Let me emphasise that the situation is not of our making. To begin with, the white world defines who is white and who is black. In the USA, if one is not white, then one is black; in Britain, if one is not white then one is coloured; in South Africa, one can be white, coloured or black depending upon how white people classify you. There was a South African boxer who was white all his life, until the other whites decided that he was really coloured. Even the fact of whether you are black or not is to be decided by white people – by white power. If a Jamaican black man tried to get a room from a landlady in London who said, ‘No coloureds’, it would not impress her if he said he was West Indian, quite apart from the fact that she would already have closed the door in his black face. When a Pakistani goes to the Midlands, he is as coloured as a Nigerian. The Indonesian is the same as a Surinamer in Holland; the Chinese and New Guineans have as little chance of becoming residents and citizens in Australia as do you and I. The definition which is most widely used the world over is that once you are not obviously white, then you are black and are excluded from power – power is kept pure milky white. The black people of whom I speak, therefore, are non-whites – the hundreds of millions of people whose homelands are in Asia and Africa, with another few millions in the Americas. A further subdivision can be made with reference to all people of African descent, whose position is clearly more acute than that of most nonwhite groups. It must be noted that once a person is said to be black by the white world, then that is usually the most important thing about him; fat or thin, intelligent or stupid, criminal or sportsman – these things pale into insignificance.

The Groundings With My Brothers

Reader, Issue 6 of 197X is here! In Sjǫfn we have one of the more introspective comics of the series. What is family, what is the nature of connection, what humans owe to each other? Is there a space for even heroic monarchy in a better world? What retribution and reparative justice look like in the postcolonial? Why is Henry Kissinger still allowed to breathe?


Part I starts in what seems to be a recurring framing device: a conference gathering the leaders of America. While Soberana goes to represent Chile officially, the rest of the team is to investigate the odd small nation of Sankt Bartolomeus on the island of Ouanalao and thwart imperial design for the succession crisis the island nation's super-powered royal family is going through. While on the boat there, the party faces off against Colonel Carter Wax - the war criminal responsible for the atrocities during the Moon Wars - and the one political assassination Jonh Doe failed.

Get your copy of that issue here!


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