Stronger economies balance race relations
IN last week’s instalment, I argued that there was no effective way of addressing racial imbalances than for poor nations to grow their economies. Stronger economies are a source of power, pride and influence. Individuals or nations become counted when they are economically capable of standing for themselves and have something to offer to the world. Recently history has shown that establishing stronger economies is the only muscle that enables effective self-definition in a world where the strong preys on the weak.
In making this argument, I am aware of many sociological, psychological, academic and political initiatives that are pursuing the epistemological route to address race. Top on the agenda these days is the decoloniality — an emerging school of thought concerned with untangling the production of knowledge from a primarily Eurocentric episteme such as the education and religious system. It builds on the decolonisation agenda which refers to the undoing of colonialism by dismantling the colonial empires established prior to the First World War.
On the political front, there has been waves of global protests such as the Black Lives Matter campaigns and the rest. While these attract attention, their impact is both slow and limited given that they have to depend on institutions controlled by the same supremacists for resources to sustain the campaigns. The impact of these protests would be more significant if resources were sourced from the marginalised racial groups and if such efforts would result in a major shift on the current global economic superstructure. As long the global economy remains intact, the possible outcome of these protests is peripheral inclusion to quell the discontent.
Decoloniality is a critique of the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture. On that account, it assumes that when the Western knowledge and its superiority are cast out of the way marginalised groups see the world, they will be more empowered to redefine themselves and how they wish to manage their ways of lives.
The process involves unlearning and relearning the world and creating a new knowledge that is independent of the oppressive colonial world. It places the power to change and redemption on knowledge oblivious of the aggressive power of capital. Now, in a world that is entangled and intertwined and so much dependent on one another, this is not an easy feat.
From theoretical standpoint, the credibility of this school of thought is not in question. However, reality works differently. For starters, in the modernday era, cultural or socialisation agents are no longer independent from the political economy of nations. Historically, local social agents were both repositories and suppliers of knowledge, a role that has been hijacked by capital. Those who own the means of production define the culture of a society and they have the power to shape how life must be lived than counter cultural episteme. Take for example, the political economy of a society decides its education, religion and days of worship, diet and how it is served and eaten, modes of communication and the language of command. They shape culture and how it should evolve.
This is not disputing the importance of dismantling Western knowledge as a necessity and its superiority but pointing out that it takes far too long and is a complicated route to address racial imbalances. The same dominant Western knowledge, and those who drive it, will be the first to resist and derail the decoloniality overtures as permitting is tantamount to allowing loss and ultimate defeat.
The West invested massively into knowledge that perpetuate white supremacy and superiority — part of which remains with us today. Our literature feeds the imbalances that characterise the race relations today. They have used science to justify racism such as in Charles Darwin’s 19th Century On the Origin of the Species which pseudoscientifically justified racism on the basis of stages of human development and primitivity. In Extinction of Human Races by Prichard (1838) dark races were described as savages beyond redemption. In the field of medicine, Robert Knox in his 1850 book The Races of Man drew a link between race and intelligence before it was found that his conclusion was based on a wrong sample. But that was before Knox’s studies had gained traction and used to inform the origins of the 20th Century eugenics — an effort to breed better human beings by encouraging the reproduction of people with “good” genes and discouraging those with “bad” genes. This gave rise to multi-racial breeding and inter-racial marriages.
This is just a sample of few example of sources of knowledge that shape different areas of studies on race relations, some of which are still being used in our schools today. The problem is not that these racially toxic texts are still in our education system but that we are now in a cultural context whose political economy is controlled elsewhere. Our minds are consuming that is being produced somewhere to serve the interests of those who control the global economies.
The solution to this problem is therefore to establish a local political economy that sustains local knowledge production and external knowledge acquisition for areas that require supplementary text. Several Asian countries have succeeded after pursuing this route. This is why the world today is learning Mandarin and Chinese culture because China brings “food” to the global table. This is why Chinese are now more respected than four decades ago. Even though they are not understood but they have space in the global arena and their people get what they want even when they have little or nothing to offer.