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oAgainst sentimental pessimist narratives of Africa
This is a long dump of some thoughts I’ve been having for a while.
Once when i was a 19-year old college student in the US, a white schoolmate sneered at me when i told him where i was from.
“No offense, Africa has never been great”, he said. I didn’t have the knowledge to respond to him at the time, something which has bothered me in the time since then. That’s what is post is about. Africa is discussed as a scapegoated as a “dark continent”, associated in the imagination of many as a place to do with suffering, poverty, war, disease etc. Obviously this is an image that arose because of its domination by foreign powers, and the continued political and economic problems of the states that came out of that era of political domination.
The facts of this reality as well as the ideological discourse of racism that arose along with European domination has solidified this image of Africa in the popular conscious. It is propagated and perpetuated not just by non-Africans but also by many Africans as well especially outside of Africa.
And yet, i would like to offer the additional context that is necessary to cure oneself of this image. That context is as follows:
The negative conditions that are uniquely associated with Africa today have belonged to humans everywhere for the vast majority of the history of human civilization.
Poverty, war, disease, superstition, exploitation and domination is the history of the entire planet. History books about anywhere on earth will tell you this.
When Julius Caesar wrote about England, he wrote of savages who painted themselves blue before they fought. Europe was full of warring tribes that were called barbarians and stigmatized by Romans and that fought and were dominated by them for 300 years. The same goes for Asian Minor.
When the Roman Empire collapsed and the relative political and economic stability it provided, Europe fell into war and constant turmoil for the next 1500 years. These processes are what provided the modern nation states that we know of today, many of which would go on to dominate the whole world after they came up with *capitalism*, an invention that enabled them to project power in a way no one else could compete with. That’s the only thing that made northwestern Europe special. And it only began 500 years ago. That’s all “white supremacy” is. The ideology that came up to explain this accident of history. And anywhere in the world, wherever people have developed an innovation that gives them an advantage and allows them to project power at the expense of other groups, they come up with a narrative about how they are better smarter stronger more moral etc etc. that’s all it is.
And yet, guess the percentage of French people that could read and write in 1800. Less than 20%. The streets of Paris and London flowed with shit and they had no idea it had anything to do with disease. The best doctors at the time literally believed bad blood were what caused diseases and would bleed their patients, hastening their deaths. They believed witches were responsible for bad fortunes. And yet their propaganda would have you believe they were always above such folly.
Poverty and exploitation has been the lot of more than 99% of humans that lived anywhere. Anyone that thinks white peoole were just living like kings while African slaves were working in the fields of Virginia should read about indentured servitude. All the colonists of Virginia were 12 year old beggar boys and girls on the streets of London and Bristol who would have had an ear cut off for stealing a loaf of bread but instead were shipped off against their will to Virginia. Their average life span was less than 10 years because they were worked to death and could be traded and bartered. All the sailors and soldiers of the British empire were press ganged and forced into service and whipped to ensure their diligence, executed when they tried to run away, which they did plenty. The death rate of the sailors who went on slaving expeditions was something like 50%. Africa was a death sentence and some of those slavers literally had to be kidnapped after being tricked into getting drunk. It was misery all the way down. All of this only started to change in the 19th century. Even then, read Charles dickens. Oliver Twist was just how the average Englishman lived until the next senseless war was declared by their inbred queen. The proud “masters of the world” that northwest europe thought itself to be was something that only happened in a brief spell of time compared to human history. The traders who went to Africa and Asia were half-starved and were at the mercy of the kings of Africa and Asia, not cold calculating imperialists of the late 19th century.
War - Africa has been racked by civil war and the way it’s talked about you would think that’s the only place that happens. How did the nation of France come to be? Through everyone agreeing and having a party? Hell no. What about Germany? Italy? Mexico? China? Colombia? Japan? The United States? Russia? Rome? Persia? Turkey? Vietnam? Cambodia? India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? It was always bloody. Genocide, war, massacres, drownings. Read the history of the French Revolution. Read about the wars in China you’ve never heard about which had a casual body count of 150 million people. The processes of political centralization and state formation in Africa may have been artificially started by European colonization and are still ongoing, but guess what it happened elsewhere too. It’s only a matter of when they happened. So enough with the woe-is-us were the only victims narratives. It’s one thing for the racists to perpetuate time, it’s another thing for us to do so.
Yes, the slave trade was a unique evil. Yet the history of the world has been full of barbarism, this one just ended up touching Africans uniquely. What it gave us also uniquely is the lie of racial ideology and the attendant belief by some people that they are better. But that’s all it is - a belief helped by convenient ignorance or all I’ve said above. The history of the world is long. Civilizations come and go. Empires rise and fall. Turks, mongols, Mughals, Romans, Han Chinese, the Portuguese, the British were whose empire never saw the sun set (who have now ended up as Americas poor little b**ch) Egypt, Alexander’s Greece, the Zulu, all came, all faded into oblivion except for people who study these things.knowledge f this and a zen attitude is required if we will resist this disempowering narratives about ourselves. Our time will come, and it will go again. The random ebbs and flows of history, even with the attendant pain and suffering says absolutely nothing about our inherent worth as human beings. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
#local
source
This is a long dump of some thoughts I’ve been having for a while.
