IMMANUEL KANT (Cited in ibid:38) argues that there are four distinct varieties of the human species, each with a specific ‘natural disposition’ deriving from what he calls ‘stem genus’, supposedly a race of ‘white brunette’; now best approximated by ‘white’ Europeans, believed to have existed between 31st and 52nd parallels in the old world.
In the hierarchy of these varieties, the African is placed at the bottom as the least endowed.
Again such a regimentation of people is based not on scientific fact, yet Kant seems to believe so much in the lie. Imagine such a popularised philosopher claiming that:
“This fellow was quite black … a clear proof that what he said was stupid.”
This utterance defies logic.
In it one can detect a pathological distaste of the black people, which is shared by both the ‘philosopher’ and those who valorise such ‘philosophy’.
The statement has no ‘truth value’.
Clearly, the premise, which is that the fellow is black, does not justify the conclusion that what he was saying was stupid.
There is no link between skin pigmentation and the quality of mental elasticity. The link is therefore superimposed to fulfill the Aristotle- Hume-Kant value agenda.
On the whole the glaring fallaciousness of their utterances cannot simply be attributed to lack of logic.
Behind the nonsensicality of their claims there is a latent ‘logic’ – the conscious or unconscious bid to project one’s ways of seeing as superior to the rest; and this is done to one’s advantage.
This is the essence of imperial ontology.
Imagine also a renowned 20th century philosopher, Georg Hegel (1956:93) blatantly asserting that:
“The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must quite give up the principle which naturally accompanies all our ideas – the category of Universality.
“In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that consciousness has not yet attained to the realisation of any substantial objective existence. “The Negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and tamed state.
“We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality – all that we call feeling-if we could rightly comprehend him; there is nothing with humanity to be found in this type of character.
“The copious and circumstantial accounts of missionaries completely confirm this.
“At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again for it is no historical part of the world; it has no movement or development to exhibit.”
This de-historicisation of Africans is echoed by another 20th century scholar, Hugh Trevor-Roper.
In 1963 the Regius ‘Professor’ of Modern History at the University of Oxford gave a series of lectures at Sussex University that were later published in a periodical and in a book.
These lectures argued that “Sub-Saharan Africa had no history” (Trevor-Roper cited in Fuglestad: 152).
To him the past of this part of the world was “clouded in darkness and darkness is not the subject of history” (Ibid: 152).
It seems that his notion of history is essentially a form of purposive movement which, as he thought, Africa did not exhibit.
Such miscomprehension of African history can be understandable on grounds that he is not African even though he is not under academic pressure as a professor to speak on what he does not know.
What is worse, however, is to proceed and say that prior to its contact with Europe; Africa consisted of only “the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe” (Ibid: 152).
This is unpalatably insulting.
It invokes an ambiguity which borders on inflammatory ethnocentrism.
From this discussion it is clear that part of the enlightenment philosophy was instrumental in codifying and institutionalising both the scientific and popular European perceptions of the human race.
The works of Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Trevor-Roper, show how ‘reason’ and ‘civilisation’ were synonymised with ‘white’ people and how ‘unreason’ and ‘savagery’ have been conveniently located among the non-whites.
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 sums up Williams’ thesis:
“The reason for slavery is not moral, but economic circumstances.
“They relate not to vice and virtue, but to production.”
As Williams also puts it:
“Slavery was not born of racism: Rather, racism was born out of slavery.”
We now see through the veil of hypocrisy.
Education, media and the whiteman’s version of religion were consciously crafted lies to manipulate global perceptions about Africans, the beasts of burden.
That is why I wish to expose the intellectual naivety of one of our own, Okot p Bitek who accuses the missionaries of having no inkling about the people they sought to convert.
This is what he says in his famous essay, Convert from What?
“The Christian missionaries were pathetically ignorant about the ‘thing’ they wished, worked so hard, shed blood and even died to convert the African from.
“They never stopped for a single moment to ask themselves ‘What is this that we want to convert the African from?
“Did the African have some principles, some worldview, some social philosophy on which he organised his life?
“Why had the fellow to be bribed, wooed, enslaved, and imprisoned to forego his philosophy of life?”
Let me say to my fellow African and to you too, that there is neither irony nor ignorance here.
Missionaries used Christianity and Islam as tools of ideological conquest.
And they distorted deliberately.
The point is we should stop collaborating with them against our own interests.