"Contemporary discussions on decolonisation differ from formal decolonisation and can have anti-human elements" What are your thoughts on the video? Want to watch more videos on Decolonisation Theories? Check out our interview with Doug Stokes! ruclips.net/video/pyV19CEZc7Y/видео.html You can also find EquianoPod on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. The Equiano Project is also on Substack! Why not add us to your reading list? theequianoproject.substack.com
Your talk was brilliant. Thank you. My biggest criticism of the whole decolonisation movement ties right into your notes about agency. Western countries are among the most peaceful, who strive towards equal rights for everyone regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. The reason they are like this today is through the work of all the people, (Indigenous, immigrants, settlers...) throughout the years. When these progressives claim that the indigenous are victims of colonial settlers, they are also removing them from the history of how the Western countries came to be so enlightened.
I have coworkers in S.Africa who regularly laugh at the notion of decolonization. If you kick out the English and Afrikaaners, you're still left with the Zulu and the Bantu and wave after wave of African colonists who took over the region. The boots-on-the-ground attitude among some but not all S.Africans is that if you're not a Khoisan/Bushman then you're just another colonist. Basically the discussion around colonization often leaves out non-white colonists who colonized non-white people. Vietnam and Tibet have a lot to say about China, Dravidians have a lot to say about India, and the Huron have a lot say about the Mohawk.
i teach this - that bantu are colonizers, they just ran into another colonizer and lost; western ideology, particularly through whiteness bs, ignores non-Euro colonizers (plenty here in Asia)
Nando's had a great ad about diversity, telling all foreigners, to go away, and as the narrator tells each one to go they disappear, until only a Bushman is left, and he's like, I'm not going anywhere. The joke was that most of us in SA were foregners at one point in our history. ruclips.net/video/cBIDkW2_FnQ/видео.htmlsi=4Jlngi-Z9mx-LI_I
You've hit the nail on the head. Where in the world will you find a people that was not subjugated or the subjugator? You won't find it! This lass is talking about how difficult is for British people to talk about and tackle the colonization question, when we've hip deep with it here, even before the English marched into Ireland and the Scottish. The Romans, Normans, Anglos and Danes all came here and colonized. We still have the proof with Dane law still evident along with the Roman baths! And it's not that it's right that our ancestors did the things they did (wherever they where from in the world), just that they did do these things. If we forget or erase the past, we are doomed to repeat it!
While your other points might be valid, there is no actual ethnic or cultural identity called Dravidian. It is a wedge driven between North and South Indians by the British coloniser as a part of their explicitly stated "Divide and Rule" policy. Christian missionaries from Europe created this divide in an effort to convert South Indians to Christianity and break them away from the nationalistic civilisational identity of Hinduism. After the Brits left the ideas they helped cultivate have taken on a political tone and have perpetuated the "Divide and Rule" policy by local politicians in the South who use it to gain votes.
The Kings of Benin were involved in slavery long before the Atlantic slave trade began. The Benin Kingdom actually traded in slaves , attacking adjacent African countries and subjugating weaker communities into slavery. So much so that Benin rulers even buried slaves alive to show how powerful they were. It can be justly argued that the Benin Bronzes are an example of African slavery practiced pre Colonialisation and pre Atlantic slave trade.
This about African identity and self determination. It was the Europeans who created the black/ white divide. The Greeks called Native Africans Aetheopians meaning burnt face. In the 15th century after the Moorish occupation of the Iberian ended, dark skinned people start being ostracized. The Moors being black and muslim were easy targets and this soon expanded to other African ethnicities in the transatlantic slave trade and colonization during the scamble for Africa. The various African communities that were on the one hand tarred with the same brush and in the other pitted against each other needs a pan-African voice and solution that can speak to the interests of everyone involved.
@@harrypmay This is very true. That slave trade began around 900 years before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and was not ostensibly made illegal until around the same time that Europe collectively made slavery illegal in the 19th century. Despite it being "illegal," the actual abduction and trade in slaves across the Sahara into the Middle East and further afield Eastward continued at least until the middle of the 20th century. Many of the countries involved in this slave trade did not officially make slavery illegal until the later 20th century, more than a century after Europe and the Americas.
The problem is not the decolonial discourse in itself but rather the overly moralistic stance their proponents show and demand. By self-loathing they want to prove that they are morally better than anyone else not following their doctrine, which again is just another figure of feeling superior over others.
This reminds me of a quote from God of War (2018) game. “Wars are fought for two things. Resources or advantage.” I do think the moralistic stance is a means of seeking a moral advantage/superiority and thus elevating their status.
To be a blunt about it: Malcolm X warned of the White Liberal as a fox. Not exactly trustworthy. They appear to be so caring, yet again find a way to exert control and superiority over the lowly people they profess to stand up for. Are there genuinely caring "foxes"? Yes. But why did such people enable White Guilt to the expense of Truth? And why do they speak over those they align with? Why do they hold accountable any tribe of European descent while dismissing any equal ( or worse ) evils committed by Non-Europeans? Soft bigotry of lower expectations, a lower view of the "oppressed". Malcolm X would call that out as a seemingly benevolent manifestation of the same old sin of racism. He was right.
How moralistic is overly moralistic? And just because someone criticizes the social structure of their society doesnt make them self loathing. Not all of us stake so much of our personal identity on our nation!
@@waltonsmith7210 overly moralistic is when people elevate their doctrine to infallible. And I'm clearly stating that I'm not against the discussion per-se, I rather wished an open minded discussion was possible. And where do I say anything about a nation? This decolonial theory is now heavily discussed at least in the US, the UK, France and Germany - all of them major colonial powers. Pick one!
these holier than thou whiners all comfortably lecture from Britain, they forget to mention how squalid, violent & backward conditions were, as found by the colonisers in african countries before introducing structure, order & technology. how far would these people get while bleating in africa?
Great to hear someone speaking so much sense about decolonisation. I also find it interesting how popular culture celebrates historical fantasies such as Bridgerton, instead of creating TV series about real examples on the nuances of historical multiculturalism, such as in Créole Louisiana.
Exactly. There are so many amazing and true stories. I'd love to see a series on Comancheria, a really unique empire based on the horse trade and incorporating multiple ethnic groups.
"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?"
The Colonial period saw the end of Slavery almost worldwide, and it was a Colonial Empire that did it .. The problem is that "colonialism" just means "white" And most people have a very poor understanding of history so they don't understand that empires and colonists come in every shape and colour.
Because Marxists supplied the weapons to defeat the colonialists - & that debt cannot be repaid. Anyway it has not been current since the Soviet Union dissolved 3 decades ago. There is only one empire left on earth - the American one.
You have it all backwards. We're being colonized by big Corpo and the market, not Marxism. Think what you will of Socialism, but at least Marx knew what was coming
Because Marxists do not levy taxes greater than than their entire GDP - for centuries. Unlike the British Raj. When you have become used to being eaten alive by lions - tick bites are not a priority.
In the years to come the things that had to happen (mining, burning coal, child labor…) to make and sustain our electric vehicles and smart phones and all our other new technologies (that are supposed to be morally and environmentally superior) will come under scrutiny. Hindsight is always 20/20 and all that.
