The
Fourth World: In the Belly of the Beast
By Amin Sharif The term “Third World” is a common
euphuism for the people and governments of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. The terms origin derives from an historical
analysis of the world’s social, economic, and political
development and from the Introduction of Frantz Fanon’s
masterpiece, The
Wretched of the Earth by Jean-Paul Sartre. The First
World according to this analysis is composed of the countries of
“Old World” Europe—the capitalist West. The Second World
was the Soviet Union and its satellites—a non-capitalist or
socialistic East. The Third World was made up of the countries
of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It was in the Third World
that anti-colonial and anti-imperialist national liberation
struggles were waged against the First World Powers of Europe
during the 1950s and ‘60s.
When, the Soviet Bloc began to crumble, many
saw the same mechanism of national liberation at work in Poland
and Czechoslovakia that had been before evidenced in the
struggle of Third World countries such as Algeria to extricate
itself from France or Ghana’s breaking away from the British.
The “theory of convergence” had predicted decades ago that
the capitalism and socialism would begin to resemble one another
in the political and economic sphere. But many Leftists refused
to accept the premise of social imperialism and were sent
spiraling off course when the Soviet Bloc disintegrated. As a
result of the dismantling of the Soviet Republics, it may be
inaccurate to even speak of a viable socialistic Second World
today.
Today, the term “Third World” is as passé
as the political vernacular that once brought it into existence.
Regionalism emerging from economic cooperation has rapidly led
to fragmentation in the solidarity once professed by leaders of
the Third World national liberation struggles. Now, we speak not
of the Third World as a whole but of fragmented Free Trade
Zones, Pacific Rim alliances, and the like. There is no Mao, no
Nkrumah speaking of the exploited Asian peasant or African.
Castro, alone, continues to hold up the banner of international
Third World solidarity. And, Castro is the last of the old style Third World
revolutionaries who holds power.
Some on the Left may look upon the end of the
era of national liberation struggles with nostalgia. But it is
high time that progressive thinkers moved beyond the dead
rhetoric of those days. This statement in no way devalues the
accomplishments of the peoples and leaders who waged the
anti-colonial struggle within the Third World. It acknowledges
that most, if not all, of that work has been accomplished.
What is called for is a new analysis on the
Left that will allow us to determine how best to advance the
struggle for peace and justice in the world. Fortunately, enough
time has now passed to make the advancement of a new analysis
possible. The current events in Paris and New Orleans have given
rise to an appropriate occasion to begin the discussion.
As this article is being written, Paris has
experienced nearly twelve days of riots by an economic and
cultural underclass of African and Arab youth. These youth are
the sons and daughters of immigrants who have been in Europe for
two, perhaps, three generations and have found it an
inhospitable home. Europe is their home for it is highly
unlikely that any of these Black and Arab children will ever
return to their mother countries—unless of course they are
expelled by their host countries. Like the African-American of
the United States, most are permanently exiled in Europe for
better or worse.
Today, we find that it is Paris burning. But
the working class cities of England and Germany have also had
problems with immigrant populations. The key question at the
center of this social upheaval is can non-European populations
“integrate” into Western European countries? Is it at all
possible to accomplish this? The answer to this question is
central not only to the Arab and African youth of France. It is
also central to the entire European Union. For, it is estimated
that the integrated economy of Europe will require millions of
cheap non-European labor in order to maintain itself.
The United States has for years wrestled with
how to integrate African-Americans—non whites—into a greater
white American culture. There can be little doubt that it has
failed to accomplish its task. The condition of the Black
working class and Black poor were revealed in graphic detail
when Katrina hit New Orleans. The American Constitution means
nothing if you are Black and can not purchase a bottle of water
when you need it. It is my suspicion that the Black and Arab
youth of Paris have found that all the rhetoric about
Brotherhood espoused by French revolutionaries also means
nothing when set against the virulent racism and religious
bigotry of the day.
The Black and Arab youth of Paris are part of
a new phenomenon that has not been given proper analysis by the
Left—the introduction of non-Western peoples into the very
heart of the post-modern West. Although these persons are Third
World in origin, they constitute an entirely new species of
mankind within the European countries they reside. They
constitute a Fourth World—the second and third generation of
Africans and Arabs who know well what Western democracy and
modernity is and is not. They
are not wholly of their Mother Country nor are they full
citizens of the post-modern West.
