Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times

6. Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone): Bling and the Promise of Consumer Citizenship

114 | 6 Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone) Bling and the Promise of Consumer Citizenship Roopali Mukherjee People ask me how we wearing diamonds When there’s little kids in Sierra Leone Losing arms for crying while they mining Talib Kweli “Bling” is the terminology used from a hip-hop song and is being used at the forefront to speak about diamonds. So why can’t hip-hop be at the forefront of the change? Kareem Edouard Late in the summer of 2005, hip-hop superstar Kanye West released his highly anticipated second album, Late Registration.1 Among the songs on the album, West unveiled the music video for the single “Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone)” that offers a stylized indictment of human rights atrocities fueled by the global trade in African “blood diamonds.” Raising thorny issues about child soldiers, slave labor, and the culpability of the global diamond industry within these conditions, West’s video appeared in the midst of a surge of Western interest in the “conflict diamond” trade and its humanitarian costs. In a resolution adopted in December 2000, the United Nations defines conflict diamonds as “diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and [which] are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council.”2 Author Greg Campbell explains that these gems, often referred to as “blood diamonds,” are mined in Central and West African war zones including Angola, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Repub- Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone) | 115 lic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo.3 Sold illegally to finance insurgencies , war efforts, and warlord activities, the trade in blood diamonds drew international attention when reports emerged that these armies routinely and forcibly conscripted African children as soldiers and slave laborers.4 Over a decade of war in Sierra Leone, an estimated 50,000 civilians perished, 20,000 were deliberately maimed, many having their hands hacked off by rebel militias, and more than 2 million—one or more than one out of every three Sierra Leoneans—suffered displacement.5 Nearly a decade after the civil war ended, as many as 200,000 child soldiers remain in Africa.6 The World Diamond Council—funded by major players in the global diamond trade including De Beers, the largest player in the industry that sources 40 percent of the world’s diamonds, all from Africa—estimated that at the heightoftheatrocitiesinthelate1990s,conflictdiamondsrepresentedapproximately 4 percent of the world’s diamond production. Since then, the council claimed, transnational agreements like the Kimberley Process,7 under which members agree to monitoring and certification protocols to track and authenticate gemstones from mine to retail outlet, had worked to reduce the trade in blood diamonds to less than 1 percent of the yearly $60 billion industry. Opposing these claims, human rights organizations like Global Witness and Amnesty International have criticized the Kimberley Process as ineffective and corrupt.8 According to Bonnie Abaunza, director of Amnesty International USA’s Artists for Amnesty program, “More than $23 million in blood diamonds is currently being smuggled into the United States and international markets.”9 Similarly, United Nations investigators reported that, as late as 2006, rebels in Ivory Coast had smuggled millions of dollars worth of diamonds into the world market through Ghana and Mali, where illicit stones are mixed in with—and thus rendered untraceable among—certified diamonds.10 Initiatives to strengthen the Kimberley Process, promulgated at the organization ’s annual plenary meeting in Botswana in 2006, confirmed claims that the transborder certification system was marred by loopholes, haphazard and underresourced enforcement, and a thriving smuggling trade.11 What Is This “Resistance” in Black Cultural Resistance? Starting in the year 2000, a series of small- and big-budget films began to appear that focused on the global trade in diamonds, drawing attention to the ways that Western demand for these gems is implicated in wartime atrocities in Africa. Notable among these, Sierra Leonean filmmaker Sorious Samura’s Cry Freetown (2000) traces human rights repercussions of the 116 | Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship trade in illicit diamonds, focusing on the plight of conscripted child soldiers and displaced and maimed civilians during the eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone. In his more recent Blood on a Stone (2006), Samura reveals flaws in the Kimberley Process, embarking on a journey to show how easily...