At the time of the genocide, and later after I took over as president of TransAfrica Forum, I said that if 100 Belgian paratroopers had landed in Kigali (capitol of Rwanda) and killed 1,000 Rwandans, there would have been mass demonstrations across the U.S. Yet, in a situation where a million people were being exterminated, Black America appeared paralyzed.
For too many of us the framework in looking at Africa had been that of a site of struggle for racial justice and national liberation against European colonialism and White minority rule. We reduced many, if not most of the struggles to that framework. And it was actually easy to do that given that European colonialism and White minority-rule had been central to the Africa for most of the 20th century.
Yet the reality of Africa was (and is) never just about European colonialism and White minority rule. Within each country there have been ethnic contradictions, frequently rooted in and/or fueled by colonialism. There have been struggles rooted in class and power, also regularly tied in with the activities of multi-national corporations and countries of the global North. These realities have been the kerosene thrown onto open flames.
We, in Black America, were not prepared for the Rwandan genocide. It did not correspond to what we knew or thought that we knew about Africa. It seemed, to many of us, to be a situation of Black people killing Black people with a viciousness that was difficult to comprehend. And, as chronically happens in our own communities, we decided that silence was the best option.
And so, people died, many of who might have lived if Black America had created an uproar forcing the USA to get out of the way of a United Nations rescue mission. But it simply did not add up for too many of us. The White people were not there; they were not the obvious perpetrators; and it was just a bit easier to turn the page.
(Bill Fletcher Jr. is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. He can be followed on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.)
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