Skip to main content

On savarna fragility by Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt





Some brown folks in academia are as toxic and fragile as some white folks. 

Their hunger for both power, recognition and capacity for toxic positivity is just harmful to all those who are trying to do the “real” work of equity and social justice on the ground and face serious resistance from both masked and unmasked oppressors.
 
These are the same people whose capacity for any scholarly engagement is minimal. 

When you confront them with their transgressions (which are actually very passive-aggressive) they seem to disengage.


And if these are “savarna women,” then their brand of feminism is both self-serving and oppressive. They do little to put their bodies on the line to resist or organize, but jump up and take credit for solidarity movements and coalitions that others create (and they participate by standing on the periphery, and often performatively).


Once you recognize these folks, you really need to be aware of them. 

Call out when they lay any claim to movements that are not their own but co-opted, or ideas that you’ve created - which they will grab like spiders and give you no credit.


This is a kind of violence that must be addresssed. It is predatory.


This is the kind of lateral and horizontal violence that is most harmful to the very bodies that are desperately trying to remove themselves from a cycle of oppressions that they encounter — created by these savarna fake intellectuals.

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Libertarianism, the Free Speech Union, and the Life of Disinformation

The rise of the far-right globally is intertwined with the globally networked power of libertarian think tanks, funded at the base by the global extractive industries . In this blog post, through an analysis of the disinformation-based campaign I have personally experienced since October 2023 mobilised by the communicative ecosystem of the Free Speech Union (FSU), I will attend to the lifecycle of disinformation in libertarian networks, arguing that the disinformation ecosystem is invested in upholding both white supremacy and extractive capital. The FSU’s investment in disinformation I argue that the FSU is invested in producing and circulating disinformation. In response to my analysis of the hypocrisy of the Free Speech Union (FSU) that positions itself as a champion of free speech in Aotearoa while one of its co-founders, council members and spokespersons David Cumin (who is also one of the key actors representing Israel Institute of New Zealand) actively targets the freedom of a...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University.  Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...