White on Black by Jan Nederveen - Book Report/Review Example

Assignment CRITICAL REASONING PAPER, “White on Black” by Jan Nederveen Pieterse Due CRITICAL REASONING PAPER, “White on Black” by Jan Nederveen Pieterse Summary The first three chapters of “White on Black” are all captioned under the title of “Africa”, which makes up the first part of the book. In these first three chapters of the book, Jan Nederveen Pieterse brings out the total theme or idea of the birth of European supremacy over the African. The fundamental idea is therefore to make the reader have a historical understanding to how issues of White discrimination against Black started.

From the nature of presentation of issues in these chapters, it is clear the writer chose these fundamental ideas as a way of leading the reader to better understanding the broader issue of discrimination that was at stake, ahead for the reader to uncover. To this end, a subject such as ‘Images of Eurocentrism’ is discussed in the first chapter. By Eurocentrism, Pieterse debates that European has set itself as a superpower and an ultimate pivot from whose perspective the whole world should be viewed from.

The first chapter is thus written with a lot of focus on the decolonization, which took place in the late 20th century. The reason this era was taken into consideration was that the writer makes an important premise that as most European countries lost power through colonization, they wanted a new form of means to take control of the world again and thus Eurocentrism. The second and third chapters are rightly linked to the themes of the first by somewhat telling the reader the out of the Eurocentrism that took place.

To this end, the writer makes a conclusion that acts of savages, racial discrimination, and focus on the Dark Continent were all ways by which the West wanted to center the world on itself. Evaluation The general presentation of the author can be described as coherent, well organized and precise. This was achieved through a number of means including the chronology of events, starting right from the medieval times and entering perfectly in colonial periods, then transiting into the periods of slavery and its abolition.

There was also a lot of visual rather than abstract understanding of concepts presented due to the image rich nature of the presentation. In all the arguments, quality can be said to be a key principle because the author avoided being subjective in most of the cases. Rather than being subjective, the writer was very objective with events and activities as they happened in history. The nature of selection of events made in the chapters under consideration also makes the arguments of high quality because it would be noted that only arguments that related directly to the central theme of the chapters and the book in general were focused on.

Whiles doing this, the writer paid particular attention to the use of evidence by largely quoting secondary sources and in some cases, primary sources. The use of secondary evidence was however ore than primary evidence, making the chapters have some level of doubt with the credibility of evidence as secondary sources are not firsthand sources. Instead of the overreliance on secondary sources, there are key primary evidences or sources that could have been of importance to the material if used.

For example there remain primary evidence of some key acts of Black discrimination, slavery and abuse of power against what the author captures as the Black Continent in most museums around the world. Regardless of the absence of sufficient primary evidence and sources, it can be said that the arguments that were presented by the writer were highly persuasive. The commonest element of writing that the writer used in achieving such high level of persuasion was the fact that arguments were presented devoid of subjective and discretional judgments of events.

This way, the reader is presented with an opportunity of descending very deeply into the arguments made and making personalized judgments in accordance with what the author had presented. But even though the chapters considered promote personal reflections on the relationship between the White and the Black in historical antecedents and some cases of present day occurrences, one area that remained unanswered in the chapters was the area of cause or reason. What this means is that the writer dedicated much time into narrating from a very subjective viewpoint, the acts of racial discrimination that was going on and the consequences of it thereof, without explaining why the White would see himself as superior over the Black in the first place.

Indeed after reading the three chapters of the book namely chapters one, two and four, there has been a new wave of thinking for me. This is because before the reading, I had heard of similar reports and cases of racial supremacy and discrimination against the Black but I had not come across such empirical and pictorial presentation of the issue, making it highly visual and easily comprehensible. To a larger extent therefore, I have now come to be a person who thoroughly disagree with any form of discrimination, even if not racial.

Cited Work Jan Pieterse, J. Nederveen. White on Black. Yale: Yale University Press.1995. Print.