When one thinks of the western world and how it has come to be, is the sweat, tears, and blood of the African diaspora person thought of? When one is stripped of their culture and humanity and forced to do labor how can one truly gain freedom? Colonization can be describe as taking over ones territory and making it yours and in the process; forcing ones practices, belief Colonization of the African diaspora person was a dehumanizing process that damaged not only the colonized but the colonizer as well. Colonization of the African person resulted in oppression and a sought for liberation. Freire’s notion of liberation can be described as a “painful child birth”. Liberation according to Freire can be a level of freedom through thought and/or …show more content…
They must realize their worth and their worth. Colonization became a mean in which to keep people In their place, so what happens when one steps out of this place that they were put in. through the process of colonization the colonizer becomes then less then human, it is up to the oppress to educate and inform the colonizer how they are not helping or civilizing the oppressed but is dehumanizing them and taking away their identities and culture. I would like to say that everyone has his own Negritude. There has been too much theorizing about Negritude. I have tried not to overdo it, out of a sense of modesty. But if someone asks me what my conception of Negritude is, I answer that above all it is a concrete rather than an abstract coming to consciousness. What I have been telling you about-the atmosphere in which we lived, an atmosphere of assimilation in which Negro people were ashamed of themselves-has great importance. We lived in an atmosphere of rejection, and we developed an inferiority complex. I have always thought that the black man was searching for his identity. And it has seemed to me that if what we want is to establish this identity, then we must have a concrete consciousness of what we are - that is, of the first fact of our lives: that we are black; that we were black and have a …show more content…
They see what they are doing as helping and contributing to the success of the underdeveloped societies. Colonization brought modernization with it. This process ‘justifies’ colonization is the colonizers eyes. The European way is the only way to be in the colonizers eyes and civilization translate into modernization, if on is not modern in the way that Europe is then they are not civilized. “Certainly, because the relationships between consciousness and reality are extremely complex. That's why it is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize
In Brent Hayes Edwards essay, “ The Use of Diaspora”, the term “African Diaspora” is critically explored for its intellectual history of the word. Edward’s reason for investigating the “intellectual history of the term” rather than a general history is because the term “is taken up at a particular conjecture in black scholarly discourse to do a particular kind of epistemological work” (Edwards 9). At the beginning of his essay Edwards mentions the problem with the term, in terms of how it is loosely it is being used which he brings confusion to many scholars. As an intellectual Edwards understands “the confusing multiplicity” the term has been associated with by the works of other intellectuals who either used the coined or used the term African diaspora. As an articulate scholar, Edwards hopes to “excavate a historicized and politicized sense of diaspora” through his own work in which he focuses “on a black cultural politics in the interwar, particularly in the transnational circuits of exchange between the Harlem Renaissance and pre-Negritude Fran cophone activity in the France and West Africa”(8). Throughout his essay Edwards logically attacks the problem giving an informative insight of the works that other scholars have contributed to the term Edwards traces back to the intellectual history of the African diaspora in an eloquent manner.
Identity is not something that you born with it is the function of location that can be shifted. Identity can be explore by language, knowledge and also be adopted by the culture. James Baldwin and Zora Neal Hurston are the greatest African-American writers explain the term identity of blacks from their different perspectives. James Baldwin write various essays about African-Americans to convey the meaning of Identity through language however, Zora Neal Hurston defined identity of African-Americans by the term of knowledge. She also acknowledges that, if Black people does not have any language to identify there self’s, and have lack of knowledge, then why do Master depend on the slave.
Then, when faced with the possibility of a revolt or decolonization, the colonist will bring out their reason of colonization - to improve the condition of the colonized land and the colonized people. The colonists reason that if they leave the country, it will go back to the Dark Age (Fanon, 15).
During the Cold War and twentieth century there were several processes that influenced colonization and decolonization. To be examined is what the characters reveal about the colonization processes, the involvement of industrialization, the change in identities of the characters, and lastly the social and political changes during the cold war will be discussed.
Criminalization is a term with many connections to smaller terms such as racialization, discrimination, marginalization, and oppression. This term is also connected to smaller terms as well as factors such as social location, age, race, sexuality, and religion. Overtime, this term has evolved into a concept encompassing many different social categories and inflated by many micro-aggressions controlled by normativity and the status quo. It is through a critical perspective and an anti-oppressive lens that I will discuss the evolution of racialization and criminalization in connection to minorities as well as its connection to the prison system and how it relates to crime and violence in Canadian society.
