TO date, the term ‘racism’ is now attributed to a type of behaviour which consists of the display of contempt or aggression towards other people (races) on account of physical differences between them and oneself.
However, etymologically, no such value is loaded in the meaning of race from which racism is derived.
Originally, race simply referred to a ‘gene pool; a group of people who share a number of physical characteristics because they are part of the gene pool’ (Phillips:
1984: p.12).
Satnam Virdee and others also observe that it was during the 17th Century when the Englishmen interested in their historical origins, developed a view that they were descendants of a German ‘race’ to prove that the Norman invasions of the 11th Century amounted to alien dominations.
That is when a historical dimension was added to the prior common-place neutral conception of ‘race’.
It is important to observe that even at this juncture, distinction of race was still based on separate history and culture rather than on biological difference.
Virdee and others argue it was only during the 18th Century and early 19th Century that the term ‘race’ came to be associated with physical traits, both within the boundaries of Europe and beyond.
By the end of the 19th Century, the concept had become an ideology which Britain used to distinguish its colonial subjects whom it branded racially inferior to its own citizens.
In fact, racism had been used much earlier to justify slavery.
It is only too apparent that the racial twist was only a justification for subjecting a fellow race to the tyranny of toil for economic reasons.
Cubbon Wakefield (cited in Williams: 1964: p.06) sums up Williams’ thesis:
The reason for slavery is not moral, but economic circumstances, they relate not to vice and virtue, but to production.
Slavery was not born of racism: Rather, racism was born out of slavery (1964: p.07).
Both Wakefield’s and Williams’ arguments are authenticated by the fact that when the consumption of the multiplying slave population surpassed production margins, slavery ceased to make economic sense and was consequently abandoned in preference to its modified form, capitalism.
My argument here is not to obscure debates about other ‘Enlightenment’ thinkers and politicians’ contribution to the abolition of slavery, but as the discussion on ‘Enlightenment’ has shown, even some of these thinkers were as guilty of racism as their predecessors.
The primary argument here is; in essence racism was a rationalising ideology in support of the capitalist mode of production associated with the practice of slavery.
Ideology is (and has always been) an important matrix in the politics of domination as well as the arts of resistance.
In the Fanonian sense, ideology can be perceived in terms of ‘oppressive’ ideology and ‘liberative’ ideology, where the former is the oppressor’s tool of mental colonisation and the latter is the oppressed’s instrument of mental decolonisation (Fanon: 1982).
However, for the present practical purpose, ideology refers especially to a set of political beliefs, a system of theoretical institutions (mainly artificially designed) at the service of the European imperial politics during slavery, colonisation and neo-colonialism.
Indeed, our erstwhile oppressors have created and recreated endless systems and ideologies in their bid to control us for time immemorial: to control our resources for their selfish end.
They have used force and deceit to destroy our civilisation and steal our philosophy which they have re-coined ‘Greek Philosophy’ and without shame they have re-appropriated the name of our gods (check).
They have taken away our history and replaced it with darkness – in fact they have clogged all our senses to the fact that our ancestors were the earliest inventors and discoverers – rather they have systematically taught our trapped children that the history of Africa only began with the arrival of whites in Africa.
They have created slavery and deodorised it with the false innocents of ‘trade’ and ‘commerce’.
What trade was this?
Between who and who?
Involving which money, for which commodities and benefitting who?
Can’t Africa see through the veils?
In what way was this ‘human trafficking’ turned ‘trade’ then?
Our children need to be reminded there is only one ‘constant’ in Europe’s handshake with Africa – capital or profiteering – coded in different beguiling euphemisms.
When slavery architecture began to threaten their capital thrust, they replaced it with direct colonisation.
Can’t Africans see?
Yes, colonisation was sanitised by Christian and later Islamic values, both of which have been thumb-sucked from African religion – which religion has since been publicly denounced but secretly adopted by their secret societies for the effective control of the universe.
The writing is on the wall, but could it be that we have been blinded for too long to see.