Page 16 - Afrika Must Unite

C H A P T E R ONE

T H E A F R I C A N B A C K G R O U N D

C o l o n i a l i s m and its attitudes die hard, like the attitudes of
slavery, whose hangover still dominates behaviour in certain
parts of the W estern hemisphere.
Before slavery was practised in the New W orld, there was no
special denigration of Africans. Travellers to this continent
described the inhabitants in their records with the natural
curiosity and examination to be expected of individuals coming
from other environments. It was when the slave trade and
slavery began to develop the ghastly proportions that made
them the base of that capital accumulation which assisted the
rise of W estern industrialism, that a new attitude towards
Africans emerged. ‘Slavery in the Caribbean has been too
narrowly identified with the m an of colour. A racial twist has
thereby been given to what is basically an economic pheno­
menon. Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the
consequence of slavery.’1 W ith this racial twist was invented the
myth o f‘colour’ inferiority. This myth supported the subsequent
rape of our continent with its despoliation and continuing
exploitation under the advanced forms of colonialism and
imperialism.
It was during the period that has come to be called ‘the
opening up of Africa’ that there began to spring up a school of
what some fervid African nationalists have dubbed ‘imperialist
anthropologists’, whose ranks extend down to the present time.
Their works are aimed at proving the inferiority of the African.
Anything of value that has been uncovered in Africa is attributed
by them to the influence of some allegedly superior group within
the continent or to people from outside Africa. The idea that
1 Dr Eric Williams: Capitalism and Slavery, University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill 1944, p. 7.