#originalwarya

[sosorrydad]

originalwarya reblogged your post and added:

Literally every album cut from Charmbracelet says...

I hate CJW's (Charmbracelet Justice Warriors)

[cajabo]

Hi! I just wanna say your blog is really amazing, especially because I've just started to investigate Somali history. Also, thanks for answering my question on twitter about Italian Somaliland. I wanted to ask, do you know if there is anything written on white supremacy/racism towards Somali's in Italian Somaliland, or beyond? Like, are there accounts of policies/incident/etc of racism during this period? Thank so much! :)

Hey!

Well, firstly, I would consider colonialism racism and every day living under colonialism as racism. But if you want some more specific examples I’ll try to list some that I know but I don’t think there is any complete text on the matter

Ali Mumin Ahad wrote about colonial categories, which were inherently violence and continue to have repercussions to this day: “The Externally Defined Somali National Identity”

In Robert Hess’ Italian Colonialism in Somalia (sorry, i dont have a pdf of the book but maybe find it in a library) he writes about some anti-colonial action in the colony and how, for example, in 1893, Italians bombed Merca in response to the killing of an Italian lieutenant by a Somali in the city. in reaction to that, other Somalis boycotted the city by refusing to bring their livestock and goods. (see pages 44-46 of the book) 

The Italians also bombed the town of Nimow and burned the town of Lafole after the “Lafole Massacre” (if you google lafole masacre, there’s a some stuff written on it on the internet other than Hess’ book)

Mohamed A. Eno has discussed the forced labor system in Italian Colonialism (see the chapter on colonial occupation):

“Colonial Italy had to engineer a way out of its mess. As a result, it introduced the ‘kolonyo’ (corvee) forced labor system that was among the prime factors of socio-economic disintegration and labor disorientation of the Jareer community. It became also a cause for rural migration, as the male youth could not live freely in their rural villages and among their families. The agenda of the Italian colonial economy denied them sanctity among their people; hence their involuntary divorce from their abode.”

There were also race laws during the fascist period but I can’t think of any article that discusses race laws in Somalia specifically. Check out this and this post for interracial relations during Italian colonialism more generally.