The colonizers also had a paternal mindset towards the colonies. Meaning, they looked at the colonies as children who were unable to make decisions for themselves and they should be treated as unequals. We can see all of these idea come through in the Congo when it was under the rule of King Leopold II. Sekou Toure, a West African Nationalist explained, “...[they] tried to strip us of our responsibility in conducting our own affairs and convince us that our civilization was nothing less than savagery” (African Imperialism Primary Source Docs Packet Doc 2). Here we see that the colonizers took away all power from the natives and treated them disrespect and as if they were not even human. In order to gain land they would trick the colonies and made them think the Europeans had special powers. This process is explained by George Washington Williams, who was a black American and historian when he writes, “... and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand, the black brother was
After the end of the Second World War in which, to Britain, it was nearly a repeat of the First World War that Britain had experienced the same things as the aftermaths. The war put severe strains on her economic resources as well as the undermining of her export markets. Even though Britain had won the war, the impacts on Britain afterwards were not always positive, in that, as everyone know, war created tragedy. It did not make any good to anybody, even the winner. The victors also had to spend expenditures on reconstructing the destructive infrastructures. Money was not the only main factor that was primarily used to rearrange the whole society, but it took time as well. After the war, a certain country may have to lose something she did not intended to like in case of the Britain that though she won the Second World War, unexpectedly, she had to give freedom to her colonials. Why was that?
Aldous Huxley, an English novelist, explores the implications of the dehumanization of characters through the satiric portrayal of the modern world. He complies his thoughts and opinions in a novel written in 1930 but set in AD 2540, Brave New World. He utilizes psychological analysis of the characters in the World State and their interactions with the Savage Reserve characters to depict his personal contradicting beliefs following the creation of the assembly line by Henry Ford. Huxley believes that the assembly line is a threatening discovery to the individuality of people. The views of the World State juxtapose those of Huxley, who embodies the character of the savage John, as he verbally threatens the modern world’s view upon birth
Moving on, not only does Brave New World shine a red light on the controlling nature of authoritarian and dictatorial governments, it is also points a finger towards our own destructive tendencies which impact the human world more than anything else. Although in Huxley’s novel, all the power and control lies on the shoulders of the “omnipotent—albeit benevolent--world state,” it seems that this totalitarianism and despotism is not what really causes the dehumanization described in the book. It seems that we can reach this humanly debased form by solely following our free human choice. If the future offers us what we all want- health, safety, money, pleasure- than what will stop us in achieving it? We can see that humanity is already in some ways heading towards Huxley’s fictional world.
... nations of the time saw their expansion and imperialism as a profoundly nobly pursuit. The native people of Asia and Africa were considered to be savages and uncultured. The influence of European ideals and ways of life would, in the minds of their conquerors, help these people achieve better lives and a lead them to a better existence.
"L'èmotion est nègre, la raision est héllène." (emotion is Negro, reason is Greek) "Negritude is the totality of the cultural values of the Black world."
Freedom is a human value that has inspired many poets, politicians, spiritual leaders, and philosophers for centuries. Poets have rhapsodized about freedom for centuries. Politicians present the utopian view that a perfect society would be one where we all live in freedom, and spiritual leaders teach that life is a spiritual journey leading the soul to unite with God, thus achieving ultimate freedom and happiness. In addition, we have the philosophers who perceive freedom as an inseparable part of our nature, and spend their lives questioning the concept of freedom and attempting to understand it (Transformative Dialogue, n.d.).
The African Diaspora has been interpreted in many different ways. From the readings and discussions in class, I have come to a better understanding of what I believe it to be. The African Diaspora has had many different components to it that make it such a complex thing to understand. Three important components are the shared experience of struggle, self-identification versus external identification, and the formation of a community. Along with those concepts are political and economic reasons that help to comprehend the African Diaspora in greater depth.
While Collins does a succinct job of examining the economic and political factors that heightened colonization, he fails to hone in on the mental warfare that was an essential tool in creating African division and ultimately European conquest. Not only was the systematic dehumanization tactics crippling for the African society, but also, the system of racial hierarchy created the division essential for European success. The spillover effects of colonialism imparted detrimental affects on the African psyche, ultimately causing many, like Shanu, to, “become victims to the white man’s greed.”
An important psychological shift advocated by the Black Conscious Movement was the redefinition of blackness. No longer would Africans accept the negative label of ‘non-white’, they refused to be regarded as non-persons but demanded to be called positively as black. This definition of ‘black’ was not race or class exclusive rather it sought to incorporate all people who were discriminated against and denied access to white privileges under the oppressive apartheid regime. The definition of blackness is actually somewhat complex, the path to understanding it leads to certain directions. First off, that being black was a mental attitude, not just a matter of skin pigmentation. Secondly, by merely acknowledging that one is black already sets oneself along the road of emancipation.