From Division to Active Allyship

By Gonsalves & Dorcelus | On Reclaiming Unity Between Black and Brown Communities

Written by

Neil Gonsalves

&

Neskens Jr Dorcelus

| for Seeking Veritas | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together" - Commonly attributed as an African proverb

From Shared history to a Co-created Future

The shared history of colonization, forced migration, and systemic exploitation has long connected black and South Asian communities across the globe—particularly in the Caribbean, where the legacy of slavery and indentureship continues to shape society today.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, millions of people of African descent were forcibly brought to the Americas as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Their forced labor was the backbone of colonial economies, and their cultural, spiritual, and familial ties were deliberately severed to ensure submission and dependence on plantation systems. The trauma of this system reverberates across generations, forming a foundational wound in the African diaspora. Slavery was formally abolished across the British empire in 1834 but the systems of exploitation quickly adapted to maintain value extraction and ensure the continued economic advancement of colonialists.

Between 1838 and 1917, Indian indentured labourers were brought to the Caribbean to fill the so-called “labour gap” left by the abolition of slavery. This strategic colonial maneuver, replacing enslaved Africans with low-wage Indian labourers, was not just about economics. It was a deliberate act of division designed to prevent solidarity between oppressed peoples and entrench a racial and cultural hierarchy that would benefit colonial powers.

As a result, Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean communities, though bound by similar struggles of exploitation, displacement, and resistance, have often found themselves separated by cultural misunderstandings, competition for resources, and politicized identity. These divisions, while historically imposed, have at times been reinforced by harmful stereotypes, unequal access to opportunity, and a lack of cross-cultural engagement.

Yet, today, a new movement is emerging, one that recognizes the power of unity over division. From Trinidad to Toronto, from Georgetown to Durban, younger generations of black and brown leaders are reaching across the historical fault lines, recognizing that our liberation is interconnected. This article aims to explore not only the roots of our division but also the transformative potential of allyship, cultural exchange, and coalition-building between black and brown communities.

This article also introduces the Gonsalves Horizontal Integration Framework (GHIF) as a conceptual and practical response to the limits of vertical integration models. We posit that marginalization is not a fixed identity but a fluid vector of surplus value extraction. GHIF reorients social systems away from categorical inclusion and toward relational integration, grounded in shared human experience and structural equity.

In an age of global challenges, climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, our strength lies in Allyship. It’s time to reclaim our shared history and reimagine a future built on mutual respect, collaboration, and collective healing.

The Foundations of Subjugation

The pernicious practices of indentured servitude, slavery, caste, shadeism, and classism are the form not the function of subjugation. One should interpret these manifestations of prejudice as the operational processes through which systems of oppression operate.

Systems of oppression are social structures that disadvantage specific groups while benefiting others based on exploitable characteristics. The ubiquitous nature of systems of oppression allow them to operate in plain sight through the normalization of social attitudes, traditions, rituals, and policy. The fragmentation and dispersement of social and ideological attitudes among collectives of individuals is a feature not a bug of the system, it creates the pretext for internalization of negative experiences and obfuscates the functional purpose of exploitation. The guiding objective and the resulting processes of creating and maintaining social division between the various collectives who remain persistently disadvantaged is often lost in the discourse of marginalization thereby creating fertile grounds for the replication of systems that prevent similarly disenfranchised collectives from uniting through common cause.

The function of exploitation has most commonly been an economic prerogative. The extraction of surplus value from seemingly powerless collectives is a practice that enriches a dominant group. Examples of such value extraction aimed at profit maximization are plentiful through the analysis of the economic outputs of systems such as indentured servitude, slavery, caste, shadeism, and classism.

The Seeds of Division

Maintaining distrust, division, and social animus between groups of similarly disaffected collectives allows for the continued extraction of surplus value, without a unified response from those who might otherwise coalesce around common vectors of disenfranchisement.

The vestiges of colonialism are evident in the lingering social fractures found in the contemporary relationships between Afro and Indo Caribbean peoples. This strategic colonial maneuver, replacing enslaved Africans with low-wage Indian labourers, was a deliberate act of division designed to prevent solidarity between oppressed peoples and entrench a racial and cultural hierarchy that would benefit colonial powers and their plantation based economies that relied heavily on a steady supply of cheap labour. The lingering impact is felt to this day even beyond the Caribbean through the lived interactions between the African and Indian diasporas around the world. Outside the Caribbean the near history of countries such as South Africa, and Uganda, offer further examples of such experiences.

The Black-Brown Divide

The divide between black and brown communities has roots in both colonial design and postcolonial neglect. The tensions are not the result of innate cultural incompatibility but the cumulative outcome of colonial policies, economic engineering, and racial hierarchies that deliberately pitted marginalized groups against one another. While these groups often shared overlapping geographies, they were intentionally placed into separate and unequal social roles, with the divide reinforced through economics, education, religion, and racial hierarchies. This divide often emerges in the form of competition for limited resources, political scapegoating, and internalized stereotypes, all rooted in systems designed to fragment potential solidarity.

