Europe is mutating. Its liberal democracy, the supposed end state of its history, cracks open under the weight of its hypocrisy. Sanctioning the Russian invader but protecting the Israeli genocider. Welcoming the Ukrainian refugee with open arms but rejecting its African or west-Asian counterparts. Criticizing the Chinese state surveillance but sophisticating its own. The list is long and the contradictions obvious to us all. Only time will tell what this new Europe will be called and what its specific features will be. The mutation, however, already gives us one certainty : Colonialist value hierarchies and fascist reflexes are once again in the spotlight, in their most uninhibited forms. The peninsula claims its ‘ancestral’ white identity again, and seeks to protect its Eurowhite population from potential invaders or enemies from within, agents of barbarisation and replacement.
As this mutation unfolds, we, Europe’s non-white citizens of African descent, have become a nuisance, a triggering disturbance. Because we are the heritage of the very European history of modern imperialism and colonialism, and remind this Eurowhite identity that it is nothing but a fantasy invented by a people unable to face a novelty it cannot control.
How should we, as a de facto community, position ourselves in this new reality? Knowing that the previous model of multiculturalism, relying on the values of liberal democracy and policies of toleration and nondiscrimination is losing credibility by the day, any attempt to preserve traces of what used to be are useless gestures. And even if it were possible, we’d be defending a paradigm that, true to its hypocrisy, didn’t manage to protect us from insults, discriminations, and brutalities. In other words : we ought to mutate towards something new. But what novelty should this new path towards a dignified and emancipated life for non-white bodies in Europe be ?
This article attempts to provide some suggesting answers to this enormous interrogation that will ultimately take a panoply of shades, nuances and contradictions. Hence, far from being exhaustive, it hopes to be of resonance for some and spark constructive criticism for others.
We are not from here.
Being offered outright rejection or a submission masqueraded as an empty sense of belonging. If these are truly the only options – and history supports the hypothesis – it’s more than legitimate to outright reject it: Okay, we’re not European. Sure, we may have been here for generations, but we have to admit that the rooting didn’t really bear its fruits. We can’t be bothered to keep enduring the invisible insults and contempt, whilst shrinking ourselves to please a rigid system that doesn’t even bother any reciprocation. We’re done disfiguring parts of ourselves to participate in a rigged game
We are eternally other here, because our home is somewhere else. Our home is that part of us that doesn’t come from the peninsula. It comes from one of the 54 countries of the continent that we brought with us to warm our homes and lift our spirits. Yes ! We rediscover ourselves as part of the diaspora. This is how we can make sense of all of this. Not in the conventional sense of the term, that restricts its usage to describe the Jewish, Palestinian or African-American experience. Diaspora in its larger and more malleable definition: communities who kept a connection to their homeland, which they had to leave in the universal quest for peace, security and opportunity. We are thus remembered by the fact that our faith in inextricably linked to it ; that our path to a dignified life
anywhere only goes through the land of origin. The home-continent has become our new centre, and we are a part of its sixth dispersed region.
For some of us, the revival of modern Europe’s colonial roots has been the sign that it is time to go back home. After all, it is our shared destiny. The rise of organisations that facilitate such repatriation, and the open arms of our countries of origin only confirm this feeling that it is time to take the step into the old known.
But while we’re still here, we do not complain about the Eurowhite’s rejection because we do not expect anything else. There is no dialogue, only resistance against the forces of domination. We simply try to thrive the best we can in the rigged game we’re asked to play. Make your money, pay your taxes, and pray for the less documented and fortunate. Take whatever can be taken because, like or not, this is where the extracted riches of the colonial system are hoarded. Most will do the jobs that the Eurowhite refuses to do. Some will climb the ladder and fill the implicit quotas. When we’re outside, we’ll still have to contain ourselves, switch to their codes. But we know that the warmth of kinship and community, with all its human flaws and pains, waits on us in that little space that we were able to make ours. The sanctuaries that allow us to preserve our authenticity. Its walls are thick and rigid, which can sometimes cause problems for future generations. It’s the price to pay for those who resist against the forces of lactification and assimilation into the self-proclaimed civilised world.
