SCENE: Philosophy Seminar
(Prof. Coseino arrives. All over groups of students discuss about the Concept "Racism". Some accuse the others of being "racists". Others claim not to be "capitalists". A confused atmosphere. The lecture begins. Thereafter, Coseino makes a suggestion.)
Coseino: I noticed that my comments on "Racism" last week have caused academic turmoil, hence, because the topic "Racism and Ideology" is fundamental to understand Fanon's Philosophy, especially his ideas expressed in the "Wretched of the Earth", I suggest that we first clear this "race" issue. Kindly, formulate all your doubts and questions, and present them to us for scientific a n d philosophic considerations. I will supply piquant answers, revealing the core of this ideological problem.
Patricia: Indeed, we have a mountain of "racial" questions. We suggest that we treat them in detail today, and to continue with the "Wretched of the Earth" next week.
Coseino: Fine! The "clients" are the "bosses". As long as you follow the "red thread" which was elucidated last week, and as long as you keep Fanon in mind, we'll have no problems...
Adam: Are the concepts "race" and "racism" scientific and philosophic? Should we use them at all?
Coseino: Others may differ, as far as I am concerned, they are unscientific and ideological. They have caused intellectual confusion and catastrophic disasters over the last centuries. "Ghosts", "angels" and "demons" have been used as "concepts" since millennia, but until today none of them have been verified scientifically; they simply are not present in so-called physical reality. However, they exist in the "minds" of billions of indoctrinated and intellectually-manipulated "human beings". Similarly, "races" and "racism" are ideological "realities", in other words, pseudo-terms, and I would suggest that they, and many other "concepts", should be eradicated from our Philosophy.
Mohammed: Were Marx and Engels "racists"?
Coseino: Of course, for sure! From the cradle to the grave! They cannot be dissociated from their intellectual environment, from the social barriers of the 19th century. They were social products of their epoch, no matter how revolutionary and socialist they may have been. At that time, Western Europe had experienced an unprecedented development in technology, science and ideology, which was accompanied by a strong feeling of "white race supremacy". The social sciences bore the imprint of this European arrogance. History, anthropology, ethnology, psychology and sociology attempted to "scientifically" legitimize the hegemony of Europe and the "superiority" of the "Aryan Race". Marx and Engels did not escape this mighty avalanche of racist ideology; their uncensored works are full of racist remarks.
William: Could you exemplify and amplify this assertion?
Coseino: Of course. In the same year, in 1848, Arthur J. de Gobineau and Marx and Engels made their respective "Manifestos" public: The Inequality of the Races and The Communist Manifesto. None of them dealt with the "racist problems", expounded by Fanon. In fact, later, neither Freud nor Jung cared about such "native questions". In the very Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels spoke about "barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones". I wonder, if they had meant this kind of "barbarism" when they made their famous prophetic projection about the possible future of mankind, should the proletarian revolution fail. Marx even found a subject of derision in Lasalle's "negroid" features.
De Gobineau went even further: he claimed that all ancient and modern "civilizations" were "the creation of white men, the only history being white history." Now you see, "history" is not only made by "Great Men", it is made by "White Men". To be great implies to be white, to be a man. In a letter to Starkenburg, Engels bluntly stated: " ... race itself is an economic factor."
Martina: Was Charles Darwin also a "racist" ?
Coseino: The answer you can find in the subtitle of his famous work, The Origin of the Species: "The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". Voltaire, Montesquieu, in fact, the whole "Renaissance", "Reformation", "Enlightenment" and "Age of Reason" was nothing else than a virulent broiling of pale white ideology, of Social Discrimination, of Racism. Voltaire and Montesquieu could not understand, how God, The Almighty, who is the "personification of goodness", could have placed a "soul", and for that matter a "good soul" in a body as "black" as that of a "Negro". They were convinced, that the "Negroes" are not "human", that they are a "dog-race" apart, that they cannot think, and that their junglelike "animal noises" and noble "savage gestures" cannot be utilized intellectually, "not for the uses, nor for the abuses of philosophy". This can be read expressis verbis in their original works.
Jeanette: Can we then speak about "racism" already in Ancient Egypt or Greece?
