The impact of Colonialism

Simply put, colonialism did not benefit the colonised. 

The empires that owned colonies took extensive measures to exploit their colonies’ resources and manpower for the benefit of their motherland. They collected taxes that met their financial requirements and forced production of raw materials needed for their industries and exports, thereby ruining the colonies’ integrated and self-sustaining economies. When we look at any former colonies as underdeveloped or 3rd world countries when in fact we should be outlining how there is a parasitic correlation between Europe development and their underdevelopment.

The impact of colonialism can be seen on a micro level in our community and macro on the global world stage, irrespective of where you go you will see the oppression and exploitation of those whose skin is of darker pigment.

When you assess the impact of colonialism you must categorise it into several topics: the loss of life, loss of language the economic loss, the loss of freedom, the loss of knowledge, the loss of independence, medical apartheid, lack of governmental institutions, human-rights violations and many others.

Let’s start with the tragic loss of life. 

During the devastating famines of 1876-1879 and 1896-1902 in which 12 to 30 million Indians starved to death. India’s experience is highly relevant for assessing the impact of colonialism, but it does not stand alone.

Under colonial rule, the Congolese population declined by estimates ranging from three million to 13 million between 1885 and 1908 due to widespread disease, a coercive labour regime and endemic brutality. This was led by so-called King Leopold II a mass murderer on a par with Hitler or Stalin. In short, a man of questionable character highlighted by his accusations of having sex with child prostitutes. He commanded his generals to “cut off the heads of the men and hang them in the villages, have sexual intercourse with the native women and hang children and women on crosses.” He ordered the cutting off of heads and hands, flogging them to death, starvation, burning villages and severe punishment for those who did not meet the quota for rubber production.

When the Belgians left there were only three Africans in managerial positions in the Congo's administration and fewer than 30 graduates in the entire country. This is an example of a state that colonist left after exploiting lands and resources and enforcing Eurocentric values that view European values morals & superiority as inevitable and natural. These countries were left purposely underdeveloped with insufficient infrastructure to progress from a socio-economical and political perspective.

The bloodshed didn’t cease when former colonies gained their so-called freedom. During the post-colonial rule, millions of natives have been killed by poor leadership, lack of rights and the rule of law. The disappearance of the colonial masters left behind a void of power, which the local factions tried to fill with military force.

Often a civil war would occur after a coup d'état as a way to replace one despot and their dictatorship with a movement of liberation which enviably becomes corrupted and too becomes a dictatorship. 

The Nigeria–Biafra war that raged between 1967 and 1970 that led to the tragic loss of life of millions of Nigerians is an example of the above but this occurrence was not bespoke to Nigeria but common in many post-colonial states. Due to the colonist style of Western democracy for there to be a change in power requires bloodshed and despots rigged the voting polls leading to their landslide victories e.g. during the 2013 Zimbabwean general elections where Robert Mugabe won 61 per cent of the vote to claim a sixth term as president. In this case here some were unable to cast votes and reports of some being forced to vote for Mugabe.

One of the most troubling loss is the loss of freedom. This can be broken down into a few categories: the loss of political effectiveness, loss of knowledge, loss of language, loss of culture.

Loss of language

When you think of genocide, your mind goes to images of mass killings and enforced starvation. Language erasure can be used to achieve similar goals to that of a more traditional genocide.

I have a tutor that is currently teaching me Yoruba, he describes language as a key to a countries culture. One should all have the right to enjoy one's own culture, profess/practise one's own religion and use one's own language. For many, however, the first language you learn is the language of your oppressor, you learn his culture in his tongue. Perhaps you learn your mother tongue when at home but for most environments outside of the home your oppressor's tongue must be used. 

Many see globalisation as a positive thing, it often tends to hold the colonial languages as beneficial to learn and adopt with many people in poverty-stricken underdeveloped countries can not afford to get enough education to be fully proficient in English. Globalisation leads to tradition and culture being underplayed or erased in order to keep up with the global order.