Great presentation. As someone who lives in a former colony, I do wonder what the obsessive focus on decolonisation is all for. What is the desired outcome, in the UK? In my country it's obvious: political power, position, and resources. But everyone knows that you don't achieve that by earnest and sanctimonious lectures about decolonisation qua discourse. That is just a make-work scheme for underemployed white humanities graduates. Real change comes from political mobilisation. A game of permanent blame, division, and essentialising each other as Other might make participants feel virtuous, evolved, and having risen above the original sin of empire, but it's not a vehicle for real change. A game, at best, a secular cult, at worst.
Well aslo political power? The US is currently led by indian people. If you convince people white people are evil colonists, the non white people are more likely to get the votes, the jobs, positions of power. Even the rhetoric changed, they stopped asking for "more people of colour in xy field", now you have statements like that of Lewis Hamilton: "we need less white men as F1 bosses". It's a take over strategy.It's not quantum physics.
It's damage control and overcompensation. If you have a sympathetic viewpoint, but also a taste for comfortable living, then you can look at the history of colonization and slavery as a Karmic tidal wave that builds in strength the longer it goes unresolved. The hardline decolonizers she's talking about are terrified that eventually, the pent-up rage and efforts of the Oppressed will eventually explode and wipe out everything. So this performative decolonizing efforts are an attempt to neutralize the problem slowly and carefully, essentially defusing the tidal wave before it can break and drown them.
It's not about countries, it's about nations - people related by common birth. The desired outcome is political power, position, and resources for the nation leading the decolonisation.
Colonialists, the British empire, in particular, did not invent systems of extraction from the people. They leveraged existing systems of extraction. Read that again, the systems of exploitation were already there in the existing culture. The British just took the reins of it.
Really? They simply carried on the time honoured tradition of appointing Hindu zemindars in Muslim provinces - Muslim Nawabs in Hindu provinces .... & ruling the resulting instability with Sikh soldiers? No. Because that is only possible when you hold all three in equal contempt. Something that the British were unique in importing to the subcontinent. The same contempt they showed for Zulu & Xhosa in South Africa, Shona & Matabele in Zimbabwe, Nandi & Kikuyu in Kenya .... & any pairs of neighbours on the surface of the planet. They did FAR more than just take up the reins of exploitation - they forged new nations, with borders designed to force distinct tribes into situations of perpetual conflict - so that they could perpetually feed off their carcasses. They didn't just pick up the reins of the horses - they saddled the riders too. To quote Douglas Adams 'The British (Vogons) didn't care that the animals could not bear their weight, they sat on them anyway.
It seems to me that the main criticism of colonialism is that the people doing it were of a different colour. I don’t hear any criticism for example of the Zulu’s referred to by you. And the pretence that if Africa had achieved a technological advantage that they would not have done the same
@@youtubeyoutube936 Zulus did not try to systematically exterminate entire nations - that is a trademarked EU specialty. As for your confidence that any nation with a technological advantage would slaughter their inferiors - that days more about you than anyone else. Those who commit crimes are to be CONDEMNED. They cannot be absolved on the grounds of 'We all would have done it if we could.' Clearly YOU would have done it - but you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that everyone is like you.
Well if you want to try to take things out of context then Khoi sans, pygmies, Muslim invasion of India ghenghis khan huns Persians vandals goths. Ottomans mamalukes Assyrians babylonians Inca Azet Toltecs Benin or how about the Arab expansion Middle East North Africa into Europe. But yea colonialism or empire building was only a Caucasian thing
@@youtubeyoutube936 YOU defined the premise of technological advantage - not me. Yet of those you name only the Mongol compound bow, counts as such - & even they relied on outnumbering the enemy to finish the job. Only Europeans sent a few thousand riflemen to hollow nations out from the inside like a giant burrowing tick. As for race - that too is YOUR issue. I just objected to grand theft & mass murder - short & sweet. You seem to think that it is OK to be murdered - as long as it is not by people visibly foreign. That is a level of racism that never even occured to me. I will file it away for future consideration - you should too.
I have an opinion that once the Colonies realised that they could do what the British could do i.e. the middle classes had been educated to the point where they were as capable, they then got rid of the British but kept the technology and the processes..
You're halfway right. And that's why decolonization fails. Just think. White people evolved late in the world. Black people evolved first at about 1.2 million years ago. White people actually evolved just in the past 30 thousand years. Yet white people are responsible for various technologies and application of ancient knowledge and evolving them to what we now currently use. Even now with the knowledge present, you will not find significant advancement in Africa. They got outstripped by white and asian people.
Lovely Talk. She might have added that white/European people did not start slavery, but they did end it, the Native Americans, etc. all took sleeves and conquered /colonized each other, and almost all the land of Islam was taken through conquest, a.k.a. colonization, and its slave trade Was worse for Africans than the transatlantic and also enslaved over 1 million Europeans From whom the word “Slave“ derives. I think the kind of thing she’s arguing against is the same one at the base of the Maoist cultural revolution, in which all of China’s highly developed art cuisine and culture were destroyed along with its creators. Not something we want to repeat here. finally, those who wish to reject the entire history and Legacy of colonization and the cultures that produced it will need to stop using electricity, cars, planes, heck, Paved roads, etc., and everything derived from them.
Why did so many Africa countries reject the foreign influence of western Europearn capitalism and embrace the foreign influence of eastern European Marxism? None returned to their precolonial political, economic and social structure.
Their too stupid to actually understand what Karl Marx and his closest friend, Friedrich Engles, were, and that is vile racists. Even Che Guevara was a vile racist. If people were to read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, or Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, would be hopefully outraged.
Probably because it was in direct opposition to the capitalist systems that put them in chains. Marxism was extremely popular in the States in the latter days of the Gilded Age largely because it was in opposition to the capitalism of the Robber Barons. The interest started to die out when the New Deal made Marxism largely irrelevant.
Some of the greatest colonizers on history were Muslim, or Asian. How far did the Persian Empire spread? Or the Mongols? The different nations of Africa have been merrily colonizing each other for centuries.
Take jazz and blues. Black Americans are indesputedly credited for invention of these musical forms. Yet modern black racists rarely understand the reason why black Africans never invented jazz and blues, and why it was aprticularly created by people moved to the Americas. Well, it has a lot to do with the black americans having access to european-made musical instruments. Now if you want to go back pure black africa, where does that leave that part of black america's culture and identity? Like the woman said, this shit is complicated. Now, stupid young people of today have been driven to believe only brownskins were ever colonized or opressed. Of course that is one of the most preposterous ideas. Even the most powerful human empire to ever exist - yes, China - was colonized at one point by the Mongols (dynasty Sung). All other countries were colonized multiple times throughout histroy. So aside of opression, what do all these colonizations have in common? Well, with the exception of WW2 colonizations, one thing: that the colonized and the colonials mixed cultures, experiences, technologies and everything else. And most of the times, the colonizer was the superior culture that - willingly or perforce - enriched the colonized peoples. When my country was conquered by the Austro-Hungarians, we got a railroad that we STILL use. Local people worked on it perforce and for a small wage, but it's still here. Of course, when Africa was colonized by the British they got 90% of the infrastructure they have now. So how is what the Austrohungarian infrastructure percieved as positive, and the British infrastructure as bad? Propaganda. And no, Austrohungarians didn't colonize us to love us and pamper us, they did so they could have canon fodder for their wars with Russians. Black Americans with all that happened, are one of the 15% luckiest people in the world to be born in one of the 7 top world economies. What, you're telling me you'd be happier if you were born a white Ukranian? Good luck with that.
the christian slaves, there were more white slaves than in the usa. There were ver 3000 black slaves in usa at the time. Native americans also enslaved, raped, killed other tribes.
