Despite claims that we’ve entered a “post-racial” era, racism is alive and well, thriving even, and anti-black racism, in particular, continues to escalate. Layla AbdelRahim and I first discussed this topic several years ago after the Trayvon Martin murder. The recent modern-day lynching of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson, MO police officer has once again raised familiar issues, including the mainstream media’s propensity to posthumously blame the victims of racist violence for their own deaths. In 2014, Layla returns to the Deep Green Philly podcast to discuss civilised spaces and the “open season” on Black and Brown people.
Though she eschews labels, Layla tentatively describes herself as an anarcho-primitivist, specifically focusing her work on, among other things, the role of domestication and civilized narratives in shaping the socio-economic structures of society.Interview conducted by Ron Lester Whyte, 5 September 2014

Excerpt from the audio

“The criminality of the murder is not the question. For example, if you kill a wolf you will not be persecuted because, well, wolves are seen as a threat to domesticated animals and the land that has been taken by the humans, and by the humans who are given the agency to consume and control, and who therefore have the right to kill. And this is the problem, the problem is not even the idea of teaching children to be racist or to be sadists; the idea is to show them, to train them from early childhood to know their place in this food chain, in this niche [and to teach them] whether or not they constitute the resources that are disposable or usable, with the right to live – if they perform according to the prescribed role they were given in that structure, in that hierarchy of resources. If they challenge, if they threaten the interests of the hierarchy then there’s no problem killing them. These acts are not an aberration, they’re a reconfirmation of this narrative that structures our socio-economic possibilities”.

Civilized Racism part 3 (of 4)

Civilized Racism part 4 (of 4)

(2014)

 

Layla speaks on the medicalisation of the oppressed and the civilised “othering” by means of constructs of illness and health. Interviewed by Ron Lester Whyte for Deep Green Philly, 29 March 2012

Civilized Racism part 1 (of 4)

Civilized Racism part 2 (of 4)

(2012)