I have never thought the distinction we make betwn colonialism & enslavement is particularly useful esp. when thinking about Africa. Colonialism necessary entails enslavement. Whiteness likes to change terminology to disguise its continuing systems & give the illusion of progress

I wonder wether a more useful distinction is private enslavement vs statutory enslavement. In the case of slavery in the new worlds, the enslaved were marked as individual properties & good belonging to identifiable owners who could therefore be compensated in case of loss...

In the case of statutory enslavement, aka colonialism, there was no individual owners but the state as a whole. But unlike private enslavement, entitlement to free & coerced labour and right of life & death was not on particular named individuals purchased but whole nations.

And here too the states as owner could be compensated in case of loss. Indeed many ‘former’ enslaved/colonised states and nations are still paying that debt for being ‘free’. Ask France.

I’m quite interested in the psychic strategies whiteness employs to distance itself from its brutal violence. One such strategy is displacement.

Displacement is simply shifting or moving objects. It’s redirecting something usually someting we find intolerable to look at somewhere or somebody else.

And I think colonialism is such a good example of displaced aggressive & muderous impulses, it has allowed States like France & England to maintain the illusion they were/are not as brutal as the US, for example.

Bc they, as States & as people commissioned others to act out the violence on their behalf. This is very very, important and is a continuing feature of whiteness.

Imagine commissioning violence, rape, murder & mutulation of entire groups in far, far away lands, then believing you have any modicum of moral authority because you have not personally been splashed in the blood you asked to spill.

This is whiteness to a T. And that process of displacement of violence & aggression not only continues to allow the illusion of moral superiority but also dissociation from commissioned colonial violence. Makes it easier to believe ‘nothing to do with us’. ‘We’re not as bad’.

Of course there are important additional features and differences but the point I want to leave you with again is colonialism entails enslavement and in fact, enslavement also necessarily entails colonisation*. Not only of the enslaved minds...

Too often also of the lands the enslaved must ‘work’ on. And the uncritical distinctions we maintain, serves whiteness. Fin.