Colonialism has always occurred and takes many forms. We are all the victims of corporations in the 21st century, because their influence is global it seems no one is spared. Much of the impetus for decolonisation comes from those envious of Western achievements and culture. The west is not uniquely bad, colonialism, slavery, exploitation have been the norm for most of history all over the globe.
I think part of the problem with the way these issues are being re-framed by what appears to be the academic mainstream today is that this creates the impression that they're being promoted as points in a proper rational (and mutually respectful, when there are disagreements) discourse - i.e. what might traditionally be thought of as "academic", when in many cases it's pretty clear that they're "pure politics". They're "hand crafted Issues", constructed in ways that are exactly suited to keeping them eternally irresoluble. For an academic (or one being "properly academic", anyway - which sometimes seems optional) the inclination is to pick up these "Issues" as questions needing answers (to roughly categorize an essential quality of that way of dealing with things). The impulse is to find resolutions, or if not that, nuances - to think it out, and make sense of things. But that's messing with someone else's well forged political tool. It should come as no surprise, then, that when you reason your way to more sound ways of evaluating things like history, you'll find cases where the person who came to debate the issue with you just refuses to understand. Because right from the outset, the whole point is to create immunity from things like understanding. (In my more paranoid moments - of which there are many - probably because I'm not "the full box of chocolates", even - I suspect that the Issues Foundries are operated by political bad actors on an international scale, and that the real purpose, beyond the manipulation of those who fall for the Issues thus created, is to exploit what they see as cracks in the integrity of an enemy. So if people are becoming more tolerant overall of gays, for instance, from a certain point of view all that is, is the ruining of a perfectly good fracture that could be expanded if managed better. So find someone gay who's prepared to be unreasonable enough to create some Issues that will never again become dysfunctional like the development of tolerance on the part of reasonable people made gay-hate dysfunctional last time round.) If you're trying to resolve things, and someone else is trying to prevent those things ever being resolved, the pair of you are going to spend at least some time running round in circles. And it's THEM that's making the both of you do that. :D
Ask Professor Biggar what happens to people who make positive statements about western colonialism? Chinese or Russian or Islamic colonialism is quite different of course
@@jonahtwhale1779 @jonahtwhale1779 there's a few serious academics who are prepared to speak about the positive aspects of colonialism. Bruce Gilley at Portland State University and Thomas Sowell for two.
Great example is Spartacus; Hollywood showed him decades ago as a fighter against slavery, but that was simply their own ideas put into Spartacus' character.
That's the other thing. Slavery, like capitalism and colonialism, have a wide variety of models. It's not just one kind of thing. Slavers of ancient Rome would've looked at chattel slavery of the 17th century and thought "Dude, WTF? How are your slaves supposed to buy their freedom and own their own slaves if you treat them like this?"
@@TheomiteI studied Ancient Greek in school, and one of my favorite things was learning that in much of the classic era slaves were required to be paid the average free wage of their job. Dude! completely different.
Kudos. "Decolonial Theory" is nonsense and myopic. Read "Hadji Murat" by Leo Tolstoy - the Tsarist Russian Empire "colonized" other European countries and societies along their borders in the 19th century. All states and political entities have some sort of history of "colonial" enterprise if one looks deep enough.
One argument that has bothered me greatly is routinely raised by adherents to this pernicious ideology. In response to the reality that certain African nations were enthusiastic slavers, building their wealth and power on almost exclusive from the international slave trade, they assert that this is something foisted on them by the Europeans. They pretend that Europe was the only, or even the largest customer for these natiions. But worse, their arguments rely on the idea that these African nations were somehow incapable of determining for themselves that slavery was a rotten business and that they shouldn't involve themselves in it. It is an infantalizing assertion that paints native Africans almost like confused children, wholly at the mercy of European desires, somehow dependant on Europe to act ethically in order for them to know right from wrong.
Sorry guys. I stopped listening after “the infamous murder of George Floyd”. If you can’t be honest about that I can’t consider anything else you say to be credible.
Beautifully articulated argument, couldn't agree more with what she says. I would add unless I just missed it. That is that these ideas pull us apart and stoke tension and miss understand human nature at its core. MLK was right on the judgment of character and he always will be.
I’m guessing she is talking about how to decolonise the UK take some of the millions of people back to there country of origin change the UK back to what it looked like in the 1950s.
To decolonize all the ideas, art, beliefs, ingenuity that led to britain becoming a colonial nation would mean stripping the country back to stone henge days (and they won’t even let us have that). It’s stupid, pointless, and deeply offensive.
On the face of it, deconolisation comes from a reasonable and noble place. An ideology like liberalism is essentially a formal pronouncement of English cultural traditions, liberalism was written on the hearts of the English long before the Liberal writers like Locke formulated it. And so, Liberalism struggles to work in the post-colonial context, the Bantu speaking tribes of Africa do not have a culture that meshes with Liberalism, or with any other European ideology. Thus, it makes sense to go back to the drawing board and pull from their own cultures, to formalise the ideologies written on the heart of the many different African tribes, and then model the state after that ideology instead. So far, everything is reasonable and noble. But there are two major problems here: 1. Colonialism inflicted significant damage on the cultures thenselves, they are hollowed out and realistically may lack the substance to support a sensible ideology, additionally their culture almost certainly has the means to organise small tribal structures, and not anything on the scale of the nodern natuon state. 2. Every last decolonial thinker is a socialist... proponents of a European philosophy, the worst of the European philosophies. They are too deeply trapped in a colonial paradigm to effevtively attack it, and even if they succeeded therein to divorce themselves fron European ideas and truly return to their roots, they would not find anything that can keep a nation state together.
Would Inaya be brave enough to make these points to a primarily young black minority ethnic audience? I get the feeling that she may just be preaching to a choir.
I had to LOL about a super model being involved in a "natural hair movement" or anything else claiming to be natural when everything about her look is extremely curated and not natural. Washing and styling hair at all is technically not natural.
My main issue with this video is her over-use of the word "oftentimes" which is an American import and thus a colonial bastardisation of the language...
The Christian view of the past, in part, is ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not just some select cultures. The only way to reconcile this is through faith in Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for our sins. Then we can all move on from the past. It's really that simple.
From Brazil I’d like to say « muito Obrigada » to Miss Inaya Iman. Her knowledge, dedication and elegance when presenting such important subject of our History, trying to elevate and bring understanding instead of conflictive stereotypes.
Colonization is alive and well ! It is no longer the domain of governments, but the domain of corporations. We are far, far from a post-colonial world.
If you look for evil, you will find it everywhere. Good can also be found by looking. Look for good in the present and leave the evils of the past in the grave where they lie.
To colonise is to take over a ready made country,this never happened and the settlers are the indigenous as we made the lands a country,it would still be stone age and few natives around at the time of .
@@apintofbeer1667 Well, the ships came from many different nations. About 770 ships flew the United States flag. About 2425 ships flew the British flag, About 2850 ships flew the Portuguese or Brazilian flag. There were also Spanish, Dutch, and French flags.