Coseino: Because of primitive accumulation of capital, and not yet of an advanced "world market", we can only speak about a crypto-racism, about "social group antipathy". At least, to our amusement, the forefathers of the future "Aryans", the very Germans, and also the very British, were disqualified as "barbarians" by the ancient Greeks, and the latter made fun about the flat noses and lips of the Nubians and Ethiopians, also of the black Pharaohs. Who knows, why, over the ages, the Sphinx had lost its "negroid" nose? Did it occur during a skirmish with white, "Greek, Western, European Culture", and eventually the latter won?
Martina: And in the Roman Empire?
Coseino: Although capitalist accumulation was already gaining momentum, yet in Rome, superiority was still a cultural and class attribute.
Alfred: And what was happening during the epoch of "Discovery", "Christianization" and the "Slave Trade"?
Coseino: From the Roman Empire to the "barbarian invasions" of Europe, to the Muslim "desecration" of "Holy" Spain by the "Moorish Turks", during the era of political and ideological domination of Roman Catholicism, the rationalization given to treat "slaves" as "non-human beings" was not the slaves' colour, but simply their "culture" and "religion", which, of course, were not accepted as being "civilized" at all. As Eric Williams, in his book, "Capitalism and Slavery", had stated: "Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery." When the heroic Dutch East India Company "Commander", Jan van Riebeeck, had occupied the Cape, South Africa, on the 7th of April, 1652, in his Diary , he wrote that today we have killed many "black, stinking dogs", he meant the "brown" "Strandlopers", in reality, the brave members of the Khoikhoin people, living there, already for millennia, at the foot of Africa. From 1652 till today, in South Africa, one can study the "Essence a n d Existence" of Racism, of Apartheid, the true face of Capitalism, of Nazism.
Martina: A final question, as a student of language, I would like to know whether this superstructural process of progressive "racism" also had its impact on European languages?
Coseino: Obviously. "Racism", for example, in the English language can be traced back to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603), especially after she decreed that "Negroes and Blackamoors" had to be expelled from her realm.
Jeanette: And in Roman Catholic Spain?
Coseino: Well, now you know where the Spanish word "negrero" (a slave trader) comes from. In fact, "race relations" date back to 1494, when "His Holiness", the Pope, granted Catholic Spain and Portugal jurisdictional control over the "heathen" peoples of the "New World" and their natural resources. Later this also applied to the African and Asian continents. The "negro" as his colonial designation indicates was distinguished from his white slave-master by his skin colour, by "negro", black.
Martina: Now I understand how those funny discriminatory children stories, rhymes and songs came into existence. Perhaps, as a doctoral dissertation, Karl should trace "racism" in comic books, comic strips and "science fiction". Surely, in science writing, as suggested by Fanon, this ideological evil will not have any future; if any, it will be a "black future".
Coseino: There you see it! Imagine the ideological background of the "Ten Little Black Niggers", of the German "Struwwelpeter", of the "Bimbos", etc. Even Agatha Christie still made use of these "Black Niggers", as if a "Nigger" was not "Black" enough already!
Check Roget's Thesaurus or Webster’s Dictionary of the American Language, what "white" connotes:
something "angelic, godly, divine, morally or spiritually pure, honourable, decent, etc."
Now you can imagine in a world of "Ivory and Ebony", what "black" would
denote!
Now, Jeanette and Martina, check in any English dictionary what the following words or phrases mean:
Black magic, black art, black comedy, black books, black cat, black sheep, blackout, black cap, Blackshirt, Black Pope, Black Monk, Black Maria, Black Peter, Black Orpheus, black widow, black market, blackguard, blackballing, black faced, black browed, black headed, black hearted, black humoured, black hole, blackwater, blackmail, blacklist, blackball, Black Monday, Black Friday, Black Sabbath, Black Muslims, Black Africa, etc., etc.
I think now you have an idea what "racism" is all about. Next week we will discuss what "arms" Fanon had suggested to root out this evil. Surely, not by "reforming racism", not by "changing it from within"! That's all for today! Good-Bye!
(Highly satisfied, the students leave the class.)