Explorations into Decolonial Love… in response to: “I’m not racist, I have a black girlfriend”, consider this:
“The significance attributed to feelings, attachment, and the familiarity of domestic slavery rendered domination in a heartwarming light. The power of influence invested in the enslaved -the power of the weak to sway the powerful- and the place attributed to feeling in regulating the excesses of market relations refigured relations of domination and exploitation in the garb of affection, family, and reciprocal obligations. Such reasoning held that violence was both necessary and tolerable, while insisting that feelings determined the character of the master-slave relationship and informed social, familial, and political organization. In short, slave relations were dependent upon and determined by ‘the action of taking place in individual hearts’. “Saidiya V. Hartman.