Don't forget East Africa. The trans-Saharan trade or Eastern slave trade, is noted as the longest slave trade, having occurred for more than 1,300 years. Hint, it was not Europeans.
I often feel that the opposition to "wokeness" falls into the very same overcorrection it seeks to criticise. Representations of new ways of thinking about the past in popular culture are inevitably simplified when referenced in general terms. Instead of the constant pushback and "gotcha" one-upmanship it's important to recognise what contemporary discourses about aspects of the past are saying about society today by referencing the past.
The complicity of precolonial African states and African elites in slavery and colonialism respectively doesn't mean that that we shouldn't acknowledge these events as historic wrongs that ultimately contributed to the supremacey of white nations over other peoples. The Europeans applied the divide and rule approach learned from their Roman Imperial predecessors. African were thinking regionally and Europeans were thinking globally. It's not about blame but it's ensuring we are all aware of our history and helps us to better understand modern ills such as racism, xenophobia and denegration of people from non white parts of the world. Where we can right previous wrongs seeking to do so. Giving back looted art work is a start.
Looted art made with the proceeds of Slavery, that was looted as the British where busy stamping out slavery? That is a much harder moral discussion to have. Perhaps they should not have been ret5till the recipients acknowledged the troubled history of the artefacts.
One single prince from an extreme elite who was accidently enslaved and was soon released changes nothing at all. The prince Abdul was on the same level as the English upper classes and aristocracy. Yet somehow this changes the decolonial narrative?
The kings of benin sold their own people to make shiny statues of themselves from european metal. Yes, they should get them back and when they are displayed they should write how many lives each of them is worth.
No they shouldn't.....Quit whinging about past CONQUESTS. Why aren't you crying about how the Benin should pay reparations to those that they stole from, terrorized, gRaped, killed and enslaved?
As a white male New Zealander I would never in a million years think of dressing up as a pre-colonisation Maori person, even if Maori gave me permission to do so, just as I wouldn't dress up as a Zulu warrior, a plains Native American, as Genghis Khan, or an Inuit. What sort of moron would even think of doing that?
What is the difference from a Maori wearing western clothing and a westerners wearing Maori clothing? I can see no moral difference and as Maorri wear western clothing westerners are free to wear Maori clothing.
She said "alleged White Supremacy" That's all i needed to hear to know she is working for the establishment and is clearly not a revolutionary intellectual. I'm all for understanding the contradictions of historical figures but not to admit that Europe had and has an agenda to negate the rich history of Black Africa in order to exploit its human and material resources is highly problematic.
Its a pity the black Africans did nt write their rich culture down, cause they were to ignorant and stupid to learn how to read and write. Next week, rich culture fails to invent the wheel, while chewing on the thigh bone of neighbouring tribe.
@@youtubeyoutube936 Because White people are the one who made millions and millions of $ off the slave trade and the theft of resources which enable the US & Europe to become extremely rich and powerful empires to this day. While, yes some African tribes made money but not on the same scale.
Most of those are patently absurd, for one thing, where docolonization has not occurred, how do you talk about it? These are PROTESTS., not academic enterprises, and as anybody who knows anything about protest knows, issues and thoughts will vary simply by PEOPLE. Meaning you can make almost ANY generalization. But I will give a local example which shows about 'historical context'. In my province, several years ago there was a protest, and then a formal organization by students to rename a building. This law school building was called "Ludlow hall' for a local lawyer. Now, the people who advocated for change, did so beause they KNEW the history.. There are lots of other buildings named for historical poeple, none were challenged, although many people advocate to change ANY public names away from people. And that certainly has some merit. Many now feel that the PROCESS by which naming occurs is colonial, and thats largely true. Then came the online protest AGAINST the protest. This was mainly online, and it was from people who didn't even USE the building, the building literally had no meaning to them at all. They didn't even know who ludlow was, and so far from the historical context, these were people who argued against the very notion of renaming ANYTHING. They simply didn't want ANYTHING renamed. So THAT is the colonial enterprise at work. In fact the city I live in is the ONLY bilingual city in canada. French and english. It is named for an admitted war criminal, the military leader who was in charge of throwing the acadians out of their homes and who personally admitted to infecting blankets with small pox and sending them to first nations. It is AMAZING to me that the french here, who the english always claim are 'spoiled' and have 'way too much power', have NEVER advocated for a name change. Only now is there the beginnings of a change....at the FRENCH UNIVERSITY. Thats right, the french university was named for the guy who expulsed the french! You can't make that up. But I can GUARANTEE you that as this plays out you will hear an unending refrain of "Oh when will this stop...." Despite the fact that the actual number of building changes or even statue topplings has been VERY minimal, problem is some peoples algorithm follows such things world wide and think its constantly going on. Back to ludlow, I did an experiment,which was to announce that a new buidling was being built and asking for a name. That name would be decided by a choice between the two guys in the first election ever held here. One was a populist newspaper editor who helped local businesses grow, the other was a connected politico who 'won' by having the election overthrown by the local magistrate. Not only was it overthrown, but the newspaper owner who actually won was ARRESTED. Robert Ludlum was that poltically appointed guy who threw the other guy in jail, THAT is who the building is named for. The other guy is forgetton, although most people here couldn't tell you who ludlum was, obviously. NOw, I can bring up not only more examples of that, but can basically prove that virtually EVERY case of statue toppling or building and street naming follows that same exact pattern.
"Contemporary discussions on decolonisation differ from formal decolonisation and can have anti-human elements"
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Thoughtful, analytical, interesting, provoking. Intelligent, humane and life affirming.
Your talk was brilliant. Thank you. My biggest criticism of the whole decolonisation movement ties right into your notes about agency. Western countries are among the most peaceful, who strive towards equal rights for everyone regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. The reason they are like this today is through the work of all the people, (Indigenous, immigrants, settlers...) throughout the years. When these progressives claim that the indigenous are victims of colonial settlers, they are also removing them from the history of how the Western countries came to be so enlightened.
Groups of humans have conquered other groups of humans and colonised their lands for the entire history of mankind. How far back do you want to go?
I have coworkers in S.Africa who regularly laugh at the notion of decolonization. If you kick out the English and Afrikaaners, you're still left with the Zulu and the Bantu and wave after wave of African colonists who took over the region. The boots-on-the-ground attitude among some but not all S.Africans is that if you're not a Khoisan/Bushman then you're just another colonist.
Basically the discussion around colonization often leaves out non-white colonists who colonized non-white people. Vietnam and Tibet have a lot to say about China, Dravidians have a lot to say about India, and the Huron have a lot say about the Mohawk.
i teach this - that bantu are colonizers, they just ran into another colonizer and lost; western ideology, particularly through whiteness bs, ignores non-Euro colonizers (plenty here in Asia)
Nando's had a great ad about diversity, telling all foreigners, to go away, and as the narrator tells each one to go they disappear, until only a Bushman is left, and he's like, I'm not going anywhere. The joke was that most of us in SA were foregners at one point in our history. ruclips.net/video/cBIDkW2_FnQ/видео.htmlsi=4Jlngi-Z9mx-LI_I
You've hit the nail on the head. Where in the world will you find a people that was not subjugated or the subjugator? You won't find it! This lass is talking about how difficult is for British people to talk about and tackle the colonization question, when we've hip deep with it here, even before the English marched into Ireland and the Scottish. The Romans, Normans, Anglos and Danes all came here and colonized. We still have the proof with Dane law still evident along with the Roman baths! And it's not that it's right that our ancestors did the things they did (wherever they where from in the world), just that they did do these things. If we forget or erase the past, we are doomed to repeat it!