We tend to see new languages being created as a result of colonialism such as creole languages, pidgin but these are suppressed for the Queens English. As mentioned earlier development/advancement from a socioeconomic perspective is aided by learning your coloniser's tongue often at the expense of forgetting your own. So much so the colonial education system created a "colonial elite" that valued English over their mother tongue leading to Anglo-American dominance of culture and science is leading some African elites to openly embracing English instead of their home language. 

Political impact 

One impact of colonialism was the political centralisation of territories having no central government. As a result, the colonial state indirectly ruled colonies that lacked the capabilities to implement policy outside of the capital city and often had no option for pursuing policy other than coercion. Resulting in many pseudo leaders of cities and tribes outside of the capital which were merely puppets used by colonists. And for those trying to advance themselves or better their community, those who shared the same ideologies who were not looking shake the new status quo they were given privileged access to education and therefore to the administration.

With the same speed by which they came to colonialism they “left”. The decolonisation of Africa took place in the mid-to-late 1950s to 1975, often you will hear 1960 being described as the “The year of Independence” as between January and December of this year 17 sub-Saharan African nations gained their independence from their former European colonists.

George Ayittey outlines in his book Defeating Dictators that during more than half a century of post-colonial rule, millions of Africans have been killed, displaced and impoverished by poor leadership, lack of rights and the rule of law. 

Upon the removal of colonialism, you are left with European ideas of democracy enforced upon Africas who are ill-equipped to cope. Often turning former liberation hero who fought against the colonialism into despots operating in a kleptocracy. 

Stokely Carmicheal preached that voting was a great tool of organisation and to focus on local voting as a greater impact can be made within your local community compares to that of the wider countries. Unfortunately, as there are despots in power there is no democracy in these states, there is no choice in this kleptocracy because those in power do not want to lose their power, in addition to fears of being punished for the crimes they have committed. An ideological war has been created where you buy into the soothing lie that in states where corruption is so rife you are one connection, one day away from landing a contract that can transform you from the oppressed to the oppressor overnight. Those who buy into it accept the status quo and work for their opportunity and those who refute it organise and often have their leaders killed. Any talks of rebellion is silenced often to send messages to potential rebels who step out of line.

Ultimately, this has resulted in widespread income and wealth inequality in these coconut economies where oppression is rife.

Loss of Knowledge 

This naturally leads to the loss of knowledge of self. When I mention knowledge of self it is in no way related to the 5 Percent Nation, although peace to the Gods and Earth. The Koran describes it best ‘now nothing is nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest not thyself how canst thou know anything else?’

As a people, we are disconnected from our history. We learn a whitewashed version of history from our oppressors, in their language as we are indoctrinated in the schooling system. This disconnect leads to views of Africa and its people as savages and barbarians who should thank Europeans for bringing them out of the dark ages and providing us with Christianity. 

The first and earliest civilisations of the Creteans, Maltans, Pelasgians, Ionians, and Therans came from Africa. The populace was were predominantly African. Many greek philosophers cross the seas and deserts to study in Africa? Aristotle, one of the greatest of Greek philosophers, wrote in Physiognomonica that "the Ethiopians and Egyptians are very black". Herodotus (also a Greek historian) adds that the ancient Egyptians had "black skin and woolly hair".

To ascribe one of the world's greatest civilisations-Ancient Egypt-to Africans undermines the notion of racial superiority. There is sufficient evidence that the distortion of African history was deliberately planned and executed, and this has reaped dividends for the perpetrators. But to the African, this has led to a lack of self-confidence and a ‘cannot do without Western’ attitude; hence the restoration of African history is a critical component of the African renaissance.

