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Difficulties
of Colonization
Among
Primitive Peoples: African Reminiscences
By Albert
Schweitzer
Have we white people the right to impose our
rule on primitive and semiprimitive peoples--my experience has
been gathered among such only? No, if we only want to rule over
them and draw material advantage from their country. Yes, if we
seriously desire to educate them and help them to attain to a
condition of well-being. If there were any sort of possibility
that these peoples could live really by and for themselves, we
could leave them to themselves.
But as things are, the world trade which has
reached them is a fact against which both we and they are
powerless. They have already through it lost their freedom.
Their economic and social relations are shaken by it. An
inevitable development brought it about that the chiefs, with
the weapons and money which commerce placed at their disposal,
reduced the mass of the natives to servitude and turned them
It sometimes happened too that, as in the
days of the slave trade, the people themselves became
merchandise, and were exchanged for money, lead, gunpowder,
tobacco, and brandy. In view of the state of things produced by
world trade there can be no question with these peoples of real
independence, but only whether it is better for them to be
delivered over to the mercies, tender or otherwise, of rapacious
native tyrants or to be governed by officials of European
states.
That of those who were commissioned to carry
out in our name the seizure of our colonial territories many
were guilty of injustice, violence, and cruelty as bad as those
of the native chiefs, and so brought on our heads a load of
guilt, is only too true. Nor of the sins committed against the
natives today must anything be suppressed or whitewashed.
But the willingness to give these primitive
and semiprimitive of our colonies an independence which would
inevitably end in enslavement to their fellows, is no way of
making up for our failure to treat them properly. Our only
possible course is to exercise for the benefit of the natives
the power we actually possess, and thus provide a moral
justification for it.
Even the hitherto prevailing
"imperialism" can plead that it has some qualities of
ethical value. It has put an end to the slave trade; it has
stopped the perpetual wars which the primitive peoples used to
wage with one another, and has thus given a lasting peace to
large portions of the world; it endeavors in many ways to
produce in the colonies conditions which shall render more
difficult the exploitation of the population by world trade.
I dare not picture what the lot of the native
lumbermen in the forests of the Ogowé district would be if the
government authorities which at the present time preserve their
rights for them in opposition to the merchants, both white and
black, should be withdrawn.
What so-called self-government means for
primitive and semiprimitive peoples can be gathered from the
fact that in the Black Republic of Liberia, domestic slavery and
what is far worse, the compulsory shipment of laborers to other
countries, have continued down to our own day. They were both
abolished on October 1st, 1930--on paper.
Source: Albert Schweitzer.
Out of My Life and Thought: An
Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1959.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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updated 22
December 2011
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