Well said 👏🏼
While your other points might be valid, there is no actual ethnic or cultural identity called Dravidian. It is a wedge driven between North and South Indians by the British coloniser as a part of their explicitly stated "Divide and Rule" policy. Christian missionaries from Europe created this divide in an effort to convert South Indians to Christianity and break them away from the nationalistic civilisational identity of Hinduism. After the Brits left the ideas they helped cultivate have taken on a political tone and have perpetuated the "Divide and Rule" policy by local politicians in the South who use it to gain votes.
The Kings of Benin were involved in slavery long before the Atlantic slave trade began. The Benin Kingdom actually traded in slaves , attacking adjacent African countries and subjugating weaker communities into slavery. So much so that Benin rulers even buried slaves alive to show how powerful they were. It can be justly argued that the Benin Bronzes are an example of African slavery practiced pre Colonialisation and pre Atlantic slave trade.
There was also the trans-Saharan slave trade that rarely gets mentioned whenever the subject of chattel slavery is discussed.
This about African identity and self determination. It was the Europeans who created the black/ white divide. The Greeks called Native Africans Aetheopians meaning burnt face. In the 15th century after the Moorish occupation of the Iberian ended, dark skinned people start being ostracized. The Moors being black and muslim were easy targets and this soon expanded to other African ethnicities in the transatlantic slave trade and colonization during the scamble for Africa.
The various African communities that were on the one hand tarred with the same brush and in the other pitted against each other needs a pan-African voice and solution that can speak to the interests of everyone involved.
@@harrypmay This is very true. That slave trade began around 900 years before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and was not ostensibly made illegal until around the same time that Europe collectively made slavery illegal in the 19th century. Despite it being "illegal," the actual abduction and trade in slaves across the Sahara into the Middle East and further afield Eastward continued at least until the middle of the 20th century. Many of the countries involved in this slave trade did not officially make slavery illegal until the later 20th century, more than a century after Europe and the Americas.
The problem is not the decolonial discourse in itself but rather the overly moralistic stance their proponents show and demand. By self-loathing they want to prove that they are morally better than anyone else not following their doctrine, which again is just another figure of feeling superior over others.
This reminds me of a quote from God of War (2018) game. “Wars are fought for two things. Resources or advantage.” I do think the moralistic stance is a means of seeking a moral advantage/superiority and thus elevating their status.
To be a blunt about it: Malcolm X warned of the White Liberal as a fox. Not exactly trustworthy. They appear to be so caring, yet again find a way to exert control and superiority over the lowly people they profess to stand up for. Are there genuinely caring "foxes"? Yes. But why did such people enable White Guilt to the expense of Truth? And why do they speak over those they align with? Why do they hold accountable any tribe of European descent while dismissing any equal ( or worse ) evils committed by Non-Europeans? Soft bigotry of lower expectations, a lower view of the "oppressed". Malcolm X would call that out as a seemingly benevolent manifestation of the same old sin of racism. He was right.
How moralistic is overly moralistic? And just because someone criticizes the social structure of their society doesnt make them self loathing. Not all of us stake so much of our personal identity on our nation!
@@waltonsmith7210 overly moralistic is when people elevate their doctrine to infallible. And I'm clearly stating that I'm not against the discussion per-se, I rather wished an open minded discussion was possible.
And where do I say anything about a nation? This decolonial theory is now heavily discussed at least in the US, the UK, France and Germany - all of them major colonial powers. Pick one!
these holier than thou whiners all comfortably lecture from Britain, they forget to mention how squalid, violent & backward conditions were, as found by the colonisers in african countries before introducing structure, order & technology. how far would these people get while bleating in africa?
Great to hear someone speaking so much sense about decolonisation. I also find it interesting how popular culture celebrates historical fantasies such as Bridgerton, instead of creating TV series about real examples on the nuances of historical multiculturalism, such as in Créole Louisiana.
Bridgerton is basically interracial porn for white women.
Exactly. There are so many amazing and true stories. I'd love to see a series on Comancheria, a really unique empire based on the horse trade and incorporating multiple ethnic groups.
"Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Inaya Folarin is one of the UK's most interesting cultural commentators, I hope she's gets a much wider platform.
The Colonial period saw the end of Slavery almost worldwide, and it was a Colonial Empire that did it ..
The problem is that "colonialism" just means "white"
And most people have a very poor understanding of history so they don't understand that empires and colonists come in every shape and colour.
I hope they don’t forget to decolonize their electricity, refrigeration, medicine, internet, and transportation systems.
They've decolonised electricity in South Africa, and gangs make good money decolonising rail tracks.
Colonialism was an artifact of history, but the colonization by Marxism is current and profound. Why can't previously colonized people see this?
Because Marxists supplied the weapons to defeat the colonialists - & that debt cannot be repaid. Anyway it has not been current since the Soviet Union dissolved 3 decades ago. There is only one empire left on earth - the American one.
You have it all backwards. We're being colonized by big Corpo and the market, not Marxism. Think what you will of Socialism, but at least Marx knew what was coming
The modern concept of decolonisation is foreign to Britain, and they can't see the irony in imposing it here.
@@shaunpatrick8345 Foreign or not - it was imposed on Britain by its current colonial masters. You have had decades to get used to it.
Because Marxists do not levy taxes greater than than their entire GDP - for centuries. Unlike the British Raj. When you have become used to being eaten alive by lions - tick bites are not a priority.
In the years to come the things that had to happen (mining, burning coal, child labor…) to make and sustain our electric vehicles and smart phones and all our other new technologies (that are supposed to be morally and environmentally superior) will come under scrutiny. Hindsight is always 20/20 and all that.
Great presentation. As someone who lives in a former colony, I do wonder what the obsessive focus on decolonisation is all for. What is the desired outcome, in the UK? In my country it's obvious: political power, position, and resources. But everyone knows that you don't achieve that by earnest and sanctimonious lectures about decolonisation qua discourse. That is just a make-work scheme for underemployed white humanities graduates. Real change comes from political mobilisation. A game of permanent blame, division, and essentialising each other as Other might make participants feel virtuous, evolved, and having risen above the original sin of empire, but it's not a vehicle for real change. A game, at best, a secular cult, at worst.
Well aslo political power? The US is currently led by indian people. If you convince people white people are evil colonists, the non white people are more likely to get the votes, the jobs, positions of power. Even the rhetoric changed, they stopped asking for "more people of colour in xy field", now you have statements like that of Lewis Hamilton: "we need less white men as F1 bosses". It's a take over strategy.It's not quantum physics.
UK, sorry. Weird autocorrect decision...
It's damage control and overcompensation. If you have a sympathetic viewpoint, but also a taste for comfortable living, then you can look at the history of colonization and slavery as a Karmic tidal wave that builds in strength the longer it goes unresolved. The hardline decolonizers she's talking about are terrified that eventually, the pent-up rage and efforts of the Oppressed will eventually explode and wipe out everything. So this performative decolonizing efforts are an attempt to neutralize the problem slowly and carefully, essentially defusing the tidal wave before it can break and drown them.
