We all know that injustices have been committed on the continent of Africa—namely the Transatlantic Slave Trade—but the media generally likes to portray Westerners as washing the African blood off their hands after that point. The uncomfortable truth is that the colonial era came next, which arguably did greater damage to the cultures of this beautiful continent than the slave trade. With the colonial powers came a racist attitude which oppressed, brainwashed, manipulated, slaughtered, and downplayed the African people, so that even after declaring independence, many of these nations have to contend with these stereotypes and attitudes in the post-colonial era at home and abroad. For everyone who doubts that the white man was that hard on Africa, I offer this list, that we may never forget the deep-seated bigotry which Africans continue to struggle against as they rebuild their cultures and civilizations from the ashes of colonialism.
1. Ian Smith
Ian Smith, 1997
“To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.”
Ian Smith was the white prime minister of Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) who led the predominantly white government to declare independence from Britain in 1965. He is one of the most controversial figures in modern African history, seen as both a man of vision and an unapologetic racist. His policies and actions are criticized for leading to the deaths of thousands. This quote is laden with irony, since Smith is displaying the grotesqueness of the colonial attitude while trying to exalt it.
2. Thomas F. Dixon, Jr.
Thomas F. Dixon Jr., 1905
“Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa–rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He lived as his fathers lived–stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!”
Oddly enough, this quote is wrongly attributed to Charles Darwin and used mostly by hardline creationists (to discredit the father of evolution as a racist) and white supremacists (to say that such a scientific figure backs up their racist doctrines). Both are wrong. This quote is taken from a book called The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Klu Klux Klan, which was book two of a trilogy and served as the inspiration for the notoriously racist 1915 silent movie “Birth of a Nation.” Much thanks to Duane Browning for digging up the real source.
3. Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi, 1896
“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”
Wait, Gandhi?? Yep, the man who broke the British power in India was quite racist against black South Africans (derogatorily called “kaffirs”—a term on-par with “niggers” in offensiveness). He served as an attorney in British South Africa before returning to fight for Indian independence and, despite the similarities in the colonial situations, was never able to see the native South Africans as equal to himself.
4. Alain Davesne
Alain Davesne, 1933
“Les dialectes Africains ne sont pas des langues de civilisation.” (“African dialects are not civilization languages.”)
This quote typifies an attitude which we, as an organization, are combatting. The reigning colonial attitude, particularly in French-controlled Africa, was that the indigenous languages were useless and should be forgotten. The idea has persisted even into the post-colonial era, and Pan-Africanists are still working to decolonize their traditional languages.
5. L. Ron Hubbard
“Illiterate cultures do not survive and they are not very high. The natives of the tribe of the Bugga-Bugga-Booga-Boogas down in Lower Bugga-Wugga Booga-Woog are mostly no longer with us, or they are around waving red flags today and revolting against their central government.“
L. Ron Hubbard, 1964
Regardless of your views on Scientology, Elron was a flaming racist of pretty much every ethnic culture than his own. His thoughts on Africa are particularly putrid.
6. James Watson
[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.
James Watson, 2007
We should probably all know the name James Watson of “Watson and Crick”, the co-discoverers of DNA. It would be convenient to have a scientific role model who wasn’t hateful outside the laboratory, but Watson has been known to make provocative comments about women, obese people, and Africans. Watson has continued to stand behind his “studies” that Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, despite the geniuses who come out of the continent.
7. Hugh Trevor-Roper
Perhaps, in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness, like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness is not a subject for history.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, 1963
Africans are still pissed off about this lecture, delivered at the University of Sussex, and with good reason. This was an academic mind in higher education, a history professor, teaching that cultures without European involvement had no history even though Africans were in the process of declaring themselves independent while he spoke.
8. Georg Hegel
At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit… What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History.
Georg Hegel, 1830
Yeah, all those African empires that flourished while Europe was groveling in the Dark Ages aren’t history.
9. King Leopold II of Belgium
Evangelize the niggers so that they stay forever in submission to the white colonialists, so they never revolt against the restraints they are undergoing. Recite every day — ‘happy are those who are weeping because the kingdom of God is for them.’ Convert always the blacks by using the whip. Keep their women in nine months of submission to work freely for us. […] Teach the niggers to forget their heroes and to adore only ours. Never present a chair to a black that comes to visit you. Don’t give him more than one cigarette. Never invite him to dinner even if he gives you a chicken every time you arrive at his house.
King Leopold II of Belgium, 1883
King Leopold II of Belgium should be recognized as one of the worst human beings in history. His exploitation of the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) as a private venture for ivory and rubber led to him extracting a fortune from the Congolese people and land. There were human rights abuses under his regime that led to the deaths of roughly 10 million Congolese laborers—about half of the population. Many others were mutilated by the severing of a hand when quotas were not met (including children).
A Belgian missionary posing with a Congolese mutilation victim who didn’t work hard enough.
This passage is an excerpt of a speech Leopold gave in 1883 to Belgian missionaries. Leopold was pretty effective at keeping the atrocities under wraps and out of the international eye—the only reason we have the text of this speech is because a nurse named Moukouani Mukwani Bukoko discovered it in a Bible he bought in 1935.
