Foreground: small Knitted Corny. Back Row: Lord Cornwallis and assorted fellow POM (Persons of Material) gathered together in a poignant last stand for colonialism. Standard Bearer: Edward of Bristol Harbour Attr: Corny's Corner I know a few things about colonialism. I learned these things from growing up in Kenya, a former British colony. I have always been interested in hearing what other people think about colonialism, the advantages and disadvantages, and how it has influenced the socioeconomic outcomes of former colonies and their peoples. Now Bruce Gilley’s Studies in Anti-Colonialism, a book series that aims “to raise questions about the normative and empirical validity of anti-colonial perspectives, to stimulate debate and offer new solutions to pressing global problems” has been characterised as a threat to public health: it risks exposing readers to positive views on colonialism. Many people consider Bruce's work to be interesting and important, advancing our understanding of the world and our place in it. But his books have now been deemed too dangerous for innocent readers to be exposed to, because the series exposes the truth about colonialism and some of that truth might not fit the woke 'social justice' narrative. The notion that writing on colonial history should be policed by self-appointed guardians of ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ (as defined and enforced by themselves) and that no academic inquiry into the nature of colonialism should be published unless it conforms to leftist egalitarian diktat, is abhorrent. The self-appointed gatekeepers who dictate what other people should be permitted to read have justified their autocratic edicts under the new mantra of our age: it’s for our own protection, to keep us all safe and to save lives. The sociologist Frank Furedi depicts this strategy as a Hobbesian trade-off: that freedom must be curtailed to keep people safe.
The public-safety argument here is that if we read Bruce's books, we might feel hurt, and we don't want to live in a world where we might get hurt by stuff we read! That would make us feel very unsafe! The more books published by people we disagree with, the more our lives will be put at risk! We need somebody to protect us, by checking all the books BEFORE they get published, and making sure there is nothing dangerous and life-threatening written in there. By burning all the books that might hurt our feelings, we can all be kept safe and happy. See how that works? I disagree with that view of public safety, and with its extension to policing books and other academic publications. Black people who have come up out of colonialism do not need to be protected from the idea that maybe some good stuff emerged from the colonial experience. We know that so many good things came out of colonialism. We were there. That's how we know. We experienced both the trauma and the liberation of colonialism ourselves, and nobody from their blinkered and mollycoddled ivory tower can tell us that what we experienced in the trenches is not true. I know what is true, because I was there and the anti-colonial artists who want to 'decolonise' everything were not. They know nothing about the matter. All they know, is how woke they are, and how important it is to destroy anyone who does not admire the woke way of life. Anti-colonialist dictators have no idea what colonialism was all about, they just think the idea of 'decolonising' fits well with wokism because it signals all those egalitarian virtues, and that's all they need to know. This is why egalitarianism is a dangerous ideology: egalitarians start by declaring everything to be identikit, and then take up an axe and hack away at everything until the entire universe and all humanity are remoulded to fit with their ideals. There is no reasoning with them, and they will not rest until they achieve their goal. The news that Africans can make up their own minds about what to read may come as a huge surprise to all the wokerati who are new to the discourse - it is only in the last few years that the woke have discovered, to their growing horror, that there is a place called Africa! Where poverty and hunger and other social ills abound! Wow, they are shocked. They didn't know that. Nobody told them about that.