It's not about countries, it's about nations - people related by common birth. The desired outcome is political power, position, and resources for the nation leading the decolonisation.
Colonialists, the British empire, in particular, did not invent systems of extraction from the people. They leveraged existing systems of extraction. Read that again, the systems of exploitation were already there in the existing culture. The British just took the reins of it.
Really? They simply carried on the time honoured tradition of appointing Hindu zemindars in Muslim provinces - Muslim Nawabs in Hindu provinces .... & ruling the resulting instability with Sikh soldiers? No. Because that is only possible when you hold all three in equal contempt. Something that the British were unique in importing to the subcontinent.
The same contempt they showed for Zulu & Xhosa in South Africa, Shona & Matabele in Zimbabwe, Nandi & Kikuyu in Kenya .... & any pairs of neighbours on the surface of the planet.
They did FAR more than just take up the reins of exploitation - they forged new nations, with borders designed to force distinct tribes into situations of perpetual conflict - so that they could perpetually feed off their carcasses. They didn't just pick up the reins of the horses - they saddled the riders too. To quote Douglas Adams 'The British (Vogons) didn't care that the animals could not bear their weight, they sat on them anyway.
It seems to me that the main criticism of colonialism is that the people doing it were of a different colour. I don’t hear any criticism for example of the Zulu’s referred to by you. And the pretence that if Africa had achieved a technological advantage that they would not have done the same
@@youtubeyoutube936 Zulus did not try to systematically exterminate entire nations - that is a trademarked EU specialty. As for your confidence that any nation with a technological advantage would slaughter their inferiors - that days more about you than anyone else. Those who commit crimes are to be CONDEMNED. They cannot be absolved on the grounds of 'We all would have done it if we could.' Clearly YOU would have done it - but you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that everyone is like you.
Well if you want to try to take things out of context then Khoi sans, pygmies, Muslim invasion of India ghenghis khan huns Persians vandals goths. Ottomans mamalukes Assyrians babylonians Inca Azet Toltecs Benin or how about the Arab expansion Middle East North Africa into Europe. But yea colonialism or empire building was only a Caucasian thing
@@youtubeyoutube936 YOU defined the premise of technological advantage - not me. Yet of those you name only the Mongol compound bow, counts as such - & even they relied on outnumbering the enemy to finish the job. Only Europeans sent a few thousand riflemen to hollow nations out from the inside like a giant burrowing tick. As for race - that too is YOUR issue. I just objected to grand theft & mass murder - short & sweet. You seem to think that it is OK to be murdered - as long as it is not by people visibly foreign. That is a level of racism that never even occured to me. I will file it away for future consideration - you should too.
I have an opinion that once the Colonies realised that they could do what the British could do i.e. the middle classes had been educated to the point where they were as capable, they then got rid of the British but kept the technology and the processes..
Yep. That sums it up perfectly
Didn't want to be slaves...but DID like the thought of living in the slaveowner's house.
You're halfway right. And that's why decolonization fails.
Just think. White people evolved late in the world. Black people evolved first at about 1.2 million years ago.
White people actually evolved just in the past 30 thousand years.
Yet white people are responsible for various technologies and application of ancient knowledge and evolving them to what we now currently use.
Even now with the knowledge present, you will not find significant advancement in Africa. They got outstripped by white and asian people.
Everybody keeps technology, you don't need to conquer another race of people to past on technology
Lovely Talk. She might have added that white/European people did not start slavery, but they did end it, the Native Americans, etc. all took sleeves and conquered /colonized each other, and almost all the land of Islam was taken through conquest, a.k.a. colonization, and its slave trade Was worse for Africans than the transatlantic and also enslaved over 1 million Europeans From whom the word “Slave“ derives. I think the kind of thing she’s arguing against is the same one at the base of the Maoist cultural revolution, in which all of China’s highly developed art cuisine and culture were destroyed along with its creators. Not something we want to repeat here. finally, those who wish to reject the entire history and Legacy of colonization and the cultures that produced it will need to stop using electricity, cars, planes, heck, Paved roads, etc.,
and everything derived from them.
Why did so many Africa countries reject the foreign influence of western Europearn capitalism and embrace the foreign influence of eastern European Marxism? None returned to their precolonial political, economic and social structure.
Why would they want to return to that? Even Marxism is better than slavery.
Marxism 'sounds' great
Their too stupid to actually understand what Karl Marx and his closest friend, Friedrich Engles, were, and that is vile racists.
Even Che Guevara was a vile racist.
If people were to read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, or Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, would be hopefully outraged.
Probably because it was in direct opposition to the capitalist systems that put them in chains. Marxism was extremely popular in the States in the latter days of the Gilded Age largely because it was in opposition to the capitalism of the Robber Barons. The interest started to die out when the New Deal made Marxism largely irrelevant.
Ego, your stupid when you are angry.
Some of the greatest colonizers on history were Muslim, or Asian.
How far did the Persian Empire spread?
Or the Mongols?
The different nations of Africa have been merrily colonizing each other for centuries.
Take jazz and blues. Black Americans are indesputedly credited for invention of these musical forms. Yet modern black racists rarely understand the reason why black Africans never invented jazz and blues, and why it was aprticularly created by people moved to the Americas. Well, it has a lot to do with the black americans having access to european-made musical instruments.
Now if you want to go back pure black africa, where does that leave that part of black america's culture and identity?
Like the woman said, this shit is complicated.
Now, stupid young people of today have been driven to believe only brownskins were ever colonized or opressed. Of course that is one of the most preposterous ideas. Even the most powerful human empire to ever exist - yes, China - was colonized at one point by the Mongols (dynasty Sung). All other countries were colonized multiple times throughout histroy. So aside of opression, what do all these colonizations have in common? Well, with the exception of WW2 colonizations, one thing: that the colonized and the colonials mixed cultures, experiences, technologies and everything else. And most of the times, the colonizer was the superior culture that - willingly or perforce - enriched the colonized peoples. When my country was conquered by the Austro-Hungarians, we got a railroad that we STILL use. Local people worked on it perforce and for a small wage, but it's still here. Of course, when Africa was colonized by the British they got 90% of the infrastructure they have now. So how is what the Austrohungarian infrastructure percieved as positive, and the British infrastructure as bad? Propaganda.
And no, Austrohungarians didn't colonize us to love us and pamper us, they did so they could have canon fodder for their wars with Russians.
Black Americans with all that happened, are one of the 15% luckiest people in the world to be born in one of the 7 top world economies. What, you're telling me you'd be happier if you were born a white Ukranian? Good luck with that.
Always nice to hear a sane voice in this conversation
When will we talk and the north African slave trade?
the christian slaves, there were more white slaves than in the usa. There were ver 3000 black slaves in usa at the time. Native americans also enslaved, raped, killed other tribes.
Do you mean the Muslim slave trade?
She's a beautiful speaker. Clearly went to a fine school. Not the comprehensive I went to.
Colonialism has always occurred and takes many forms. We are all the victims of corporations in the 21st century, because their influence is global it seems no one is spared. Much of the impetus for decolonisation comes from those envious of Western achievements and culture. The west is not uniquely bad, colonialism, slavery, exploitation have been the norm for most of history all over the globe.
