘grey’ knight for ‘white’ knight, etc.

“A better, and surely sounder, option, however, would be to replace the  two terms instead with two newly created words that have neither  history nor ‘baggage,’ thus giving us, for example, ‘X list’ and ‘Y  knight’ for ‘blacklist’ and ‘white knight,’ respectively, where X and  Y represent the newly created substitute-words.

“Of course, identifying and agreeing on such new terms is a serious

challenge. With English not having one single authority empowered to

pronounce on its usage.”

With such delinking achieved and, consequently, no everyday usage

reinforcement forthcoming, Okali stresses, the two terms should in

time become value-neutral and, therefore, mindset irrelevant, causing

the ‘black’ is bad, ‘white’ is good’ narrative and mindset to

eventually be erased. ‘

Royal Commission:

Okali says given the complexity and sensitivity of undertaking such a

significant revamp of the language, particularly in a democratic

society, and yet faced with the imperative need to do so, “one can

well -envisage a broad-based Royal Commission being tasked in this

case with, first, proposing the new terminology to replace ‘black’ and

“white”, as discussed above, and then making recommendations on how

best to achieve the switch – ideally in consultation with relevant

stakeholders from other English-speaking countries.”

“In the meantime,” he proposes, “those of us who believe in the merit

of this idea should rally round to campaign vigorously for it in all

available platforms.”

His advice to anti-racism movements: “With little or no focus by them

on underlying causes, their impact is bound, of necessity, to be of

limited and unenduring nature of the problem.”

His conclusion

He observes there are two more pertinent points to make. Firstly,

implementing the ideas outlined above to invalidate the “blackness of

bad/whiteness of good” narrative-cum-mindset is a long-term project

with no immediate impact.

Secondly, while one may not know if eliminating this narrative and its

related mindset will be sufficient to end the problem of systemic

racism in society, one is certain, on the other hand, that not doing

so will surely guarantee that the problem never goes away.

Okali concludes: ‘It is only fair to point out, as already noted, that this problem is

by no means a problem only of the English language but is also a

feature of other major European languages. For example, a well-known

French adage speaks volumes: ‘La diable n’est pas aussi noir qu’ on le

dit,’ translating as: ‘The devil is not as black as he is made out to

be!’ The focus on English, however, is because of its indisputable

dominance and growing profile as the closest thing to a global

language, as such, it has the capacity both to do the most damage, spreadingthe narrative and mindset.”