In South Africa, the apartheid regime meticulously constructed a racial hierarchy that placed whites at the top, Indians in the middle, and black Africans at the bottom. Apartheid laws forcibly segregated communities, assigning different levels of access to housing, education, and economic opportunity based strictly on race. The apartheid system weaponized these divisions by granting Indian South Africans limited forms of political representation and education while black South Africans were completely disenfranchised and brutally oppressed. Rather than fostering unity among all oppressed groups, this system generated competition and mistrust. Even after the fall of apartheid, residual tension between black and Indian communities persists, particularly in places where economic disparities and political mistrust remain entrenched.

In Uganda during British colonial rule, Indians were brought to the country to serve as clerks, administrators, and traders along the newly constructed railways. Over time, they became a critical part of the economy through entrepreneurship and commerce. Their economic role, however, was not accompanied by social integration. The colonial system created racial enclaves, discouraging intermingling between Indians and Ugandans. Indians were largely isolated in urban centres and maintained distinct cultural, linguistic, and religious identities. Post-independence, rising nationalist sentiments clashed with the economic visibility of the Indian community. In 1972, President Idi Amin expelled thousands of Indians from Uganda, accusing them of economic sabotage and claiming they had exploited the country’s resources while refusing to integrate. This act was rooted in deep-seated resentment over perceived economic domination by a racially distinct minority, a resentment that had been inflamed by decades of colonial manipulation.

In plantation societies across the Caribbean colonial administrators strategically cultivated division by assigning different roles and privileges to local African and Indian populations; formerly enslaved Africans were often denied land and forced into wage labour, while indentured Indians were offered small plots of land after their contracts ended. This sowed seeds of resentment and economic disparity. Colonial governments further entrenched separation by building segregated schools, temples, churches, and neighbourhoods, limiting natural social integration.

Colonial rule imposed a rigid racial hierarchy with whiteness at the top, blackness at the bottom, and brownness occupying an ambiguous “middle” position. Religious and cultural practices were used to deepen divisions; African spiritual traditions were often stigmatized, while hindu and muslim practices were sometimes afforded more leniency. These practices implicitly discouraged communities from engaging across faith or cultural lines, fostering further alienation. This differential treatment created the perception of relative privilege, which colonial powers exploited. Where brown communities were allowed limited commercial or educational opportunities, they were seen by black communities as collaborators or beneficiaries of colonialism. Meanwhile, brown communities often internalized anti-black sentiments encouraged by colonial structures to justify their precarious middle position in the racial hierarchy. These misunderstandings, steeped in systemic design, calcified into long-standing social divisions.

“Political parties have learned the lessons of colonialism well. They use the politics of division to stir their base and elicit an “us versus them” attitude. This only serves to demonize the “other”. In the gap of chaos and discord that is inevitably created, political parties can rule with impunity” - Brian Sankarsingh - Excerpt from his book ‘Decolonizing The Trinidadian Mind’

In many Caribbean and diasporic contexts around the world, independence from colonial rule did not resolve these tensions. Instead, political elites often capitalized on ethnic voting blocs, pitting communities against one another for limited resources and representation. This politicization of race continues to fracture possibilities for collective advancement. Contemporary media representation often reinforce reductive caricatures, depicting black communities as criminal or untrustworthy, and brown communities as insular or opportunistic. These narratives are internalized, particularly among younger generations, reinforcing the very divisions that colonialism engineered. The lack of cross-cultural storytelling that highlights shared histories and resistance only deepens this rift.

The Tyranny of Vertical Structures

For centuries, societies have been structured through vertical hierarchical systems that rank individuals based on perceived value. These lines, often determined by race, class, gender, and ability, have shaped public policy, institutional structures, and cultural narratives. Despite global declines in absolute poverty and formal advances in civil rights, vertical thinking persists. It is embedded not only in economic systems but also in the contemporary frameworks of inclusion and marginalization. Vertical systems of classification are rooted in colonial and capitalist ideology that ranked human beings based on land ownership, skin colour, and perceived productivity.

Vertical lines of difference were institutionalized to sustain economic and political control. In some measure the contemporary penchant to commodify marginalization has resulted in turning identity into a marketable asset used by institutions and movements alike to accrue legitimacy, funding, or moral authority. These approaches exacerbate the danger of vertical frameworks when they turn struggle into a competition for recognition rather than collaboration for liberation.

Horizontal structures by comparison focus on shared conditions underpinning lived experiences rather than symbolic inclusion.

