Tuesday, June 15, 2010

quotation of the week (w.e.b. du bois)


(a currently available t-shirt,
at a site to which I will not link --


In 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, W.E.B. Du Bois published a searing essay, "The Souls of White Folk." The following excerpt seems especially relevant in light of today's "news" (even as fools rush in to deny the relevance of this "news"). Du Bois describes how white people considered the "world war" an especially horrible war in part because the white people in it killed other white people -- instead of just exploiting, abusing, and killing the usual victims, darker peoples. Du Bois also had a clear eye for how darker peoples fit into the standard white logic of war:

War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near?

Think of the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in German Africa, in British Nigeria, in French and Spanish Morocco, in China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen lesser places -- were not these horrible, too? Mind you, there were for most of these wars no Red Cross funds.

Behold little Belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world forgotten Congo? What Belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth, of what she has done to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880. Down the dark forests of inmost Africa sailed this modern Sir Galahad, in the name of "the noble-minded men of several nations," to introduce commerce and civilization. What came of it? "Rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form," wrote Glave in 1895.

Harris declares that King Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror -- in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes."

Yet the fields of Belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing elsewhere on its own account.

As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battle smoke and heard faintly the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: This is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture -- back of all culture -- stripped and visible today. This is where the world has arrived -- these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable heights of which it boasted. Here is whither the might and energy of modern humanity has really gone. . . .

Manifestly it is expansion overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good.

This Europe has largely done. The European world is using black and brown men for all the uses which men know. Slowly but surely white culture is evolving the theory that "darkies" are born beasts of burden for white folk. It were silly to think otherwise, cries the cultured world, with stronger and shriller accord. The supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary. Darker peoples are dark in mind as well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer, cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of Mausers and Maxims; they have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical idiots -- "half-devil and half-child."

Such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly and in limited ways. They are not simply dark white men. They are not "men" in the sense that Europeans are men. To the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds -- and let them be paid what men think they are worth -- white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless.

Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal worldwide mark of meanness -- color!

There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. It is here that the golden hand beckons. Here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences. These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in "punitive" expeditions when they revolt. In these dark lands "industrial development" may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial history of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with only one test of success -- dividends!

This theory of human culture and its aims has worked itself through warp and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize. Everything great, good, efficient, fair, and honorable is "white"; everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is "yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." The changes of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper heading and moving picture, in sermon and school book, until, of course, the King can do no wrong -- a White Man is always right and a Black Man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.

There must come the necessary despisings and hatreds of these savage half-men, this unclean canaille of the world -- these dogs of men. All through the world this gospel is preaching. It has its literature, it has its priests, it has its secret propaganda and above all -- it pays!

There's the rub -- it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper -- they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from their pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully.

Small wonder, then, that in the practical world of things-that-be there is jealousy and strife for the possession of the labor of dark millions, for the fight to bleed and exploit the colonies of the world where this golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the whipping and shooting. It was this competition for the labor of yellow, brown, and black folks that was the cause of the World War. Other causes have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless were, but they were subsidiary and subordinate to this vast quest of the dark world's wealth and toil.

Colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream. They belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in Hong Kong and Anam, in Borneo and Rhodesia, in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, in Panama and Havana -- these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms.



cf. the apostasy of John Perkins and Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. Can you recommend others?

36 comments:

  1. DuBois sais it all right there. It comes down to the demonizaion of black-skin and the purification of white-skin, something that is still used today heavily especially in the media. This helps to give whites the excuse to consider blacks as less than human for which to exploit and even murder them.

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  2. Here's the extra irony: slaves didn't build the pyramids. Maybe that's intentional though. With hipsters, who can tell? Usually it boils down to "Pick whatever seems the most clever, and that's what I was going for!"

    The so-called justifications for colonialism always disgusted me. "Half-devil and half-child." This was always my grim favorite. Which one is it? Why, whichever one makes the more squeamish of them feel better about exploiting other races, of course! "They have no souls, so it's okay!" "They're so unintelligent, we're doing them a favor!'" "We're stomping out their primitive, backwards culture and replacing it with our own, if anything they owe us!"

