KARACHI: An Urdu book titled Dr William Du Bois (second edition) on the struggle against racism in the United States by Dr Riaz Shaikh, the dean of SZABIST’s social sciences faculty, was launched online on Friday evening.

Dr Shaikh began the proceedings by giving the background of the book. He said generally people associate only the name of Dr Martin Luther King with the struggle against racism in the US. “Yes, he led the movement, but Dr Du Bois gave the movement a scientific base. He did not see it just [as] a racism issue; he also looked at [it] with a Marxist point of view.”

Speaking on the occasion, eminent historian Dr Mubarak Ali said the history of the black community was important because at no point did it throw in the towel, and constantly fought for their rights and freedom. When they were brought in as slaves, those who had brought them tried to fill them with a sense of inferiority so that they remained loyal to their masters. They were turned into Christians as well. Even then the segregation remained on different grounds, for example, they had separate churches. They were taught that if they remained loyal to the whites their souls would turn white after they left this world.

Dr Ali said the institution of slavery was so powerful that no slave could easily escape it. The element of fear was inculcated in them from the beginning. But history never remains static. One change that came about was that the north (of the US) needed cheap labour. They thought they could get that if the slaves in the south were freed. This was followed by the civil war where slavery came to an end, although Lincoln had at one time said that whether slavery remained or not he wanted the federation to be intact. Still, things did not improve and organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed that harassed the black community. Subsequently movements to bring about a constructive change happened and Dr Du Bois was part of one such movement.

Book on struggle against racism in US launched

Social activist Anis Haroon said it needed to be looked at as to what’s the basis for discrimination against the black community. Capitalism never allowed them to get their just rights. For 300 years they were kept as slaves and deprived of basic requirements of life. What happened after the recent George Floyd incident in the US proved that there were a great many shortcomings in American society, she added.

Journalist Ghazi Salahuddin said the movement that had taken shape after George Floyd’s death carried an optimistic aspect. Earlier civil rights movement had a transitory effect. Now it seemed that things were changing. One way to analyse that was to see the participation of younger people in the Black Lives Matter movement in a big number. He said his 15-year-old granddaughter, who lives in Los Angeles, took part in the protest with her father, and felt that change was afoot.

Mr Salahuddin said the coronavirus pandemic had given the world an opportunity to reflect on important things. “We need to see what’s going to happen on a global scale and what could we [in Pakistan] learn from it. In the world, such as in the UK, statues of individuals associated with racism were being uprooted. But in our part of the world we seemed to have learnt no lessons from the coronavirus. We insist on being on the wrong side of history.”

Jahanzaib Chaudhry, a PhD scholar in the US, gave an eloquent account of how things today stand in the US as elections are around the corner, maintaining that Dr Du Bois was a great scholar.

Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan anchored the launch.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2020