What Do Enemy Combatants and Black Folk Have In Common?

MJ Adia
4 min readDec 13, 2021

How terra nullis and homo sacer are perfect examples of exile, landlessness, and racism

Black man yelling, tied to chair, yellow wig
Photo by Justin Brian from Pexels

Why is it that black people are killed with seeming impunity? Why did we accept the torture of so-called “enemy combatants?” What do these situations have in common? Two things: Homo sacer and terra nullis. One example can explain this quite well. During the early days of the war in…

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MJ Adia

Black-Filipina. Lived in Peru for 5 years. LICSW, dancer, meditator. Writes about multiculturalism, cinema, race, social issues.