Their struggle is not anti-colonial or
anti-imperialistic. It is far more fundamental than that. It is
a struggle to maintain cultural and economic equilibrium within
a society that devalues their very culture and yet hold dear
their cheap labor. Their struggle, and that of all Fourth World
peoples, is to obtain full citizenship while maintaining their
cultural and racial identity within the West.
The question for the Arab and the African in
Europe, as it has been for Blacks in America, is whether their
integration into the West means abandoning their identity. Can I
live in Europe as a full citizen and still be Asian, Arab, or
African, they ask?
There, is of course, a glaring reason why the
Left has not turned an eye on the plight of the Fourth World.
First, the suffering still endured in the Third World
characterized by famine and disease is much easier to mobilize
against. The bloated belly of a Somalian child will always evoke
more sympathy than the Arab who takes away your trash.
Restoration of a village a thousand miles away in Sri Lanka is
much easier to cope with than extending a good job and a living
wage to a black-skinned Nigerian. Yes, it is always easier to
recognize the devil at work in our neighbor’s house than our
own.
The source of the oppression of Fourth World
peoples is, for the most part, plain and simple racism. It is a
racism that screams in the most sophisticated languages of
Europe or the drawl of an Alabama bigot, “You are not worthy
to be among us. Your touch contaminates all that is pure in our
world.” This racism also insists, “Some of you can become
worthy if you will dress, speak, and think like us.”
But what is silent on the tongue of racism is
that whatever concessions are made by the American nigger or the
swarthy Arab or the black-skinned African, the great
majority—nigger, Arab or African—will never be allowed to
integrate fully into American or European—dare I say—white
society. The contamination rate is too high a price to pay for
every Asian, Arab, or African to become a full citizen of the
post-modern West.
The Left of Europe and America who are drawn
from white society have never been able to cope with racism.
Racism is a cancer drawn from their existence. The bourgeois
principles of American and European democracies were built on
the back of colonialism. An
inverse relationship exists between the white European and
American and their non-white counterparts. The constitutions
that promise so much for them are the very barriers that deny
dignity to other men.
But for whites to give up all that is
bourgeois is to give themselves up to an existence without
references. Whiteness, an entirely article construct, exists in
opposition to Blackness. If the European and American cease to
be white then what will he become? The greatest test of the
coming century will be whether the whites of America and Europe
can meet the challenge of their own racism and transform that
racism into a front for tolerance. Understand one thing clearly,
if they fail to confront their own bigotry, it will not be the
Kasbah of Algeria or the Ho Chi Min Trail set ablaze this time,
it will be their own house.
What is more pertinent to this discussion in
not simply that there is a Fourth World that exists within the
belly of the beast—America and Europe. The question is how the
Fourth World transforms its rage into meaningful political
action and ultimately into liberation. In America, this has been
a question that has been at the center of Black progressive and
radical activism since the days of Jim Crow. How do we become
free? What does freedom mean?
The method and the means have always been in
dispute among Black Americans. One of the reasons for this
diilemma in America has been the political bias of the political
players in the African-American dispute. Some were true
integrationists. Some were communists. Some were cultural or
revolutionary nationalists. And what they had in common was that
none were ever able to think out of their ideological boxes.
Political and ideological purity trumped political reality on
too many occasions.
Rather than consider the situation in America
as unique, the Marxists defined the African-American struggle as
just another part of struggle of the worker against capitalism.
The Pan-Africanist advocated that the African-American struggle
was solely an extension of the anti-colonial struggle of the
Third World. The black nationalists saw the plight of an
internal colony in search of self-determination. Time has proven
the efficacy of these ideologies to be wholly or partly
erroneous.
Most important thing here is that these
ideologies masked the true condition of the African-American. It
has been the pursuit of these ideologies that has led to the
political stagnation of our people in the face of unprecedented
exploitation and oppression. Why?
