I often think of Lewis R. Gordon’s passing his university campus, and the white people that saw too many Black people this day. They saw him, on his arrival, and on his way back, already constituting a multitude, an invasion. Blackness, void of character or individuality. Outside of the class character that structures its experience, that is. The Black professor, business man, member of parliament, approached as the janitor, gardener, cleaner, ‘boy,’ in humiliating, degrading tone. Liberal anti-racism often stops short at this point, amplifying the grievances—rightfully—and the aspirations—much less so—of the Black middle class, mistaking its partial makeup for the whole community. “We can be of property, too,” or “we, too, uphold the rule of law and order,” is the essence of this kind of protest, no matter, which form it takes. All of the concepts that are intertwined with the ascent and eventual betrayal of the Black bourgeoisie, are myths and legends, though not from ancient history, but from the scheming offices of white capital. As Prof. Jared Ball doesn’t get tired to remind us, even the upper echelons of Black gazillionaires are much less selling any product, than that they are selling their access to the gates of our community. Brand ambassadors for capitalism, if you will, selling the American Dream over breakbeats and samples.

As such, the Black bourgeoisie are shareholders in the economic sense, as much as in the political: Black capitalists are invested in White Supremacy, even if it throws a Black fist. We are being marketed to, and yet we are falling for it every time. African culture, history, and labor become even greater sources for resource extraction by a kind of people that use their ancestors’ blood as currency to be admitted to the rank of ‘American.’ Even the Black Panther could ascend to US cultural representation, woven into the history of empire, while the actual Panthers were forgotten behind bars, and the human remains of the martyrs of MOVE joined their ancestors behind museum vitrines.

Dhoruba bin Wahad’s note on Assata Shakur’s role in the movement is essential to understand what is meant if one were really to be taught by Assata, as the popular t-shirt claims. Operating underground clinics to get essential treatment to wounded soldiers under the radar of state surveillance is no minor task. A political party has no insignificant wing: the legal, the illegal, breakfast and education programs, petitions, rallies, guns, and care work are complementary. This is the true essence of applying self-determination and community care. This is why all sorts of caricatures that roam the streets with guns and Black berets still don’t resemble the real Panthers or the Black Liberation Army in any way. There is no political analysis, no alliances, no internationalism. This is the reason why so much of (Black) activism turns into gangsterism or careerism so easily, both are different means to the same end.

The tragedy of once has without so much of an attempt to convince us otherwise, already arrived as a farce in the present. Rather, in Germany, the ever weaker copy of a farce. Hoteps, Black capitalists, politicians, all kinds of grifters and scammers are trying to gain advantage of the momentum that was initiated by refugees and non-citizens more than a decade ago. A certain type of people was and is still notably absent from grassroots struggles, even though they significantly influenced the contemporary language of progressive politics. Others, that were and are there, often never got the recognition that their work would have deserved, or were ignored in favor of a more palatable face or voice. I am the last person to downplay the importance of digital communities, as much as I am a product and actor of those networks, but the era of the activist-influencer has dangerously flattened political discourse and meaning. Some of this might be specific to Berlin, where politics can be a lifestyle rather than a conviction based on embodied values and lived practices, and the radical youth leaves school ready to volunteer in the Global South, study political science, and after spending a few years in the Black Bloc finally unmasks for a secure job in an NGO, university, or party office.

Blackness used to be much less visible in public life, less advertisements, less pop culture, more neglect. Yet still, Black African people of all walks of life can still vanish without traces in this city, in this country, in this world. The darkest of us, the ones without a German passport, Black women and Queers are not considered worthy of care, neither in life nor death. I think of Rita Awour Ojungé, who the state did not care to search for after she went missing from her remote and isolated ‘shelter,’ and did not take seriously the concerns of her friends and family, I think of Juliet H., who was stabbed 50 times by her former husband, from whom she had escaped, and who had also abused their four children, I think of Yolanda Fulephu and her son Amani, who must have been in the water of Weißensee for several weeks, and I think of Yulady Lasso, who was innocently detained and separated from her son Mathias for 217 days.

This country harbors a hatred in people that walk around fantasizing about the annihilation of Blackness. Every time Black people gather to find their voices amid this horror, our faces disappear, as this country forms an amorphous mass out of our bodies. Living in the wilderness of Central Europe, Afropessimism is just being honest—and realistic.