Yes, there are many examples of racism burnished with bogus ambiguity. The example that has always stuck in my head is Elmina Castle in the Central Region of Ghana. There is a plaque on the site which basically says that colonialism was bad, but also good because it introduced Africans to Christ, new crops, western education, and, best of all, Europeans put the brakes on African "tribalism" and, thus, thankfully for the savages, Africans were forced to stop fighting one another. Or Boston College where my wife did her first of two advanced degrees in theology. A fellow graduate student from Central Africa (I think), insisted that she (my wife) must have a "Christian name." I also have in mind accounts of missionary schools that imposed European names and/or European languages, sometimes with physical violence. Here is an example of imposed Euro names from Long Walk to Freedom cited in:
Indigenous Peoples' Wisdom and Power: Affirming Our Knowledge Through Narratives (p. 234)
This thread, I think, was a response to an earlier post written in the NY Times by a Jewish scholar who wants to make the case that missionary schools weren't so bad because they produced anti-colonial leaders. I won't rehash my critique of that here, but I do find it offensive (and false). Now I might be wrong, but I doubt that Jewish scholars are inclined to claiming that Nazi institutions weren't all bad because, after all, Jews eventually got their own state. (Slightly aside, it seems to me that Jews aren't blamed for their oppression even though some Jews cooperated with Nazis. Africans, on the other hand, don't get the same benefit of the historiographical doubt).
To my thinking what Europeans did to Africans in the "New World" and in Africans in Africa are impossible to disentangle. These were interconnected processes. And, yes, Islam is also problematic. I am thinking of my Fulani friend who boasts that her people have been Muslims for so long that they no longer know their indigenous names and she dismisses indigenous religion as "backwards."
We won't agree on "complexity" on this thread (and that is ok). I doubt that the Namibians slaughtered by Germans gave much thought to complexity. In some cases, too many cases I fear, "complexity" is a scholarly conceit that obscures more than it explains or, rather, explains the surface of things whilst missing the deeper pattern of uncomplicated brutality. As far as I can tell, people who resist their oppressors don't waste much time pondering the "complexity" of their condition. What they did far more often is carefully assess the words and deeds of their oppressors, looked out for contradiction, and astutely exploit those contradictions to press the case for freedom, justice and equality. The Bostonian abolitionist David Walker's scathing critique of white slave-owning Christians comes to mind. Or the prophetess Kimpa Vita of Kongo who remixed Portuguese Christianity to create a revolutionary religion of African redemption.
kzs
By the way, how can you possibly say that colonialism imposed European names upon Africans? Most Africans have African names; some chose (as did my grandfathers on both sides of my family0; yet, as you and your Nigerian wife knows, they continued to use their own ethnic names; where they did, chose (or have imposed upon them a European, or, biblical names--Islam is another matter), they, or their parents, chose names that reflected their own aspirations about their children's future. What happened in the diasporas, is, of course another matter to be sure. My father, Moses, an East German trained, Marxist agronomist, loved baptist hymns, and which we sung at his funeral. So what? It's complex, brother; real complex.
As to the Gestapo (if that is the appropriate analogy; I take you mean Nazism, as the Gestapo was the secret police), I'd like to know what you know about the "Jewish" scholarship of Nazism to make that statement, at least about Nazism, and that it was not complex, unless you mean that there can be no morally complex responses to it-- that it is an unmitigated evil, etc. Surely, a point is that colonialism was complex as were its legacies; altruism, or otherwise, has nothing to do with it. That Nazism is an evil is beyond dispute; that it was complex is also not beyond dispute, but is this the point of analogy that you want to proceed with?
As for funding, it is not complicated. In so long as we are dependent on European funds to produce scholarly knowledge about Africa, we are compromised (and colonized).
kzs
On Jan 2, 2014, at 9:19 PM, Pablo Idahosa wrote:
Brother Kwame,
I realize that short statements and responses do not make for subtlety and nuance, and I would not want you to write an essay here, no more than I intend to write one in response! However, when you say that we ought not to find in colonialism complexity and ambiguity, I take it you mean that it is not complex because it was imposed and often acted with brutality, even genocidally in a number of cases; imposed norms and values that were not endogenous to Africa (i.e. Eurocentric); left pernicious political, social and, economic legacies that Africans continue to live and wrestle with. I feel that ambiguity is another matter, as here I take it you mean a standpoint about colonialism's processes and institutions and their cultural religious cognates, like missions.
By the way, how can you possibly say that colonialism imposed European names upon Africans? Most Africans have African names; some chose (as did my grandfathers on both sides of my family0; yet, as you and your Nigerian wife knows, they continued to use their own ethnic names; where they did, chose (or have imposed upon them a European, or, biblical names--Islam is another matter), they, or their parents, chose names that reflected their own aspirations about their children's future. What happened in the diasporas, is, of course another matter to be sure. My father, Moses, an East German trained, Marxist agronomist, loved baptist hymns, and which we sung at his funeral. So what? It's complex, brother; real complex.
As to the Gestapo (if that is the appropriate analogy; I take you mean Nazism, as the Gestapo was the secret police), I'd like to know what you know about the "Jewish" scholarship of Nazism to make that statement, at least about Nazism, and that it was not complex, unless you mean that there can be no morally complex responses to it-- that it is an unmitigated evil, etc. Surely, a point is that colonialism was complex as were its legacies; altruism, or otherwise, has nothing to do with it. That Nazism is an evil is beyond dispute; that it was complex is also not beyond dispute, but is this the point of analogy that you want to proceed with?
Finally, we can or we can choose not to be shackled by funding; it's a circular, imprisoning argument, as everything way say or do is taken in evidence against that which we say that, to you, appears to be "western", or at least a double consciousness. What would not be Eurocentric that might be sufficient in a a discussion about the complexities of colonialism?
Best,
Kwame Zulu Shabazz
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies
Department of Social Sciences
203-A Coltrane Hall
Winston-Salem State Univ.
601 S. MLK Jr. Dr.
Winston-Salem, NC 27110
Phone: 336-750-8940
Email: shabazzkz@wssu.edu
==
"Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear." Paul Robeson
Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies
Department of Social Sciences
203-A Coltrane Hall
Winston-Salem State Univ.
601 S. MLK Jr. Dr.
Winston-Salem, NC 27110
Phone: 336-750-8940
Email: shabazzkz@wssu.edu
==
"Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear." Paul Robeson
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