Wow, who knew colonialism was a thing. Everyone thought Africa was exactly like Wakanda, with scientific and cutting-edge industrial technology that emerged fully formed from the earth, only to be destroyed by the greedy white people who came to mine for gold and destroyed all the African achievements in the process. Now Bruce Gilley comes along with a theory that, actually, colonialism brought all those magnificent advancements to Africa: reading, writing, and science. Even clothes. Gilley claims these didn't exist in Africa before colonialism. Has Gilley not seen the evidence clearly shown in Marvel Comics as to who really built all the schools and hospitals in Africa and saved the women from circumcision and being burned for witches? It was Thoth, Egyptian god of the moon and wisdom. Everyone who has watched Black Panther knows Africans had their own gods to create everything they needed to live in the modern world. So now, quickly, to make up for lost time, the Wokerati are on a mission to fix the record urgently. Start by cancelling Bruce the Heretic. Then rewrite the history of Africa from scratch. Burn all the books that were previously written since the 16th century. To clear the slate, you understand. Then police all the new books coming through, and thus remake Africa in the Woke image. We are not persuaded by the new wokist religion, we who are African, because we know what Africa means. We understand what it is, with all its trials and triumphs. We do not come along out of Africa in search of mad wokists who can kindly woke-splain to us all about 'whiteness' and the meaning of colonialism. Nobody can cancel our lives and our own lived experience. We sat in the schools built by the British, we read English literature, we were taught by British teachers, we sang Jerusalem in the brushland of the African savanna (only marginally green and pleasant), and we know what we think about all of that. We have formed our own view of the matter, thank you. We may be black (yes, it's a trial) but we managed to figure this out all by ourselves, like actual human beings with brains and reasoning abilities (I know, shocking!) We are the living testament to what colonialism achieved, and nobody can cancel us or force us to reset ourselves to fit the New Woke Order. Life is a balance of good and evil, and the idea that some good may emerge from difficult circumstances is a self-evident truth. And so it is with colonialism. Once you realise that life is complex (who knew!), you can relax and read anything you find interesting and insightful. Read what you want! It’s a free world, my friend. You will enjoy life much more if you think for yourself and decide for yourself what to believe. Fly, you fools! Flee from anybody who tries to tell you what to read and what to think. If they are trying to 'decolonise' your reading list for you, and promising to keep you safe from life, they are not your friend. They are not trying to help ethnic minorities by forcing everyone to 'decolonise', nor do they care if your life is destroyed by their woke experiments - all they are doing is signalling virtue to people like themselves and jostling for power.
Ignore the anti-colonialists. Ignore the equality artists, too, and all other forms of woke creatures who are trying to enslave you. You are just the collateral damage in their petty power struggles. Live your life. Expand your world. Study colonialism from all angles positive and negative. Embrace all the benefits. Quit navel-gazing about the downsides because that's a waste of your precious time - what's done is done and you can't go back in time and rewrite history. Find out why some scholars think colonialism had more benefits than costs. Coming soon to a bookshop near you. Read it and make up your own mind about the legacy of colonialism. Gilley writes:
If you had to design the world from scratch, because you were God and the universe was giving you a second chance to try and get it right, you probably wouldn’t design a world in which some people enslave others, and some nations build empires by colonising other people. But you aren’t God, and you aren’t redesigning the world. Yes, I know about the great reset folks, but they aren't God either.
Moreover, history shows, that even if you chose a different starting point from which to build a new and better world because you think this one sucks, you’d still face multiple unpredictable problems that would probably be much worse than the problems you were trying to avoid in the first place. You'd find yourself hankering for a world in which the greatest threat you faced was somebody publishing a book that favoured colonialism. Life unfolds in such unpredictable ways, and not even the wokerati can fashion the world and all its humanity in their own image. Won’t stop them trying, though. But you have a choice, as to how you respond, and whether you will let the anti-colonialism police force their ideologically purged reading-lists onto you.
JBW
12/3/2021 05:44:36 pm
A fantastic piece of writing. The "woke" authoritarians have gained a lot of ground by binding large swaths of individuals into "oppressed groups", declaring themselves the champions of those groups, and then wielding them as rhetorical human shields. Every time someone separates themselves from that designation and speaks up for themselves as an individual, I breathe a sigh of relief. Wanjiru Njoya, you've gained an appreciative reader. Best Wishes.
Wanjiru Njoya
12/3/2021 08:25:51 pm
Thank you dear reader for your very kind comments.
