Racism, a vile form of collectivism

 What unifies black people is a racial ideology that denies their individuality

By Tunde Obadina

Racism is grouping people according to their genetic origin or physical appearance and assuming that members of each group share common traits, such as behaviour, intelligence, and capacity. Stemming from this is the notion that one group is inferior or superior to other groups. Racism is a way of viewing the world.

Racists are not only individuals who view members of other groups contemptuously, but also those who view them favourably. Declaring that black people are angels is as racist as castigating them as evil. Racism is a variant of collectivism–it is a denial of individuality. As the novelist Ayn Rand observed, “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.”

The only two traits blacks have in common are, firstly, the skin complexion that defines blackness and secondly, being subjected to racial ideologies and the actions of others that stem from such beliefs. Racial ideologies are ideas that attribute certain innate characteristic to being a black person. But black people do not share common history, psychology, culture, language, intelligence, behaviour, and any other characteristics associated with individuals. By the same token, there is no such thing as white history, psychology, culture, language, intelligence, behaviour, etc. We are all individuals, each with unique sets of characteristics.

We can trace the origins of modern racial ideologies and racism in relation to black people to the transatlantic slave trade. From the outset the despicable business involved both white and black traders, but the human trafficking came to be presented in simple racial terms. In the early stages of European occupation of the so-called New World, slavery was not the preserve of shackled Africans. Large numbers of poor whites were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to work on plantations, mines and as servants under conditions akin to slavery. Plantation owners initially looked to the indigenous Indian population for unpaid labour, then white convicts or indentured labour and then black slaves.

It was the relative cheapness and better health of Africans, and therefore the preference of plantation owners for them, that led to the ending of the trade in poor whites and propelled demand for Africans. The Afro-American historian, William DuBois, described this transition as the replacement of “a caste of condition by a caste of race.”

The close association of slavery with black people precipitated a racial ideology to rationalise the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas and Caribbean. This endeavour intensified after European powers colonized large parts of Africa. The second half of the 19th century saw a proliferation of publications seeking to justify the subjugation of black people. “Divines and politicians, physiologists and scientists exhausted the resources of their intellect in the endeavour to prove the Negro only quasi-human, an excellent animal, but an animal — born to serve a superior race,” wrote West-Indian born African nationalist, Edward Blyden, in his book published in 1908.

We can divide Western ideas about Africans into two schools of thought. First, there was the notion that blacks are inherently inferior because of belonging to a sub-human species or condemnation by God to subservience. Sir Richard Burton, acclaimed by the British colonial office as a reliable Africa expert, contended that once an African reached adulthood “his mental development is arrested, and thenceforth he grows backwards instead of forward.”

The other current of western thought about Africans adopted an evolutionist perspective. According to this view, though Africans are inferior, they can become civilised and achieve equality with whites by emulating the superior race. The assumption was that all human societies develop along the same path of progression with European civilisation at the pinnacle stage. Colonial conquest of non-white peoples was rationalised as a manifestation of Christian obligation to civilise primitive peoples. Lord Frederick Lugard, first colonial governor of Nigeria, outlined the white man’s burden in his book ‘The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa’ published in 1922. He wrote that the passing away of the “picturesque methods of the past” may seem regrettable but nevertheless Europe had selflessly brought progress to Africa, “we must admit that the locomotive is a substantial improvement on head borne transport, and the modern van is more efficient than the camel.” Africans should be grateful that colonialization brought the mind and method of Europe to bear on the people of the dark continent, he declared. “However strong a sympathy we may feel for the aspirations of African progressives,” wrote Lugard, “sane counsellors will advise them to recognise their present limitations. At no time in the world’s history has there been so cordial a hand held out to Africa…or a keener desire to assist the African in the path of progress.”

For black people, the racial ideology is arguably the most devastating legacy of slavery and colonialism. It was not the patently absurd claim that blacks are naturally inferior that was most disturbing. It was the contention that black people are backward and should be thankful to whites for bringing them civilisation. The claim that Africans are apes is offensive but easily dismissed. But the idea that Africans contributed little or nothing to world civilisation and owe their material and intellectual gains to Europe’s civilising mission was far more troubling.

The allegations of black inferiority transfixed pre-independence African intellectuals. They sought to debunk the claim that whites are evolutionarily more advanced than blacks. They ransacked history looking for black equivalents of Newton and Columbus to disprove the assertion that Africa was without a history before contact with Europe. They highlighted the role of black people in ancient civilisations, including Egypt, and defended African traditions and customs. Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote in his book ‘Renascent Africa’ published in 1937, that the mental emancipation of Africans required them being taught about their glorious past and their contributions to history. Africans must be told that their descendants discovered iron and that while Europe slumbered during ‘the dark ages’ a great civilisation flourished on the banks of the Niger, extending from the salt mines of Terghazza in Morocco, to Lake Chad, right through to the Atlantic. “Narrate to him the lore of Ethiopia, of Ghana, Melle, Mellestine, Songhay,” wrote Azikiwe. Africans should relish with the rest of the world that while Oxford and Cambridge were gestating, the University of Sankore in Timbuktu took in scholars from all over the Moslem world, wrote the man who becomes Nigeria’s first president.

Highlighting the existence of past great African civilisations disproved the proposition that Africans had no history. But the fact that in 500 BC Nok civilisation in central Nigeria used furnaces to smelt iron was of little relevance to the condition of Africans and their descendants in the decades since the fifteenth century. The most disconcerting aspect of the racial ideology for black people is the depiction of the place of their race in the process of globalisation that began with Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World in 1492. The notion that blacks contributed little or nothing to the great advancement of human civilisation resulting from the mass movements of people and capital across continents and countries over the past five centuries is painful. The idea that the black race has merely been part of the fodder used by a supreme white race to reshape the world is humiliating for black people who look to history for self-esteem.

It is the rejection of white triumphalism that has, at least in part, driven the demand for the dismantling of statues and other monuments celebrating individuals who personified white western hegemony. It is not simply that these white icons, such as slave traders and anti-black politicians, were unique in their acts of injustice that make them abhorrent to black people and other opponents of racism. It is that they represent the continuing racial ideology.