But also not from there
Yet some sanctuaries lost the language and forgot the lullabies with time. Others fossilised under the pressure of the peninsula’s hegemon and its own thick walls. For the children born in these drained and fractured sanctuaries, the encounter with the land of origin feels as familiar as foreign. Time carved a rift, growing silently and thinning our bond. Active efforts can combat the symptoms, but the transmission that makes us an unalterable part of a people is beyond our reach. We must then face the painful reality: in our land of origin we are also no longer at home. It seems that we are instead visiting our more or less distant relatives. To say otherwise would be to impose our fantasy on a reality that doesn’t suit us, and reduce our african heritage to a punching ball for our existential dread. We would be using the tools and follow the rhythm of the Eurowhite ; mimic the colonizer in our attempts to escape its spiritual claws. Same alienation, different colours. We are not from the diaspora. There is no promised land waiting for us or ancestral trunk to preserve. Nor can we confidently claim that we are from the peninsula without choking in its white chauvinism.
Creolisation and Creoleness
But we are not nothing. Our reference point remains the warmth of our respective sanctuaries. Porous, fragmented and slowly detached from the motherland, all we can do is preserve its warmth as best as we can. And we leave space for others to create their own, be it the children of broken sanctuaries or the white bodies that reject the imposture of Eurowhiteness. A new shared experience is thus formed out of interactions between former diaspora communities, and made out of clever borrowing and adaptation to the hazards of daily life on the peninsula. What was brought from the mother continent still exists, but in new and composite forms. We have become the unpredictable mutation birthed in the heart of the old empire. Where a radically new identity, free from the need to dominate the Other, can emerge
In this regard, our situation seems to follow in the footsteps of the Antilles, where centuries ago the Creole identity took form out of a similar kind of mutual influencing and transplantations between uprooted people. Of course, we did not experience the violent breach with ancestry that slavery caused, nor the particularly brutal and complete cultural genocide that came with it. But, we are increasingly sharing this disconnect from the land of ancestry and the necessity to open up to others to survive Day by day, a European Creoleness, unique to our conditions, is taking form. Along with a Creole conception of the world, different from the Eurowhite or the Diaspora. Where identity is seen as open, ever-changing and composite rather than closed, fixed and endowed by an inalienable essence. Where the world is seen as a landscape to discover instead of a map to colonize. Where we create with that which already exists, and let go of what was or what should be. Where the human is seen as a curious wanderer that exists through its relations with others, and is encouraged to embrace themselves in their totality.
Within this paradigm, our legitimate presence on the peninsula is a non-issue. Everything that shaped us has its place here. We are European, because we live on the peninsula. Our place was promised from the moment this colonial « relation » with the African continent started. We can only look at the Eurowhite the same way we look at our sibling that doesn’t want to do its chores : slightly irritated and impatient for the moment that they accept their reality and lift up their bootstraps. In this case, to abandon their one-sided dreams, right the wrongs they’re benefiting from and reconnect with the wandering Europe that still exists, suppressed by whiteness.
Although there is no original land waiting for our return, our ancestors have not disappeared. They are still there. They look from far away, wishing us the peace and belonging of a sanctuary that suits and welcomes us. And we thank them for their love and sacrifice that allowed us to carve our own way.
No Creoleness with the Eurowhite
Creolisation is on the way, unfolding a reality that allows for composite and indefinite beings to exist. But this doesn’t protect us from the terror of colonizer’s offspring, as evidenced by Chlordecone and the persistent anti-blackness that poisons the Antilles. Their beké is our Eurowhite, hovering over us and infiltrating, however subtly, in the inadvertent sanctuaries. The same porosity that allows for a possible emancipation on the peninsula makes us permeable to the colonizer’s trojan horse, that sells grandiose and reassuring promises infected by racism and fascism premises. The lines between emancipation and lactification are ever so blurry, and the risk of becoming our uncle Tom ever so big.
Our sanctuaries thus ought to be protected from this dominant and shapeshifting adversary. We must do our best gatekeep against the forces that are incompatible with creoleness but exist inside all of us who have been in touch with the peninsula. So we remain curious and open, but we avoid the centre of this hypocritical civilisation that has nothing to offer to us. For now, our wanderings must be confined to the periphery, that we share with the surviving diasporas, those who willingly left Eurowhiteness and one day our undocumented brothers and sisters. Here, all sanctuaries, unchanged or composite, can support each other to prevent lactification or fossilisation. Here, further poisoning by the civilisation of hypocrisy that rules over the peninsula can be minimised. Here, we can remain barbaric: empathic, communal, and away from fantasies of flashy grandeur. This is where the new Europe will rise.
Towards the mutation of the peninsula, creole and barbaric.