I think part of the problem with the way these issues are being re-framed by what appears to be the academic mainstream today is that this creates the impression that they're being promoted as points in a proper rational (and mutually respectful, when there are disagreements) discourse - i.e. what might traditionally be thought of as "academic", when in many cases it's pretty clear that they're "pure politics". They're "hand crafted Issues", constructed in ways that are exactly suited to keeping them eternally irresoluble.
For an academic (or one being "properly academic", anyway - which sometimes seems optional) the inclination is to pick up these "Issues" as questions needing answers (to roughly categorize an essential quality of that way of dealing with things). The impulse is to find resolutions, or if not that, nuances - to think it out, and make sense of things. But that's messing with someone else's well forged political tool. It should come as no surprise, then, that when you reason your way to more sound ways of evaluating things like history, you'll find cases where the person who came to debate the issue with you just refuses to understand.
Because right from the outset, the whole point is to create immunity from things like understanding.
(In my more paranoid moments - of which there are many - probably because I'm not "the full box of chocolates", even - I suspect that the Issues Foundries are operated by political bad actors on an international scale, and that the real purpose, beyond the manipulation of those who fall for the Issues thus created, is to exploit what they see as cracks in the integrity of an enemy. So if people are becoming more tolerant overall of gays, for instance, from a certain point of view all that is, is the ruining of a perfectly good fracture that could be expanded if managed better. So find someone gay who's prepared to be unreasonable enough to create some Issues that will never again become dysfunctional like the development of tolerance on the part of reasonable people made gay-hate dysfunctional last time round.)
If you're trying to resolve things, and someone else is trying to prevent those things ever being resolved, the pair of you are going to spend at least some time running round in circles.
And it's THEM that's making the both of you do that. :D
Cuba is not in South America! Cuba is in the Caribbean.
Very good talk. Postcolonial theory is not in itself positive or negative about colonialism, it's neutral.
Ask Professor Biggar what happens to people who make positive statements about western colonialism? Chinese or Russian or Islamic colonialism is quite different of course
@@jonahtwhale1779 @jonahtwhale1779 there's a few serious academics who are prepared to speak about the positive aspects of colonialism. Bruce Gilley at Portland State University and Thomas Sowell for two.
It is refreshing to listen to somebody who has a wide view on the topic of de-colonisation.
Great example is Spartacus; Hollywood showed him decades ago as a fighter against slavery, but that was simply their own ideas put into Spartacus' character.
That's the other thing. Slavery, like capitalism and colonialism, have a wide variety of models. It's not just one kind of thing. Slavers of ancient Rome would've looked at chattel slavery of the 17th century and thought "Dude, WTF? How are your slaves supposed to buy their freedom and own their own slaves if you treat them like this?"
@@TheomiteI studied Ancient Greek in school, and one of my favorite things was learning that in much of the classic era slaves were required to be paid the average free wage of their job. Dude! completely different.
Kudos. "Decolonial Theory" is nonsense and myopic. Read "Hadji Murat" by Leo Tolstoy - the Tsarist Russian Empire "colonized" other European countries and societies along their borders in the 19th century. All states and political entities have some sort of history of "colonial" enterprise if one looks deep enough.
We better all move back to where “Lucy” was found in the East African Rift Valley
One argument that has bothered me greatly is routinely raised by adherents to this pernicious ideology.
In response to the reality that certain African nations were enthusiastic slavers, building their wealth and power on almost exclusive from the international slave trade, they assert that this is something foisted on them by the Europeans. They pretend that Europe was the only, or even the largest customer for these natiions.
But worse, their arguments rely on the idea that these African nations were somehow incapable of determining for themselves that slavery was a rotten business and that they shouldn't involve themselves in it. It is an infantalizing assertion that paints native Africans almost like confused children, wholly at the mercy of European desires, somehow dependant on Europe to act ethically in order for them to know right from wrong.
Thank you for this lecture
and for your teaching🌹
Sorry guys. I stopped listening after “the infamous murder of George Floyd”. If you can’t be honest about that I can’t consider anything else you say to be credible.
Beautifully articulated argument, couldn't agree more with what she says. I would add unless I just missed it. That is that these ideas pull us apart and stoke tension and miss understand human nature at its core. MLK was right on the judgment of character and he always will be.
Exactly, thanks for sharing
I’m guessing she is talking about how to decolonise the UK take some of the millions of people back to there country of origin change the UK back to what it looked like in the 1950s.
To decolonize all the ideas, art, beliefs, ingenuity that led to britain becoming a colonial nation would mean stripping the country back to stone henge days (and they won’t even let us have that). It’s stupid, pointless, and deeply offensive.
It’s extremely important to understand history. It’s also extremely important to understand the trying to live. It is extremely damaging.
Thank you. I like that she focused a bit on the woman's perspective.
Regular people are not history scholars. Things are not always overlooked. Sometimes things are deliberately hidden or obscured.
That’s what I’ve been saying the whole time, just not as eloquently.
Thank you so much for this, so informative and engaging
On the face of it, deconolisation comes from a reasonable and noble place.
An ideology like liberalism is essentially a formal pronouncement of English cultural traditions, liberalism was written on the hearts of the English long before the Liberal writers like Locke formulated it. And so, Liberalism struggles to work in the post-colonial context, the Bantu speaking tribes of Africa do not have a culture that meshes with Liberalism, or with any other European ideology. Thus, it makes sense to go back to the drawing board and pull from their own cultures, to formalise the ideologies written on the heart of the many different African tribes, and then model the state after that ideology instead. So far, everything is reasonable and noble.
But there are two major problems here:
1. Colonialism inflicted significant damage on the cultures thenselves, they are hollowed out and realistically may lack the substance to support a sensible ideology, additionally their culture almost certainly has the means to organise small tribal structures, and not anything on the scale of the nodern natuon state.
2. Every last decolonial thinker is a socialist... proponents of a European philosophy, the worst of the European philosophies.
They are too deeply trapped in a colonial paradigm to effevtively attack it, and even if they succeeded therein to divorce themselves fron European ideas and truly return to their roots, they would not find anything that can keep a nation state together.
Thank you.
She nails it!
Decolonisation mostly happened in the 50s and 60s. Mind you, there are still problems... listen to Fela Kuti's "Colonial Mentality".
as always great work cheers from Canada
I need to hear more from this lady
Would Inaya be brave enough to make these points to a primarily young black minority ethnic audience? I get the feeling that she may just be preaching to a choir.
So?
Thanks!
Thank you for your support!
this is good
I had to LOL about a super model being involved in a "natural hair movement" or anything else claiming to be natural when everything about her look is extremely curated and not natural. Washing and styling hair at all is technically not natural.
Thank you for this thoughtful, wise evaluation of contemporary culture!
Glad you enjoyed
My main issue with this video is her over-use of the word "oftentimes" which is an American import and thus a colonial bastardisation of the language...
The Christian view of the past, in part, is ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not just some select cultures. The only way to reconcile this is through faith in Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for our sins. Then we can all move on from the past. It's really that simple.
From Brazil I’d like to say « muito Obrigada » to Miss Inaya Iman. Her knowledge, dedication and elegance when presenting such important subject of our History, trying to elevate and bring understanding instead of conflictive stereotypes.
Good, but it would be nice to see the whole debate.
Sure, The link is in the description
@@theequianoproject Ha, o.k. sorry!