Shawnelle
13/3/2021 04:22:44 am
Yes please and thank you! I feel the same way as a woman who grew up in and lives in the Caribbean!
Wanjiru Njoya
13/3/2021 02:53:58 pm
Thank you Shawnelle for adding a Caribbean input.
Shawnelle
13/3/2021 03:02:28 pm
No problem! And definitely! To add a layer to it, I think many people in the politically correct camp in the US and other countries don't realize that the things they promote can have a lasting negative impact in less developed regions. We have one major university within our region. It has four campuses and is supposed to be a research university. The degree to which having heterodox ideas can affect your career and educational prospects is soooo real. I have had friends fired from their jobs as journalists for daring to ask questions when PC people present their work. I have been called all sorts of derogatory names for not thinking I am a victim. Academic freedom and freedom of speech are slowly becoming luxuries here. When America sneezes, the third world catches a cold! The deleterious effects of that PC culture and the book burning culture is concentrated when there are fewer institutions within which one is free to discuss ideas. They have the luxury of options so they can bray. Some people do not!
Wanjiru Njoya
13/3/2021 03:23:06 pm
Shawnelle, you are so right. PC is a game for privileged (mostly white) academics in rich countries, who know nothing of the harm they are causing to poor people in the third world. 'Destroy colonialism, dismantle all your schools and hospitals that were built by the evil British!' Easy for them to say, because it doesn't affect their own life in any way. There is no welfare state in the third world - if we destroy our colonial heritage we will have nothing left.
Lyndon V-M
28/3/2021 12:12:39 am
I've had the exact same thoughts about the consequences of the woke agenda. The plan of an evil-genius intent on hurting black people would be indistinguishable.
Jens
14/3/2021 12:28:10 pm
What a great, important article! Thank you, Wanjiru. Have you thought about publishing it more widely? I know, most publications wouldn't be interested for obvious reasons (it baffles me to no end, how easily the sacred cow of 'lived experience' gets slaughtered when a member of a group deemed oppressed has the audacity to have a 'diverse' view or a different opinion, it often has the stench of real racism and paternalism to me), but spiked-online might be, I guess. Anyway, keep up the good work! All the best from Germany
Wanjiru Njoya
14/3/2021 03:28:42 pm
Thank you Jens for checking in from Germany - it will grieve you to learn that one of the crimes of which Bruce Gilley stands accused is that he "delivered a talk to Germany’s far-right political party". I think we all know what is meant by "far-right" in the Age of Woke. It means anybody who does not swear fealty to the new woke religion.
James van den Heever
14/3/2021 01:40:34 pm
Thanks for existing! You are a breath of fresh African air.
Wanjiru Njoya
14/3/2021 03:40:04 pm
Thank you James - there are millions of Africans quietly getting on with life, trying to earn a living and look after their families, who want nothing to do with this woke madness but are just too busy with their own day to day activities to have time for public spats.
Michael Larmour
14/3/2021 05:24:14 pm
A brilliant rebuke of what has become a religion to many. A free world can never be a safe world, we would all do well to remember that.
Zan
15/3/2021 10:29:38 pm
Excellent and very necessary article, the narrative is firmly being grasped by a certain section of society, especially at a time like this where social liberties are freely being taken (and given) away. Articles like this are crucial for retaining some form of perspective. Keep them coming!
Alison Schofield
24/3/2021 01:31:52 am
A welcome article which stands as a beacon of common sense in the current fog of anti-Western hysteria. I'm a mixed-race, working class Brit, who is fascinated by the empire era. I just wish to enjoy reading 18th-century themed literature featuring brave Zulus, pirates and dashing Redcoat men in tight breeches without being made to feel like some kind of race traitor! On a serious note, on a visit to India in 2019 to visit relatives, was interested to hear that empire nostalgia as they called it is quite high.
