Nick

On January 9, our class visited the Black Cultural Archives. This archive highlighted the movements against racial inequality, movements that the Bloomsbury Group had previously been criticized for not participating in. I focused on the 1980 Fowaad! Newsletter which was written by the Organization of Women of Asian & African Descent, which was designed to give marginalized communities them a voice.

The text within the newsletter provided advice and political commentary for its intended audience. One article in particular that I was interested in was titled, “Olympic Boycott? So What?” The article was written as an opinion piece to voice the displeasure for inequal treatment for people of color in Britain. The view of Black civilians is juxtaposed with the preferential treatment of Black Olympians. As a result, the author calls for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics to spur change in the perceptions of Africans in Britain. The newsletter was featured normal printer paper with exclusively typed text. There was evidence of wear as demonstrated by the fading ink, creases, and staple marks. However, the newsletter was still in excellent condition and able to be flipped through like a modern magazine. 

Reading this article, I saw an evolution of the Bloomsbury Groups ethics towards pacifism. While the Bloomsbury group featured primarily upper class, white individuals, we can see how their Modernist, nontraditional approaches influenced the racial movements around the world. In Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, she advocates for pacifism through means similar to the article in Fowaad! This is Woolf’s primary objective as she rhetorically questions, “how can we answer your question, how to prevent war?”1 The concept of striking as a political statement is still relevant as Black Lives Matter protests or Colin Kaepernick’s kneel during the national anthem. In all instances, marginalized groups are utilizing pacifism to advocate for equal rights.