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  3. [Chris, Du Bois writes here of WW I, not WW II. ~macon]

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  4. >> "these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms."

    How lovely that gold was the reason Columbus set forth (and then embarked on a massacre spree) back in the 1400s. We white people have made *so* much progress since then, yes?

    @ Kraas,
    >>"Here's the extra irony: slaves didn't build the pyramids. Maybe that's intentional though."

    Well, the argument is that young men were conscripted into service to build the pyramids, but it was a HONOR and a PRIVILEGE that they looked forward to. Sound anything like neo-Confederate justifications of slavery in the U.S.? (I may be affording too much credit to [company]).

    As for other apostates (POC and WP) - Vine DeLoria, Jr., Anne McClintock, Gayatri Spivak, Alice Walker, Kathy Kelly, Emma Goldman, Eric Foner, Howard Zinn, 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America

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  5. I know where that shirt came from. They're so tee-hee-we're-so-fucking clever "hipster funny." Arab Trader, to me, is the same as being hipster...it's taking something one thinks is a clever retort and making some asshole point with it.

    A historical fiction to accompany the "half-devil, half-child" theory, and just an all around beautifully written novel about slavery and, in particular, one slave in Jamaica is Andrea Levy's "The Long Song." The white people thought their black slaves so dim and stupid or they were calling them "tricky" or often insinuated that their slaves were lying to them. It's so pervasive throughout this novel. The irony of how brutally honest and intelligent the slaves were, despite being stripped of an education and their own culture is also pervasive.

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  6. Ah, my mistake. Still, the arrogance displayed to assume that the world war was about Afirca is overwhelming. It's about European state's right to self determination.

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  7. Powerful and still apt. I see the drooling already over Afghanistan's newly "found" treasures.

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  8. @ Chris Allin re: " It's about European state's right to self determination."

    Ah! Isn't it always? From the point of view of those who wage war, that is?

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  9. @bloglogger

    From the point of view of those who wage war? I don't even understand what you are trying to imply.

    I'm not sure what I'm doing discussing this, I just fail to see how the beginning of the first world war can have a racial basis when it's centered around the European nations.

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  10. I'm sorry, It seems I was lead to believe that WW I was fought over a dude getting shot, and then alliance multiplying the size of the war.

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  11. Looks like your typical case of [white] hipster irony. Using the Arab Trader Argument/distraction with a good helping of completely failing at history.

    @Chris Allin
    "It's about European state's right to self determination"

    I'm (not) sorry but I had a good laugh at that. Think I will again now.

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  12. "I'm not sure what I'm doing discussing this, I just fail to see how the beginning of the first world war can have a racial basis when it's centered around the European nations."

    Self-determination was certainly a major factor of World War I...but the key term here is "World War". The rest of the world was involved, not just Europe. Africa became another battleground for the European nations, because they wanted to hold onto the colonies they had already establish and then gain even more territory. Your opinion isn't invalid, but neither is Dubois'.

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  13. I'm not seeing the connection between DuBois' quote and the US presence in Afghanistan. Could the author or someone else help make the connection a little more obvious please?

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  14. Jerry,

    As a start, this veteran's explanation of his own apostasy might help. Racist conceptions of dehumanized Others buttress the plundering U.S. efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

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  15. *adding on to Kraas' comment*

    And not just determined for their state to hold onto their colonies in Africa but elsewhere on the planet too. And there's the european powers also using their colonized people to fight for them then giving them the shaft after the war was over. And then repeated the performance in WWII.

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  16. "How lovely that gold was the reason Columbus set forth (and then embarked on a massacre spree) back in the 1400s. "
    I thought Columbus was looking for spices, and it was the guys who followed him who were after gold...

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  17. When I was studying WWI in school, we spent about three months before hand looking at the situations leading up to it and the conflicts that set the stage, so to speak, for the war. The vast majority of those conflicts, which in turn caused the formation of networks of alliances between the colonizing powers, took place in the colonies, particularly africa. I was taught that before anything happened in the Balkans, tensions were building in the struggle for more and more profitable, colonies.