Wanjiru Njoya
25/3/2021 08:57:52 am
Ah, empire nostalgia and dashing soldiers in tight breeches...I know exactly. Enjoy.
Mary Herrington
27/3/2021 04:25:22 pm
I am an ordinary white woman from Texas, USA and I am leaving this comment to let you know you have picked up another reader. Your so eloquent in your style and I do hope you get more internationally visible platforms to share your ideas and opinions. I came across you using an internet search "Black Lives Matter criticism" and read your piece from The Critic. I follow Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein and enjoy their perspectives on pc ideology. I became interested in this topic because in 2019 we had a tragedy of a little girl killed in Houston who's death got national media attention because it was thought to be a racially motivated hate crime. Then her murder was found to be a drug-related shooting by a 20 year old black man- and all national media attention abruptly stopped. It was as if this tiny 6 year old's death no longer mattered. It has affected me ever since that this important dialogue needs to happen because those racially motivated political activists cared only about the race of her killer and didn't really care about little Jasmine Barnes.
Mary Herrington
27/3/2021 04:30:06 pm
I'd like to apologize, she was 7 years old and her name is spelled Jazmine.
Wanjiru Njoya
27/3/2021 05:10:06 pm
Thank you Mary for sharing. My heart breaks for little Jazmine. News reaches us about black folk killed by white police officers, and that's about the sum of it. I guess those are the only newsworthy stories. Like Shelby Steele says, it's a sick hunger for racism. Always searching for the racism angle and inventing one if none exists. If there's no racism in a story nobody cares.
David Monid
7/4/2021 01:47:55 am
A very well written and nuanced article. As a guybin Canada, but originally from NZ, I'm well aware of these anti-colonial fanatics. A group of Maori activists got some newspaper article purged from the internet recently. The offending article had dared to state an uncomfortable historic fact - namely a large percentage were supportive of colonial rule. In Canada we have land grab schemes whereby your property can be seized if it's deemed to be on some "stolen native land."
Wanjiru Njoya
7/4/2021 09:58:41 am
I had a stint teaching law in Canada (Queens, Kingston Ontario). The vast majority of Canadians in the university system (students and professors) feel very proud of these land grab schemes. Proud to give land back to the Natives along with a bunch of free money, repeated apologies and rolling expressions of guilt and shame. Canadians are definitely the winners at doing White Guilt. 21/12/2021 07:14:15 pm
Thank you so much, Wanjiru!
Barry Northrop
16/2/2022 09:55:49 am
I am glad to read that common sense and humanity is entering the debate. I am an Englishman in my late seventies but of half Irish origin going back to the famine and spent my life living and working in Asia and Africa with Asians and Africans of many nationalities. The experience was more than a privilege, it was a pleasure. I worked as a colleague with many Kenyans, Ugandans, Rwandans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians and others as a professional equal and am happy to observe that quite a few were better qualified than me. As I retired they went on to do great things. I do not know if I contributed to their career as professionals, that is not for me to say, but I do hope so, however insignificant my efforts. I have huge confidence in Africa and Asia; they have much to contribute to the West as I believe and hope the West still has much to contribute to them. I do not see increased prosperity and economic development in what is now the Commonwealth, or elsewhere for that matter, as demeaning or as a threat to me or my country but as progress to a better world for all. In Asia and Africa I saw this advancement being made by educated, talented, hardworking, intelligent and honest people with a realistic understanding of the shifting complexities of the world. As hard as I try I cannot see how wokeism, with its emphasis in victimhood for some and the demonising of the other is going to contribute to the welfare of the people it pretends to represent. I agree that Africans and Asians know who they are (just as I know who I am) and are more than capable of looking after their own future. I wish them all well. Thank you for giving me a voice.
Wanjiru Njoya
16/2/2022 01:28:53 pm
Thank you for sharing your view. People who have been in Africa, or who know actual African people, tend to regard Africans as humans. What you describe is a very human experience. Comments are closed.
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