Under the Skin, We Are All Africans

Wandering through the American South is something I particularly recommend to nature lovers—especially fans of alligators, barbecued ribs, and seafood fried beyond recognition. And did I mention the alligators?

Also, to church enthusiasts. In the Bible Belt states, there are truly a lot of churches. In the small town of Valliant, Oklahoma, which Wikipedia says has 754 residents, I came across the local newspaper, The Valliant Leader, in which no fewer than eleven churches advertised their services. This is partly due to the religious zeal of the local population—religion is an important part of their identity—but also because most belong to various Protestant sects, which are much less hierarchical and more autonomous than, say, the Catholic Church. In other words, if Mr. Žmauc and Mr. Žmauc’s neighbor, and the neighbor’s cousin’s friend lived in Oklahoma or Alabama instead of Ljubljana, they would more likely open a house of God (or three) than a pub.

The South is also a vast open-air classroom for anyone who wants to know more about the history of the civil rights struggle of African Americans. From Paris, Texas, where they proudly display a several-meter-high replica of the Eiffel Tower adorned with a red cowboy hat—and where almost no one remembers Nastassja Kinski, let alone the times when public lynchings at the city fairgrounds were a favourite pastime. In 1893, the Paris townspeople tied sixteen-year-old Henry Smith, a Black teenager, to a stake and burned him alive. Smith’s death stands out because it was the first lynching to be photographed; pictures of his dying were made into postcards and souvenirs exchanged among the locals.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, you can visit a museum presentation of the 1957 events when nine Black teenagers, relying on the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregation in public schools, attempted to enter Central High School. Violent protests followed. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus sent the National Guard to support—the locals, not the teenagers. Things calmed only after President Eisenhower had had enough and sent in the legendary 101st Airborne Division to restore order and let the Little Rock Nine enter the school.

From Little Rock, it's just a few hours' drive to Birmingham, Alabama, which Martin Luther King once called the most thoroughly segregated city in the U.S. In spring 1963, mass protests by Black youth were met by police chief Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor with dogs and water cannons. When that didn’t stop the peaceful demonstrations, members of the local KKK branch bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four Black girls aged eleven to fourteen.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, the French Quarter is a must-see, but not far away is William Frantz Elementary School, where in 1960 first-grader Ruby Bridges, escorted by federal marshals, became the first Black child to attend the school. The resulting outrage led most white students to boycott classes for weeks. A famous black-and-white photo of Ruby walking up the school steps surrounded by plainclothes agents looks like something from a distant era. But that’s misleading. Ruby, who this March was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame alongside Serena Williams, paved the way for others, including Kamala Harris, who entered school in California just a few years later. These events feel close—and ever closer—because time, at least regarding human rights and political freedoms, seems to be moving backward, not forward. In the U.S., and not just in the U.S.

One of the most haunting photos in the Little Rock Museum shows a group of white women, girls, and children holding signs opposing school integration: “Integration is un-Christian,” one reads; another proclaims, “Integration is Communism.” This discourse from over sixty years ago painfully echoes language still heard today—in the U.S. and beyond. Remember the campaign slogan of a European Parliament candidate who fired up supporters with: “Europe will be Christian, or it will be no more.” As then, today any talk of social injustice or minority rights is swiftly branded as “leftist extremism,” “wokeness” (whatever that means), or, of course, “Communism.” The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say.

It's disturbing how socially acceptable intolerance, including racism, has become. One of the more hyperactive ideological crusaders in the Slovenian online space, University of Ljubljana professor Žiga Turk, often weighs in on intergroup and cultural relations. A self-described “extreme realist,” he is highly sceptical of multiculturalism. Fair enough—everyone’s entitled to an opinion. But the attitude mirrors the doctrine of “separate but equal,” which allowed Black Americans legal equality, but only in segregated schools, buses, restrooms, and so on—until the Supreme Court overturned that in 1954, paving the way for those students in Little Rock and Ruby Bridges in New Orleans. Some in Slovenia, it seems, still haven’t reached that point—or worse, wish to return to a time before it. Because multiculturalism, apparently, just can’t work. Integration is un-Christian. Integration is Communism.

Similar thinking can be found even among Constitutional Court judges. Recall the recent dissent from one judge who, disagreeing with a ruling that rejected a referendum on changes to the Family Code, complained that the majority opinion violated the "right to separation from others,” which he deemed the "second pillar of our tradition."

Professor Turk sometimes goes even further. In other words, not just separate, but also unequal. Not long ago, he commented on a video of a looted store in South Africa by saying, "South Africa was once an orderly, fast-developing country. Then they introduced one man, one vote. And the majority voted for this." In doing so, the professor showed even more “conservatism” than Americans, who at least in principle granted voting rights to Black citizens after the Civil War—though they’ve continually tried to limit its scope ever since.

As I mentioned, the man is a professor at the University of Ljubljana. At a roundtable on free speech hosted by a former president of the republic—which I attended—he sat next to the host as a sort of consigliere. We know how that turned out. The former president never missed a chance to miss a chance to use his moral authority against growing hatred in Slovenian society. So it’s no surprise when university professors wax nostalgic for apartheid-era South Africa, before those pesky Blacks got the right to vote.

And it wasn't just a one-off slip. The professor recently claimed that when Europeans arrived in the Americas, the continent was "from the civilizational perspective, empty". "Racism," write Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Allan H. Goodman in their recent book published by Columbia University, "is systematic discrimination from a position of power, directed at individuals based on perceived membership in a socially defined racial group."

How does this look in practice? Look at the professor’s posts on social media. Black South Africans don’t deserve voting rights. Indigenous Americans didn’t exist when Europeans arrived—from a “civilizational” standpoint. Racism is an excuse for hierarchical domination based on skin colour.

Race is not a biological fact, according to Graves and Goodman, but a social construct created to justify colonization, looting, killing, and slavery. It underpinned the subjugation of Native Americans by white economic migrants from Europe, historical and modern genocides, the absolute rule of whites in apartheid South Africa, and the peaceful sleep of slave owners who bought and sold humans like livestock.

Today, racism remains integral to the far-right populism attacking the democratic values of human rights, civil liberties, and dignity for all individuals and social groups. If race doesn’t exist biologically, that doesn’t mean we’re all the same. Diversity exists, but not because of race. It is shaped by environment and evolution, not genetics. DNA variations are within 0.1 percent. In other words, we humans are 99.9 percent identical. More than that: science has proven that we all originate from Africa. Genetically and beneath the skin, regardless of its colour, we are all still Africans. You, me, and you too, Professor Turk.