I’ve found that people from other parts of the world tend to conflate what is US empire with the people living inside the US. This is not to say that those two things should be thought of separately. Of course they shouldn’t. But when people talk about “America” I don’t think they don’t really know what they are talking about. What people are you talking about? The people who say this are usually people who do not understand the way race operates in any other place besides where they live. Someone recently told me that they don’t care about the ‘cultural’ aspect of colorism, just the ‘political’ as they made a very generalized point about colorism in the US. At this point I knew I had to stop engaging, because this is a person who doesn’t know anything about the way race and blackness has functioned in Amerika. I don’t know about the American left because I don’t consider myself a leftist. I know about black people struggling and resisting in this country, and at every turn, black people have been the ones to make the connections internationally, intercommunally between what US imperialism and colonialism has done and is doing around the world with what has happened and is happening to black people right here at home. Have we had the power to interrupt and destroy that violent empire/structure? No. But to say “Americans vote for imperialists” and this is the reason why folks around the rest of the world have formed no alliances with Americans, as if that is the entire picture of what is happening in this fucked up country irks me. It’s a similar strain of thought I’ve experienced in México where people assume that just because you are from the US, that you are living a good life, when so many black people are incarcerated, in poverty, don’t have stable housing, live paycheck to paycheck, face state violence and repression constantly.

Those people aren’t interested in forming alliances because they aren’t interested at all in freeing black people in their countries or anywhere else.