In addition to the distortion of history, we have the eugenics moment and pseudoscience outline black inferiority to justify the mistreatment of Africans in the past and present. Even so far as to it to be written in legislation, look no further than The Dredd Scott v Sansford where the Supreme Court ruled that no black could claim U.S. citizenship as the Constitution outlines backs as 3/5 of a person. Historically, we have seen African men presented as hypersexual, hyper-violent savages who have an affinity to the white woman, a great dramatisation of this is Birth of a Nation rebased in 1915. It's easy to hear the US Constitution and assume this is solely an American ideology however, lets us view The US as the largest Imperial regime this form os white supremacy has been permeated globally. With Redlining, Jim Crow and other initiatives affect the US. We here in the UK need to look no further than Wind-rush. Here we find former members of the British Commonwealth had been detained, deported and denied legal rights despite the preemies that being citizens of the British Commonwealth making them automatically British subjects and free to permanently live and work in the UK.

What we face now is a lack of knowledge of ourselves & our history with many of the youth being bombarded with images of entertainers enabling them to believe that the only way for them to carve a niche for themselves in this Anglo-centric world is them to act as entertainment to the masses. In the not so distant past, it was interesting anomalies of their bodies that were often used as entertainment for their owners which resulted in their masters’ monetary profit such as Ota Benga or Saartjie Baartman. Not much has changed now except these entertainers on the surface receive hundreds of thousands or millions for their services to act as symbols of what can happen to the average person if they work hard and abide by the status quo. This begs the question, how much are these establishments profiteering that they can afford to pay entertainers millions? And also, why is the only socially endorsed area that African men and women can excel is as athletes where statically speaking the odds are very heavily stacked against the average male or female ever becoming professional athletes. If we look at the NFL, every year you have millions of men fighting for only 224 roles available.

As entertainment has been carved out as the pipe dream for many Africans, those who have “made it” are now seen as leaders in the community. This in of itself is troubling, as there is no real leadership in the community and the class, economic, social and political problems the average Africans face are very different from this new class of African Bourgeoisie. This class of bourgeoisie tread the line as they are tethered to white approval and acceptance, it is the life jacket that keeps them afloat. They are quickly used as examples as to what can happen if you ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps ’ and working hard. As we will touch upon later this is the ideological war that needs to be fought, in short, the current system is based on the assumption that the most oppressed and marginalised believe that should they work hard they will one day no longer be oppressed and marginalised but become the oppressor. They do not recite it in the manner by which I have but ultimately that is the goal, they may describe it as getting “rich” via compassionate capitalism but I find that in and of itself an oxymoron as you cannot be a compassionate exploiter.

Ultimately, there is still a racial coding suggesting that blacks are bodies, but not minds. The images of blacks that circulate in white media have rearticulated the slave ideology to fit in with the contemporary obsession with having the perfect body. Black men, whether athletes or hip-hop artists are admired for their cool, muscular, hard bodies bot only when they are located within the safe, contained space of a mediated image on a screen. 

When we look at beauty standards these have been affected by white supremacy. For many, they have internalised a preference for a lighter shade of black person as a response to hundreds of years of colonial indoctrination that has been passed down through socialization. Historically, lighter-skinned Africans were the product of for the most part non-consensual relationships between African slaves and white slave-owners or colonial rulers and often received greater access to land and resources as a result of their white ancestry. If we look at Jamaica where today lighter brown skin is still read as a marker of privilege and access—class is often divided among racial lines, with wealthier and more powerful Jamaicans generally being white and brown, while poor Jamaicans are mostly black. From a contextual perspective, kin bleaching becomes a strategic choice. The media to plays its part as things you aspire to be own are often depicted with a lighter complexioned person. If we pathologies people who lighten their complexion, we ignore the racism that incites them to do it. 

The exploitation of Africans globally is a market in of itself, according to a report by Grand View Research The global skin lightening products market size is expected to reach USD 13.7 billion by 2025 with products coming from Asian or Europe.

The Eurocentric view of beauty relates to hairstyles worn by Africans women with them feeling fried to straighten their hair or wear wigs anything other than wearing their own natural hair in a work environment, for black men, it's the notion they should remain cleanly shaven with less hair being on their heads preferred. 