    By contrast, the areas where self-determination was a big motivator were...Serbia, and Austria-Hungary. The former because it didn't want to get swallowed, and the latter because it had so many internal ethnic tensions it was tearing itself apart. Serbia was a small country, that served more as a spark than a major player, and Austria-Hungary disintegrated and dropped out of the conflict pretty quickly.

    [/off topic][on topic]

    Besides which, the point about the comparative amount of screaming is much more interesting (and relevant to this blog) than arguments about the cause of WWI. regardless of what the cause, the fact is, people of other races, in other parts of the world, were suffering plenty before the war, and white north americans ignored it. Then something bad happens in europe, and it's a big deal. Reminds me a bit of how we tend to get really upset when a european/north american soldier or aid worker is killed or hurt in someplace like iraq and afghanistan, but when it's "only" the people who actually live there we ignore it, or say they should have just avoided the fighting better.

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  18. “Manifestly it is expansion overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good.”

    It’s an indictment of the Anglo mindset- a tragic fusion of racism and manifest destiny on a global scale. Fated by providence to expand his ambitions, he navigates the savage continents, subjugating people of color wherever they may dwell. Much like the fictional Borg of star trek, “we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” Ostensibly, we will descend upon your borders and we will annex your lands; your valiant struggle to preserve your history and culture is irrelevant.

    Under the guise of liberty, (The War on Terrorism for instance) American values have been sold as a bill of goods- sustained by the racist notion that the vanquished will be better off somehow. Ascribing civilian loss to generic terms like collateral damage makes war bearable to the citizenry back home. Such carnage is noted by the media and yet easily forgotten. However, the death of one white American is enough to occupy a 24-hour news cycle for days on end. It would seem Dubois knew the white man better than he knew himself.

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  19. @ Laggania,

    Nope! That's largely one of the lovely myths about Columbus that U.S. textbooks like to propagate. He did use spices as one of his arguments before Ferdinand and Isabella (the other being gold), but all the records from his time on Hispaniola--even the very first voyage--show him as obsessed with finding gold from the very beginning. (Although many of the sources are filtered through Las Casas, who, um, had a distinct point of view. To put it mildly). The Internet Medieval Sourcebook has some good documents and links about this.

    I also recall reading something about travel to the actual Indies not actually being that difficult, but I don't remember where it was so I can't verify that right now. ;o)

    In the letter to Spain in which Columbus announced his "discovery," he mentions spices once and gold over and over (he had, at that time, found neither). Plus, he introduced a system of slavery--first to send slaves back to Spain because he hadn't found gold; then once he did, he forced the Arawaks to work in the gold mines in horrendous conditions.

    It was, in other words, all about the Benjamins.

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  20. @macon

    "... the plundering US efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

    Exactly what plundering is the US doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? The last time I checked the wars were contributing towards bankrupting this country, and even evil US-based multinational corporations haven't got much loot out of them. For example:

    http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1948787,00.html

    So again, what does the DuBois quote have to do with the US presence in Afghanistan?

    (p.s. the white type reversed out of the dark brown background is hard to read after awhile imo)

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  21. @Jerry

    Re: Afghanistan, the writer (Kit) was talking about the "discovery" of vast mineral deposits that, according to the Pentagon, have the potential to lift Afghanistan out of its sad state. All the country needs is for a few American capitalists to go over there and put everybody to work as slaves--er, miners.

    Google it; you'll find it's not new information, just newly manipulated by the Pentagon, which IMO is laying the ground work for resource extraction. One of the minerals in plentiful supply is lithium, which powers technology.

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  22. Totally OT: I'm not really a fan of the new template, macon. It's kind of hard on the eyes, as Jerry mentioned.

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  23. @August

    Its very nice on the eyes to me.

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  24. If you prefer dark text on light background, try highlighting it. That should give you blue on white, at least in Firefox, although I *think* you can change the colors if you wish.