Commodification of Marginalization

Today, vertical frameworks persist through identity politics that essentialize rather than liberate, often utilizing metrics of “inclusion” that maintain gatekeeping under new language. Marginalization is not a static phenomena, it is a vector of value extraction. The problem is not who is marginalized, but how marginality is instrumentalized. Any group can become “marginalized” if their identity or experience can be used to generate social, political, or financial capital.

Marginalization becomes a commodity, something to be performed, surveyed, or centred in ways that reinforce difference rather than dismantle structural inequality. Systems benefit from preserving marginality because it offers moral cover for extractive practices, creates an illusion of progress, and sustains a culture of managed dissent.

The persistent centring of marginalized identities in political discourse paradoxically appears to argue that defined collectives experience sustained marginalization due to their group identity but must simultaneously maintain the rigid vertical structures that were imposed upon them by colonial ideology. Marginalized status today is often used to argue moral urgency or institutional legitimacy, without structurally transforming the systems that produce inequality. The more society relies on identity as the basis for redress, the more it reifies the very categories that sustain hierarchy.

Marginalization may best be understood as a vector, a directional force that can be mobilized for profit, legitimacy, or control. Race, class, gender, or ability are not inherently marginal; they become marginal when systems extract meaning or value from them for purposes other than liberation. Examples include but are not limited to; initiatives that centralize pain narratives without redistributing power; trauma marketing on social media which converts lived experience into content; or fundraising campaigns that rely on imagery of suffering to drive donations. Each case illustrates how marginality can be commodified. It is no longer sufficient to ask who is marginalized; we must ask how marginalization is being used.

The Gonsalves Horizontal Integration Framework (GHIF)

The GHIF advocates for a paradigm shift from vertical association to horizontal integration. It challenges systems of exclusion by turning siloed allegiances into opportunities for mutual alliances, utilizing sustainable goals shared across various vectors of marginalization. GHIF posits a model that centres relational equity, not representational inclusion. It proposes that we reimagine social belonging and justice as horizontal processes rooted in mutual interdependence.

Core Principles of GHIF:

• Relational Equity Over Representational Inclusion - Focus on how resources, care, and decision-making are shared, not who is “in the room.”

• Common Denominators Over Unique Identifiers - Build coalitions based on shared conditions such as precarity, barriers to access and participation, or care burdens, not identity silos.

• Fluid Vectors Over Fixed Categories - Acknowledge that identity is contextual and shifting, marginality is not a badge but a system to interrogate.

• Integration Over Accommodation - Don’t retrofit existing systems to include marginalized people, redesign systems that integrate all participants from inception.

Practical implications across sectors:

• Policy: Universal basic services (housing, childcare, income support) that benefit all, especially the vulnerable, without targeting identity groups.

• Education: Curricula that prioritizes shared human conditions (conflict, resilience, ecological dependence) over tokenistic diversity celebrations.

• Community Building: Cross-class, cross-race coalitions based on mutual care and resource sharing rather than symbolic representation.

Marginalization is not inherently liberatory. When commodified, it serves the very vertical systems it claims to challenge. GHIF offers a pathway out of competitive victimhood and toward structural solidarity. By reframing our systems horizontally, around shared conditions rather than identity categories, we not only dissolve silos, but we co-author a new political and emotional landscape rooted in equity, dignity, and collective well-being.

The GHIF exposes the underlying logic of all systems of subjugation, those that mask economic extraction through identity-based fragmentation, making it applicable across contexts where marginalization is engineered to inhibit collective agency.

Transforming Siloed Allegiances into Mutual Alliances

GHIF rejects vertical lines of difference in favour of horizontal integration, an approach that prioritizes shared human conditions, resource equity, and cross-sectional solidarity over categorical inclusion. Horizontal systems integrate all members as co-creators, not recipients of inclusion. It's not about making space at the table, it’s about redesigning the table. It builds coalitions around shared conditions of dislocation and precarity rather than unique identity labels. Beyond marginalization as branding we need a politics that de-commodifies identity and recenters shared human conditions as a site for radical integration.

Horizontal integration doesn’t just redistribute resources—it redistributes dignity.

About the Authors:

Neil Gonsalves

is an author, TEDx Speaker, and educator. He is a 2025 Durham Community Champion Medallion Award recipient, recognized by the Member of Parliament for Durham from the Canadian House of Commons for unwavering commitment and dedication to improving the community. He is the author of ‘I’m Not Your Token: Unapologetic Clarity in Divided Times’

Neskens Jr Dorcelus

is a dynamic personal development speaker and anti-bullying trainer, who inspires audiences to foster non-toxic environments in schools and professional settings across Canada and the United States. Born in Haiti and shaped by diverse life experiences, he delivers engaging keynotes and workshops on personal development, workplace toxicity, self-esteem, emotional intelligence, unity, and collaboration through his company Dorcelus Empowerment.

Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions.2025 ©️