Clarifying to Obscure

One would think it was as clear as… but I just read a person on twitter explaining that the infamous Central Park woman who rang the police falsely claiming that she is being threatened by an African-American person was ‘not racist’. To understand what she did, this person wrote, we need to go into 'the complex history' of the dynamic between dog owners and bird watchers in Central Park.

Most of us who work on racism and colonialism know the implication of the trope of ‘complexity’ when it is deployed in this way and on such occasions. We know that those who appeal to complexity in similar contexts are hardly ever driven by some kind of ‘empiricist desire’. Even when the complexity referred to is indeed there to see. For instance, It is pretty certain that there is a complex history and dynamic between dog owners and bird watchers in Central Park. 

The problem then is not the truth or falsity of the complexity but the fact that the complexity is used to conceal rather than to further expose what is increasingly salient. That is why those who deploy complexity in this way never say: it is racism *and* it is more complex than this. Instead complexity has to always do a work of negation. You say 'all non-indigenous Australians are the inheritors and beneficiaries of the theft of Indigenous land' and someone is bound to tell you that this is untrue, extremist and simplistic and 'reality is far more complex than this'. You say the Zionist movement colonised Palestine and there will always be someone shaking their head at how naive and unsubtle you are for 'things are far more complex than that'. 

What we are dealing with here then are 'white strategies of complexification' that take the form of a litany of 'white obscurantist clarifications,' for the strategy is indeed one of ‘clarifying’ for the purpose of obscuring.

To those who will be waiting: US, Australia, Palestine again and again

(The name of a recently deceased Indigenous Australian is mentioned below)

Ahmaud Arbery
He ain’t going home

Veronica Marie Nelson Walker
will not be back to country where she belongs

Hamdi Naasan
Mech raje’ ’a beyto l yom (he’s not going back to his house today)

Trayvon Martin
He ain’t going home

Kumanjayi Walker
will not be back to country where he belongs

Mohammed Abu Khdeir
Mech raje’ ’a beyto l yom

Tamir Rice
He ain’t going home

Trisjack Simpson and Christopher Drage 

will not be back to country where they belong

Iman al-Hams
Mech raje’a ’a beyta l yom

Terence Crutcher
He ain’t going home

Tanya Daywill not be back to country where she belongs

Khalil el-Mughrabi
Mech raje’ ’a beyto l yom

Walter Scott
He ain’t going home

Thomas Hickeywill not be back to country where he belongs

Faris Odeh
Mech raje’ ’a beyto l yom

W meen raje’ ’a beyto l yom?
(but guess with me: who is going back home tonight?)