    (I for one like it, but then again, I've been using it in MS Word since about 2001. :P )

    /OT

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  25. Chris Allin said...
    "I'm not sure what I'm doing discussing this, I just fail to see how the beginning of the first world war can have a racial basis when it's centered around the European nations. "

    yeah European nations who wanted to maintain their control of the colonies i.e. the ones in Africa. That's why the colonies fought for independence so strongly after the WWs. The colonial empires treated them as completely expendable resources for their war efforts, and that included the humans lives to fight the war as well. Are you getting the connection now?

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  26. I like the new format ....

    "There's the rub -- it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper -- they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from their pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully."

    I suspect Free trade policies help create exploited conditions abroad.The arguments for free trade stress that jobs are created in country's with weak economy's and that the goods created are significantly cheaper which passes the savings to the consumer which is a trickle down way of helping poor people in the West stretch their earnings.Those against Free trade argue that it destroys business and take jobs away from workers who live in country's that import the inexpensive items.In the U.S. for example their are tariffs on tires made in China so that American tire manufactures can stay in business.So the 30.00 dollar tire Americas working poor could afford to buy is never allowed on the market at actual free trade cost.A few years back I remember reading about Nike and how it cost them only a few dollars to make a pair of tennis shoes and Niki would turn around and sell them for a few hundred.I think Fair trade policies need to be extended to include manufacturing allowing the workers in developing economy's to make a decent income.Then you could eliminate tariffs in the U.S. and allow the items to compete on the open market.Thus the inexpensive import tire is made available to those on a budget and those who made the tire are compensated a fair wage.At least in theory ....

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  27. @Mike,

    I like the new format ....

    Thanks for your input, and to others who've commented. Mike is responding to my second try for a change -- I got rid of a white-on-brown color scheme after five readers wrote here and via email that it was hard to read (though a couple said they liked it). I hope this green scheme is easier on the eyes of all or most readers. If you think any further tweaking would help, I'm all ears.

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  28. I definitely smell the Arab trade argument...but what else is new?

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  29. what color would you call this, seafoam or mint lol?

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  30. It's much better now, thank you macon!

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  31. The color of links, especially the coral color for already-followed links, is really hard to read on this background.

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  32. Thanks August and riche. I just adjusted the link color, hope it's better. For now, I've made the "already-visited" color the same as the unvisited color, because I haven't found a good color for already-visited yet.

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  33. @Willow - slaves didn't build the pyramids - when it wasn't time to farm pyramid building was like a public works project and the labor was considered a form of taxation. We know the laborers weren't treated as slaves because archeology and other research shows they ate high quality nutritious food and were well cared for. This t-shirt is about saying - Africa had slavery, too!

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  34. "Africa had slavery, too!"

    Yeah, we know. That changes nothing, though. Please read this.

    tl,dr version: Just because Person A does Bad Thing X, doesn't mean that it's okay for Person B to do it too, nor does it make Bad Thing X acceptable.

    Articles regarding who built the pyramids: here and here. Whether they actually WANTED to be doing the work, well, I guess we can't really know.

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  35. @ Hatshepsut,

    Yes, I'm relatively familiar with Egyptian history. My point, however, is that the same way we view the conscripts who built the pyramids (well-fed, enthusiastic, etc) is the exact same justification neo-Confederates use to smooth over U.S. slavery today. (There's also the matter of the Hebrews/Israelites, and what constituted "slavery" for them).

    Furthermore, when you learn in school about Greco-Roman history, the one thing that's always stressed is "Hey, slavery wasn't so bad back then." Again, it may be historically accurate, but the way the emphasis is placed on that fact, and on how the crews who built the pyramids saw it as an honor, just creeps me out. It's like the teachers are purposefully teaching students to think U.S. slavery was A-OK.

    (And yes, I've heard people defend U.S. slavery on the grounds of Greco-Roman slavery, not just w/respect to the Bible, and on how "archaeologists discovered it wasn't really slavery; they *wanted* to do it." I grew up someplace scary).

    <3 your screen name, by the way; she was awesome.

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  36. [Proud2be, thanks for the rant, but I've heard it all, many times before. In fact, I basically addressed this post to people who say things like what you said. You're really missing the whole point. ~macon]

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