The answer is simple. The movement that
brought us so much progress was the Civil Rights Movement. It
was middle class in leadership and agenda but poor and working
class in body. It was almost entirely successful in achieving
the middle-class dream of opening the doors of American society
for those equipped to go through them. But, for the working
class and Black poor, the Civil Rights Revolution was a dismal
failure. What the Civil Rights Movement failed to do was to
extend the social and economic benefits of the middle class to
the Black working and poor classes.
Today, we have the curious phenomenon within
our community of a flourishing Black middle class, an
impoverished working class, and almost entirely powerless
underclass. But, if we are to move forward, we can not attempt
to build a new Civil Rights Movement—though we may find some
of the Civil Rights Movement tactics useful. What we need is to
build something new—a Fourth World Revolution. The Fourth
World in America came into existence the minute the second
generation of slaves realized that there would be no returning
to Africa. And since, the Fourth World emerged in America
earliest; it must be Fourth World African-Americans who must
take the lead in developing the tactics and strategy that will
end their oppression in both Europe and United States.
The first thing that a Fourth World people
must understand is the role of its middle class. The middle
class has little or no capacity to lead the majority of its
Fourth World brothers and sisters in the struggle for economic,
cultural, or political progress. It will be the Fourth World
middle class who will be the first to compromise, to integrate,
and assimilate. They will rally the working masses to a false
flag of racial and class solidarity and leave them standing
beneath that banner when their goals are accomplished.
Thus, the Fourth World is not only in
contradiction with the power structure of the country in which
it resides but with its own middle class. Just as at the time of
the Civil Rights Movement, the poor and Black working masses
stood with the middle class to end segregation. Today, the test
will be whether the middle classes will stand with its own
working class and poor to end their oppression. The Fourth World
would like to stand with its brothers in every class. But it has
no fear of standing alone and making its own way in the world.
Thus, acting alone or in concert with other forces, Fourth World
people must seek and direct their own liberation.
The second thing the Fourth World must have
is its own fighting organization that will carry out its agenda.
We want nothing less than the restructuring of the entire
relationship between Fourth World peoples and Western democracies
and capitalism—be it in America or Europe. Here, our message
to the West is clear: You must let us be men and women paid in
the currency of dignity and decency before you can have our
labor. We want nothing less than full citizenship within the
Western countries in which we reside. At the leadership of the
Fourth World must be men and women from the oppressed classes
who are dedicated to the goal of full citizenship within the
West.
But it is already conceded that the Fourth
World Revolution will not be based on solely working class
values. Since many of our problems are rooted in religious and
cultural bigotry, we must work to make freedom of religion, the
celebration of Third World culture and identity as well as the cultural forms developed from our experience within the West a
central goal of the Fourth World Revolution. Here, we depart
from the Marxists who would have a Fourth World devoid of its
indigenous character. We want whole men and women within our
ranks that act as their conscious guides steeped in their own
history.
The third thing that the Fourth World must
understand is that racism—our primary enemy—is both a
political policy and a set of personal behaviors. Neither of
these will disappear overnight. Thus, the Fourth World
Revolution is on-going until the day that both
the political policy of racism and the personal behavior of the
racist come to an end. The Fourth World will no longer sanction
the West’s incursions into Africa, Asia, and Latin America for
economic gains.
We will not allow you to fatten yourselves on
the exploitation of our brothers and sisters throughout the
world. We will no longer fill the ranks of your armed forces or
your jails. We will no longer starve while you eat nor cry while
you laugh. We declare ourselves free to be fully Asian, Arab,
and African within your midst, to be less would make us subhuman
in our own eyes. We will no longer watch as our children are
raised without dignity or hope. We will no longer give you our
labor without a fair wage. We will no longer give you our
allegiance without full citizenship.
We stand ready to throw all your platitudes
about democracy, freedom, and brotherhood back in your face
whether you rule in America or Europe. We will hound you until
you allow us to fulfill our dreams of being fully human as you
are fully human. We, the people of the Fourth World, have come
of age. And, we want from you only that which you have promised
to yourselves. That is the right to live without fear and want
in the world. Give us this and you need not fear us. Deny us
this and we have no other alternative but to realize our
humanity at your expense. posted 10 November 2005 * *
* * *
updated 3 November 2007 |