A sad irony is when we look at the story of Saartjie Baartman who was imprisoned and paraded to show off her womanly curves & bodily composition, those which historically you would correlate of a woman of African descent it was seen as a freak show. Now you have society adopted these elements of African beauty and internalising them as their own. You have Europeans deified for their plump lips, shapely body, large backside. Often you will find media portrayals where it is preferable to have European with these assets compared to those of African descent for a more global appeal. An example of this would be the Kardashain family who have made much of their wealth from monetising attention in the attempt to use it to sell products or services. They have been positioned as a sex symbol for the same bodily composition that Baartman and many others have been imprisoned for. 

There seems to be a pathological fetish for an African body, whether it is the African woman for her body composition and the African man for his supposedly hypersexual, hypersexual nature but also for his genitalia. Not only above the psycho-sexual relationship but also the sexualization of racism in pornography, as mentioned earlier there is still a racial coding suggesting that blacks are bodies, but not minds.

Pornography is a very interesting example as it not known for its subtlety when it deals with race, it deals with the clear, uncomplicated racial categories that define American society. You have a genre where the colour line is defined by the binary black/white categorisation. In heterosexual non-interracial pornography, the woman body is the social point, however, when it comes to interracial porn the black penis becomes the centre point, often described by adjectives such as ‘’big”, "huge," "enormous," "monstrous," and” gigantic,”. 

There also tends to be another theme at play and that is the inadequacy of the white male, his lack of ability to satisfy his woman with and the size of his genitals mocked after having been compared to that of a black males. We see this in the rise of the categories ‘cuckold’ or series ‘black ambush’, ‘blacks on blondes’ ‘blacked.com’ where often white women are quick to ridicule their husbands before and after being enthralled by stereotyped black man.

Another theme at play is that these men are often described as thugs, pimps, hustlers and bros who live in the "hood”. The middle-class black man is missing from many of these movies due to his class mobility and his allegiance to an ‘educated’ form of masculinity. Porn allows for the viewer to enjoy fantasies about their sexual relationship to blackness without having to account for the possibly troublesome dimensions of the brand of thinking about race that he must necessarily bring to these images for them to work. 

If we look at the treatment of black women, they are viewed as less attractive than a white woman and have historically been represented as being hypersexual with overt sexuality that makes her an ‘ideal’ whore. The common stereotypes emerge, black women as loud, overbearing & masculine. In much of interracial pornography (white males, black women in this case), we see the representation of the black woman subservient to the white male once they have been shown their place and become docile. You can find an underlying theme of the slave days with the white master and his black bed wench.

Whiteness?

This begs the question of what is whiteness, what is blackness? There is much literature on this question that will articulate it better than I can.

In short, both are constructs. Whiteness as an identity is a meaningless concept outside of the constructed notions of blackness that whites have produced and circulated in popular culture. Whiteness is a shield that many people have adopted to better assimilate into the imperialist regimes, people such as Italians, Irish, Scottish and others with immigrants backgrounds opt to operate under the protective veil of whiteness. I recall watching the movie Malcolm X where the Muslim brother had faced Red to read the dictionary from A- Z and look at the definitions of words. In this world, to be the opposite of black: hardworking, law-abiding, intellectual, rational, and sexually restrained and controlled. 

The subsequent question is why? Why is the imagery ported in media and taught to the masses, passed on generation to generation both consciously and subconsciously? Throughout time this imperialist regime has needed to justify their barbaric way of dealing with those with melanin in their skin, an effective way is to portray black men and women are savages, less than, criminals, lazy, a burden to society, predators and a threat to whiteness by having whites living in a perpetual state of irrational fear as many have next to no interactions with black people in their day to days lives due to geographic location. The notion you can represent those whom you exploited by enslaving them and having them work for free while you capitalised on their labour lazy is just one example of the perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. 