Colonization is alive and well ! It is no longer the domain of governments, but the domain of corporations. We are far, far from a post-colonial world.
Especially curious given that the VOC, British EIC, VCoL, etc. were all private or semi-private corporations from the start.
If you look for evil, you will find it everywhere. Good can also be found by looking. Look for good in the present and leave the evils of the past in the grave where they lie.
To colonise is to take over a ready made country,this never happened and the settlers are the indigenous as we made the lands a country,it would still be stone age and few natives around at the time of .
Well said
wow excellent
This is not about colonisation generally. It's anti white person colonisation. But colonisation has been the lot of man for eons
Who owned the American slave ships ?
Most of them? The Portuguese. (from a cursory look from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database)
Documents in Carnegie Library say otherwise@@AtrusOranis
@@apintofbeer1667 Well, the ships came from many different nations. About 770 ships flew the United States flag. About 2425 ships flew the British flag, About 2850 ships flew the Portuguese or Brazilian flag. There were also Spanish, Dutch, and French flags.
Don't forget East Africa. The trans-Saharan trade or Eastern slave trade, is noted as the longest slave trade, having occurred for more than 1,300 years. Hint, it was not Europeans.
It was smaller than the North Atlantic slave trade,empires were built on the wealth of it @@acerrubrum5749
The mainstream news media always leaves out historical context when it comes to geopolitical issues.
I often feel that the opposition to "wokeness" falls into the very same overcorrection it seeks to criticise. Representations of new ways of thinking about the past in popular culture are inevitably simplified when referenced in general terms. Instead of the constant pushback and "gotcha" one-upmanship it's important to recognise what contemporary discourses about aspects of the past are saying about society today by referencing the past.
Audio out of sync.
Very interesting speech. The fusing of spiritual and Catholicism is not exciting, but dangerous engagement with demons.
The complicity of precolonial African states and African elites in slavery and colonialism respectively doesn't mean that that we shouldn't acknowledge these events as historic wrongs that ultimately contributed to the supremacey of white nations over other peoples. The Europeans applied the divide and rule approach learned from their Roman Imperial predecessors. African were thinking regionally and Europeans were thinking globally. It's not about blame but it's ensuring we are all aware of our history and helps us to better understand modern ills such as racism, xenophobia and denegration of people from non white parts of the world. Where we can right previous wrongs seeking to do so. Giving back looted art work is a start.
Looted art made with the proceeds of Slavery, that was looted as the British where busy stamping out slavery? That is a much harder moral discussion to have. Perhaps they should not have been ret5till the recipients acknowledged the troubled history of the artefacts.
One single prince from an extreme elite who was accidently enslaved and was soon released changes nothing at all. The prince Abdul was on the same level as the English upper classes and aristocracy. Yet somehow this changes the decolonial narrative?
Because Benin engaged in slavery means Britain shouldn't return the art work it looted?? I don't follow your argument.
The kings of benin sold their own people to make shiny statues of themselves from european metal. Yes, they should get them back and when they are displayed they should write how many lives each of them is worth.
No they shouldn't.....Quit whinging about past CONQUESTS. Why aren't you crying about how the Benin should pay reparations to those that they stole from, terrorized, gRaped, killed and enslaved?
As a white male New Zealander I would never in a million years think of dressing up as a pre-colonisation Maori person, even if Maori gave me permission to do so, just as I wouldn't dress up as a Zulu warrior, a plains Native American, as Genghis Khan, or an Inuit. What sort of moron would even think of doing that?
What is the difference from a Maori wearing western clothing and a westerners wearing Maori clothing? I can see no moral difference and as Maorri wear western clothing westerners are free to wear Maori clothing.
You wouldn't eat or prepare native cuisine from other cultures or go to events in support of other cultures? Are you against all culture mixing?
Because the decolonisation of India was carried out in the most responsible way imaginable? Good thing you don't do body counts.
That was because the Hindu, and Muslim leaders couldn’t get along with each other.
She said "alleged White Supremacy" That's all i needed to hear to know she is working for the establishment and is clearly not a revolutionary intellectual. I'm all for understanding the contradictions of historical figures but not to admit that Europe had and has an agenda to negate the rich history of Black Africa in order to exploit its human and material resources is highly problematic.
Ha ha you unironicaly said 'revolutionary'. You live in a posh bubble funded by the government.
That’s the issue that the colonialism of Africa which is scrutinised is white colonialism not black on black colonialism. Why is that???
Its a pity the black Africans did nt write their rich culture down, cause they were to ignorant and stupid to learn how to read and write. Next week, rich culture fails to invent the wheel, while chewing on the thigh bone of neighbouring tribe.
@@youtubeyoutube936 Because White people are the one who made millions and millions of $ off the slave trade and the theft of resources which enable the US & Europe to become extremely rich and powerful empires to this day. While, yes some African tribes made money but not on the same scale.
Pffft
Most of those are patently absurd, for one thing, where docolonization has not occurred, how do you talk about it? These are PROTESTS., not academic enterprises, and as anybody who knows anything about protest knows, issues and thoughts will vary simply by PEOPLE. Meaning you can make almost ANY generalization.
But I will give a local example which shows about 'historical context'. In my province, several years ago there was a protest, and then a formal organization by students to rename a building.
This law school building was called "Ludlow hall' for a local lawyer. Now, the people who advocated for change, did so beause they KNEW the history.. There are lots of other buildings named for historical poeple, none were challenged, although many people advocate to change ANY public names away from people. And that certainly has some merit. Many now feel that the PROCESS by which naming occurs is colonial, and thats largely true.
Then came the online protest AGAINST the protest. This was mainly online, and it was from people who didn't even USE the building, the building literally had no meaning to them at all. They didn't even know who ludlow was, and so far from the historical context, these were people who argued against the very notion of renaming ANYTHING. They simply didn't want ANYTHING renamed. So THAT is the colonial enterprise at work. In fact the city I live in is the ONLY bilingual city in canada. French and english. It is named for an admitted war criminal, the military leader who was in charge of throwing the acadians out of their homes and who personally admitted to infecting blankets with small pox and sending them to first nations.
It is AMAZING to me that the french here, who the english always claim are 'spoiled' and have 'way too much power', have NEVER advocated for a name change. Only now is there the beginnings of a change....at the FRENCH UNIVERSITY. Thats right, the french university was named for the guy who expulsed the french! You can't make that up.
But I can GUARANTEE you that as this plays out you will hear an unending refrain of "Oh when will this stop...." Despite the fact that the actual number of building changes or even statue topplings has been VERY minimal, problem is some peoples algorithm follows such things world wide and think its constantly going on.
Back to ludlow, I did an experiment,which was to announce that a new buidling was being built and asking for a name. That name would be decided by a choice between the two guys in the first election ever held here. One was a populist newspaper editor who helped local businesses grow, the other was a connected politico who 'won' by having the election overthrown by the local magistrate. Not only was it overthrown, but the newspaper owner who actually won was ARRESTED.
Robert Ludlum was that poltically appointed guy who threw the other guy in jail, THAT is who the building is named for. The other guy is forgetton, although most people here couldn't tell you who ludlum was, obviously.
NOw, I can bring up not only more examples of that, but can basically prove that virtually EVERY case of statue toppling or building and street naming follows that same exact pattern.
To be honest I think she's arguing from racism