VIDEO NEWS: Congolese-Japanese Children of Japanese Workers in the Congo: Survivors Tell

Speaking further about transcontinental racisms and sexisms that form through our internalizing of imperial and colonial mentalities:

Now, in the early 21st century, China is “investing” in Africa, for its minerals, its business potential.  It is a colonial enterprise, done in the same manner as the United States and Europe have done and continue to do.  Global power compels this kind of power. China is seeking to stretch itself in the global market, both as male corporate and globalizing chauvenism, racism, sexism and also as a way to combat the US and Europe in their own reach that has developed over centuries, around the globe.

In these business and politically oriented forces of displacement and relationships of hierarchy, there are many kinds of relationships that happen and are formed, temporary or sustained, with their effects. And as you know from my other posts on this site, the relationships formed are full of historical racismss, sexism, forms of power that are shaped by racism and sexism, and are always at more of a cost to non-elite lives.  In almost every case globally, there are tactics of purposefully making invisible, certain stories, in the name of other priorities.  Death–spiritually, physically, emotionally, becomes a norm.

This presence of the “China-Africa” political enterprise, reminds many Congolese locals of trauma and death. It is because this seems eerily reminiscent of an earlier colonial invasion.

Earlier in the 1970s, the Japanese began a more intensified relationship with African nations in order to take advantage of economic “possibilities.”  In this, the racism and sexism traveled.  Japanese worked on the coal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When local women became pregnant with their Japanese men who worked there, Japanese racism stepped in.

As is the case in history, these mixed-Japanese Congolese babies were most often killed, kept out of the media, kept secret.  In many cases, it was the doctors who killed the babies.  I suspect in most cases I mention in this entire site, it is not only mothers and relatives and nurses who did so, not to mention general society through neglect and disdain.

While Japanese “aid” supposedly “helps Africa” with its child mortality rate, due to their poverty, mixed Congolese-Japanese babies were purposefully killed.  Others survived.  A familiar picture develops and I am worried of the presence of the Chinese in the African nations and what is happening.  It will not come out in mainstream news, and not be taken care except in a colonial way, through “charity” and “medicine”–convenient ways among many, to dispose of and make people think that compassion is happening.

Remember, these stories are not events.  These killings, these exclusions, these decisions about who is demoted in society, ignored, and/or killed, represent forms of identity and social life that live.  This is why we must struggle to change our systems which will help to change our deepest assumptions and behaviors.  We must remember that I speak to DOMINANT norms, which usually go unnoticed and taken for granted or ignored.  Not ALL people of any group, community, or nation, advocate or agree with or participate.  We must begin to be more accountable to the assumptions that underlie prejudice, privilege, and killing.

We, as humans, have a long way to go.  Please watch the news program below.