This divisive message is effective in doing the following as President Lyndon B. Johnson has outlined, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Interestingly, from a pornographic perspective, these definitions hinder the white male and threaten to undermine his sexual prowess. Individuals enjoy the identification with blackness whether it be from pornography or other forms of media but only in his own environment and in a mediated form. The real living black man needs to be kept as far away from his rooms, intuitions and women. The same ideology that white men take to pornography to enhance their experience is used to control black men in real life.

Medical apartheid

Based upon pseudo-science to justify the treatment of Africans globally where we were considered ‘inferior’ and so very easy to cast as ‘dispensable’ and ‘exploitable’. An example of a few would be the following black people being believed to have larger sex organs and small skulls — which translated to promiscuity and a lack of intelligence — and higher heat tolerance. Many of these fallacies, presented as fact and legitimised in medical journals. Two of the most persistent physiological myths where black people were impervious to pain and had weak lungs that could be strengthened through hard work they remain rooted in modern-day medical education and practice. In the 1787 manual “A Treatise on Tropical Diseases; and on The Climate of the West-Indies,” a British doctor, Benjamin Moseley, claimed that black people could bear surgical operations much more than white people, noting that “what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a Negro would almost disregard.”

Racial stereotypes were intertwined with medicine, there is a long tradition of racially infused practises. We have some examples that are familiar such as Tuskegee Syphilis Study’ (1932–72), in which so-called African Americans suffering from the disease were prevented from receiving the necessary medication by the US Public Health Service so that the evolution of the disease could be observed, however, other asides are less known to the general public. More information can be found in Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation by M. Turda.

The origin of racially infused practises stemmed back to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade where slaves were purchased for clinical experiments, dissections. It is difficult to document mistreatment, however, we can look at the Dr James Marion Sims who would conduce medical experience on slave women without administering ether or other tranquillisers.

In a modern way, the way this affects us in many ways, to be UK specific, black women in the UK are much more likely to die from complications surrounding pregnancy and childbirth than white women. The chance of death is 1 in 2,500 for black women according to the UK Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths. But the rate was five times smaller for white women between 2014 and 2016.

The report says the figures are partly explained by health complications experienced by black women. But it also pointed to other factors, including the inadequate use of antenatal care.

When we look at the difference in antenatal care between black women and white women we find black women find they aren’t listened to in as more detail or with as much empathy as their white counterparts. There is a narrative of the "strong black woman" which some have internalised and so prevents them from speaking up about their concerns. Outside of the tragedies, it is hard to document these experience empirically speaking, anecdotally speaking black women can share their stories with over black women and often there are parallels in their experience.

With Africans been seen as ‘inferior’ and so very easy to cast as ‘dispensable’ and ‘exploitable examples such as Renne Bach, a US Missionary with no medical training pretending to be a Doctor in Uganda who has been accused of the death of hundreds of lives of young Ugandans. This is an example of the problems with white savioursism and foreign aid workers in underdeveloped economies. Renee’s own cofounder for her Not-for-profit Serving His Children told Al Jazeera ‘people have taken Africa to be an experimental grounds where you can come and do anything and walk away . . . without anyone holding you accountable. If it was a black woman who went to any part of the US or Europe and did this they would be in jail right now.’ Now while we are waiting for the completion of a proper legal process and investigation to occur, I believe we would be intellectually ignorant if we didn’t agree with the words of Renee’s co-founder.

For 70 years, most biologists and geneticists have been telling us that race has no basis in biology, that it is a social construct and we are all essentially similar underneath. Yet we continue to hear doctors confidently advise us that race does matter in diagnosis and treatment—that diabetes, say, is more common in Africas. So is race biologically meaningful or not? 

The modern-day use of racial categories in medicine has been fuelled in part by the habit of collecting racial demographic data when conducting clinical research. Since 2000 the NHS has recorded patients’ ethnicities, ostensibly to measure discrimination. But in practice doctors also use this kind of information in diagnosis and treatment.

In short, colonialism left deep scars on the colonised and for those genuinely interested in the welfare of non-Western countries, the first step is acknowledging this.