The recent racial slurs cast on the sculptor Ivor Thom bring to the fore, once again, the lingering effects of racism that was born out of African enslavement by Europeans back in the 15th century. We need to interrogate why racism has been so long lasting, if we are to ever hope to eradicate it. The sources of racism are not only external: some have been interjected into the psyches of peoples the world over, so that even if the external constraints are removed, these internal shackles will deliver their invidious effects. These shackles go to the issue of identity that eventually translates into group worth.
For instance, there was the denudation of the culture of the Africans during slavery and the forcible imposition of practices designed to convince them that they were sub-human. There is no question that Africans opposed these pressures, but the logic of the power differential in the master-slave relationship determined that the early Euro-African “Creole” culture was never going to be positive for the slave. The docile, happy-go-lucky Quashie was the ideal end product that the ruling class wanted to perpetuate.
With the final abolition of slavery in 1838, the colonists were not prepared to leave the construction of a docile work force to chance. Not coincidentally, the British had begun crafting an alternative method of domination to exchange the metal chains holding the colonised people with mental chains for which the people clamoured. The centrepiece would be through “Education” – with a capital “E”. In the words of Lord Macaulay, the chief architect of the scheme, which began in India: the graduates of the schools to be established would be “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” The stated objective would be to create a class of clerks, who would serve the British commercial and governmental interests, but the effect would be to create mental chains for the new elite for which they and the rest of colonised people would clamour.
The strata that aspired to become the elite was taken into newly-established schools and bombarded with “Knowledge”. This classificatory power to define what was “knowledge” was crucial since the rulers could establish a scale of value on all knowledge. This process operated at several levels. Firstly, knowledge would only be transmitted in the language of the hegemon – ensuring that all other concepts from other paradigms had to fit within the procrustean bed of his paradigm. Secondly, Knowledge was to be transmitted only within the approved schools. The fisherman, farmer, yogi, medicine man or village elder is by definition, not “knowledgeable” and thus inferior.
Thirdly, the particular historical experiences of the hegemon is untethered from its parochial origins and universalised as applicable for all places and all times. For the transmission of knowledge, the hegemon’s curriculum is deemed complete i.e. it is universalised as “Education”. The “graduated” colonial is taught that he is “Educated”, period, not that he is educated to keep records. The Bible is “Scripture”; “Literature” is English literature. In fact, one of the ironies of the new dispensation was that “English Literature” as a subject was taught for the first time in India – in England, there were only Latin and Greek.
The successfully imparted or imbibed paradigm creates an identity system for all those within it – including both the ruler and the ruled. Within this system, the identity of the dominated is the negative mirror image of the dominator, of which the latter is akin to perfection, if not perfection itself. The identity-set of the hegemon is the ideal while that of the hegemonised is deficient in all respects. In accepting this inferior identity, the hegemonised individual automatically assumes a low self-conception – and self-esteem – and of his group vis a vis the hegemony. The precursor, of course, to this identity set – was the slave-master relationship created during African slavery.
If we are to abolish racism, we must cleanse its foundations in our “Education”.
