Foreign Scholars Admire Values of President Ho Chi Minh’s Anti-racism Thoughts

President Ho Chi Minh paid great attention to the lives of the blacks and their struggle for equality. He was one of the first Asian communist leaders to discover the problems facing the black community and promote their movement for freedom.

Hannah Nguyen

ngminhphuong26@gmail.com February 13, 2023 | 17:28

Participants in seminar entitled “Ho Chi Minh in Brazil: Liberation of the Black and Solidarity of Classes”. Photo: VNA

A seminar entitled “Ho Chi Minh in Brazil: Liberation of the Black and Solidarity of Classes” as held within the Black History Month that is held annually in February across Canada to honour the legacy of Black Canadians and their communities.

Luis Silva, an expert on government relations and an editor of Professor Nguyen Dai Trang's English book “The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh and Selected Works on Systemic Racism”, has showed his wish to spread the legacies of the late Vietnamese President, Ho Chi Minh, to international friends, VNA reported Sunday.

Attending a seminar held by the Canada-ASEAN Initiatives on February 11, Luis Silva, who has edited three books on President Ho Chi Minh by Prof. Trang, affirmed the need to translate the works of the great Vietnamese leader into English so that future generations can gain access to them.

He said that President Ho Chi Minh had numerous works throughout the 1920s on injustices against the black, including "La Raza Negra" (Black Race, 1925), a collection of 13 articles in French on the topic.

The book’s editor, Silva, said that the Vietnamese leader’s works help him understand the underlying causes of systemic racism and discrimination. Photo: VNA

In 1924, the eminent Vietnamese leader wrote "Class Solidarity," a true story about the trial of José Léandro da Silva, a black sailor in Brazil who was arrested during a strike in Rio de Janeiro and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

This work was published for the first time in the French newspaper L'Humanité, and in Portuguese in the Brazilian newspaper O Paíz two months later, Luis Silva pointed out.

The President’s literary works on injustices against the black since the 1920s have not been widely known in the world yet, said the scholar, assuring that he will continue to study more on this topic.

Sharing the same view, Joe Pateman, currently working at the Faculty of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, the UK, emphasised that President Ho Chi Minh’s articles on the black race are excellent, as readers can find them very standard, educational, and also very polemic.

Joe Pateman, lecturer at the Faculty of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, the UK, shares about the book “The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh and Selected Works on Systemic Racism”. Photo: VNA

The book “The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh and Selected Works on Systemic Racism” is a collection of 20 articles written by President Ho Chi Minh, including 13 articles in the work "Black Race" and seven articles in other publications written in the periods of 1922-1924 and 1963-1966.

It is the first English-language publication that explores this aspect in the revolutionary leader’s legacy and provides a clearer view of his thought regarding the field.

The book "The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh and Selected Works on Systemic Racism” made debut in Canada in February 2021 with the English and Vietnamese versions.

Trang, who has spent more than 25 years on collecting, studying, and writing about President Ho Chi Minh, told the VNA’s reporter that “The Black Race” was written in French by Ho Chi Minh in 1925, and its Russian version was published in the former Soviet Union (now Russia) in 1928.

Only few people have a chance to read it, Trang said, and not many readers have known about his considerable influence on national liberation movements in Africa, as well as movements protesting against wars and seeking equality for people of African descent in the US.

This has encouraged Trang to gather 20 articles by Ho Chi Minh, including 12 from “The Black Race” and seven others written in the 1922 - 1924 and 1963 - 1966 periods, in this book.

Every February, people across Canada participate in Black History Month events and festivities that honour the legacy of Black people in Canada and their communities. The 2023 theme for Black History Month is: “Ours to tell”.

For more than 400 years, the black people and African diaspora in Canada has played an important role in society as a whole, helping to make Canada what it is today.

During Black History Month in Canada, the seminar entitled “Ho Chi Minh in Brazil: Liberation of the Black and Solidarity of Classes” attracted the attention of many Canadian scholars and international friends.

The works of President Ho Chi Minh introduced at the seminar showed his brilliant thoughts on fighting racism, fighting for justice and charity among skin colors.

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