Once when i was a 19-year old college student in the US, a white schoolmate sneered at me when i told him where i was from.
“No offense, Africa has never been great”, he said. I didn’t have the knowledge to respond to him at the time, something which has bothered me in the time since then. That’s what is post is about. Africa is discussed as a scapegoated as a “dark continent”, associated in the imagination of many as a place to do with suffering, poverty, war, disease etc. Obviously this is an image that arose because of its domination by foreign powers, and the continued political and economic problems of the states that came out of that era of political domination.
The facts of this reality as well as the ideological discourse of racism that arose along with European domination has solidified this image of Africa in the popular conscious. It is propagated and perpetuated not just by non-Africans but also by many Africans as well especially outside of Africa.
And yet, i would like to offer the additional context that is necessary to cure oneself of this image. That context is as follows:
The negative conditions that are uniquely associated with Africa today have belonged to humans everywhere for the vast majority of the history of human civilization.
Poverty, war, disease, superstition, exploitation and domination is the history of the entire planet. History books about anywhere on earth will tell you this.
When Julius Caesar wrote about England, he wrote of savages who painted themselves blue before they fought. Europe was full of warring tribes that were called barbarians and stigmatized by Romans and that fought and were dominated by them for 300 years. The same goes for Asian Minor.
When the Roman Empire collapsed and the relative political and economic stability it provided, Europe fell into war and constant turmoil for the next 1500 years. These processes are what provided the modern nation states that we know of today, many of which would go on to dominate the whole world after they came up with *capitalism*, an invention that enabled them to project power in a way no one else could compete with. That’s the only thing that made northwestern Europe special. And it only began 500 years ago. That’s all “white supremacy” is. The ideology that came up to explain this accident of history. And anywhere in the world, wherever people have developed an innovation that gives them an advantage and allows them to project power at the expense of other groups, they come up with a narrative about how they are better smarter stronger more moral etc etc. that’s all it is.
And yet, guess the percentage of French people that could read and write in 1800. Less than 20%. The streets of Paris and London flowed with shit and they had no idea it had anything to do with disease. The best doctors at the time literally believed bad blood were what caused diseases and would bleed their patients, hastening their deaths. They believed witches were responsible for bad fortunes. And yet their propaganda would have you believe they were always above such folly.
Poverty and exploitation has been the lot of more than 99% of humans that lived anywhere. Anyone that thinks white peoole were just living like kings while African slaves were working in the fields of Virginia should read about indentured servitude. All the colonists of Virginia were 12 year old beggar boys and girls on the streets of London and Bristol who would have had an ear cut off for stealing a loaf of bread but instead were shipped off against their will to Virginia. Their average life span was less than 10 years because they were worked to death and could be traded and bartered. All the sailors and soldiers of the British empire were press ganged and forced into service and whipped to ensure their diligence, executed when they tried to run away, which they did plenty. The death rate of the sailors who went on slaving expeditions was something like 50%. Africa was a death sentence and some of those slavers literally had to be kidnapped after being tricked into getting drunk. It was misery all the way down. All of this only started to change in the 19th century. Even then, read Charles dickens. Oliver Twist was just how the average Englishman lived until the next senseless war was declared by their inbred queen. The proud “masters of the world” that northwest europe thought itself to be was something that only happened in a brief spell of time compared to human history. The traders who went to Africa and Asia were half-starved and were at the mercy of the kings of Africa and Asia, not cold calculating imperialists of the late 19th century.
War - Africa has been racked by civil war and the way it’s talked about you would think that’s the only place that happens. How did the nation of France come to be? Through everyone agreeing and having a party? Hell no. What about Germany? Italy? Mexico? China? Colombia? Japan? The United States? Russia? Rome? Persia? Turkey? Vietnam? Cambodia? India, Pakistan and Bangladesh? It was always bloody. Genocide, war, massacres, drownings. Read the history of the French Revolution. Read about the wars in China you’ve never heard about which had a casual body count of 150 million people. The processes of political centralization and state formation in Africa may have been artificially started by European colonization and are still ongoing, but guess what it happened elsewhere too. It’s only a matter of when they happened. So enough with the woe-is-us were the only victims narratives. It’s one thing for the racists to perpetuate time, it’s another thing for us to do so.
Yes, the slave trade was a unique evil. Yet the history of the world has been full of barbarism, this one just ended up touching Africans uniquely. What it gave us also uniquely is the lie of racial ideology and the attendant belief by some people that they are better. But that’s all it is - a belief helped by convenient ignorance or all I’ve said above. The history of the world is long. Civilizations come and go. Empires rise and fall. Turks, mongols, Mughals, Romans, Han Chinese, the Portuguese, the British were whose empire never saw the sun set (who have now ended up as Americas poor little b**ch) Egypt, Alexander’s Greece, the Zulu, all came, all faded into oblivion except for people who study these things.knowledge f this and a zen attitude is required if we will resist this disempowering narratives about ourselves. Our time will come, and it will go again. The random ebbs and flows of history, even with the attendant pain and suffering says absolutely nothing about our inherent worth as human beings. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
#local
source
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