The Experience of Colonialism and Post-Colonial Migration - Essay Example

?How the Experience of Colonialism and Post-Colonial Migration, Diaspora, Racism, Exclusion and Marginalisation Affects the Construction of Racial Identity Introduction When most African, Asian, and Oceanic nations were granted their independence by their colonial masters in the 1950s and 60s, many citizens of these geographical regions were ecstatic because they presumed that with the removal of the colonial yoke, they would be able to benefit from the natural resources of their nations without having to share them with the colonialists. Many observers also presumed that these nations would also bloom into being modern financially independent states that would have their own identities. This, for the most part, has not been forthcoming. The reality is that colonialism affected the colonised masses in more ways than could have been imagined. This is particularly evident among the African peoples who were colonised and enslaved- in the case of African Americans. The Effects of Colonialism Colonialism enforced the powerful ideology of the existence of racially inferior and superior tribes through its operations in Oceania, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. All over the world today, there is a lot of conflict that is taking place in the nations that were colonised by Western European nations. According to Meredith (2005), many scholars believe that these conflicts are mostly the result of colonial policies that established territorial boundaries, the unfair treatment of native populations in colonies, the unfair distribution of wealth from national resources, and the privileging of some ethnic populations over others. The colonialists also formed non-democratic governmental systems which further disenfranchised the local populations. Since the decade that saw the independence of many colonised nations, many people from the colonised populations have relocated to the nations from which their colonisers came from so as to benefit from a better way of life or to work and send money to their dependents in their native nations. While many of these people relocate in order to find jobs that will make them more financially capable, the fact is that they also carry a ‘colonial mentality’ and identify more with the colonial masters than their own colleagues in their nations of origin. This would explain why these members of the Diaspora continue to live in Western European nations even when they are exposed to constant taunts and even physically threatened. The Arrival of the Colonialists The arrival of Europeans on Africa’s shores more than 200 years ago was marked by serious changes to the demographics in many African nations. In many West African communities, people were taken against their will to work in plantations in Northern and Southern America as slaves. After the abolition of the slave trade, European nations would quickly lay claim to the resources of different nations in Africa and Asia (Kymlicka 2007). The peoples of the colonised lands were largely ignored and forced to live in reservations while their lands were pillaged by the invaders who could do so because they had more, in terms of military warfare, than their victims. This factor alone greatly affected the mind frame of the colonised peoples. African and Asian cultural identity was largely attacked, discredited, and destroyed through these invasive acts. The invasion by the colonialists was also backed by the activities of the missionaries who discredited cultural practices as being barbaric and retrogressive in spite of the protests voiced by different African communities. This resulted in the large scale erosion of Asian, but primarily African cultural identities. The colonised people began to feel alienated from not just themselves, but also from their lands which were being appropriated by strangers. Africans, Asians, and other colonised peoples would start viewing a new their own points of view about their religions, social arrangements, and cultural practices. Colonialism’s legacies still affect people today. Colonialism relegated the colonised peoples to the lowest position in society. The colonised peoples would subsequently develop an ingrained reliance that originated from the days when they were dominated by European colonialists and could not do anything to change this state of affairs. Since colonialism politically, historically, financially, and socially dispossessed and disinherited the colonised groups, the indigenous peoples in Africa and Asia would acquire a negative self-image in which they began to believe in the lies that were perpetuated by colonial regimes. The colonised masses, prior to the coming of the Europeans to their lands, would merely have recognised that they were different from the White tribes if they had met them (Van Amersfoort and van Niekerk 2006). However, after being colonised, they began to define themselves as being defined by who the European colonisers claimed that they were. This belief that the self image is defined by what a stranger says it is a mental condition that still afflicts the people whose parents or grandparents experienced colonialism (Kymlicka 2007). It defines racial identity even today because the children and grandchildren of the colonised peoples still actively use the languages and cultural and religious beliefs of the former colonial masters for the most mundane jobs and to communicate even within the privacy of their homes. This form of self-inflicted subjugation was probably the result of the way in which the African and Asian peoples were dispossessed from their own environment before the culture of their colonisers was imposed on them. In many nations in Asia and Africa which were colonised, the indigenous peoples were stopped from participating in the norms of their own cultures. By being excluded from making political, social, and economic decisions about their own lands, they suffered alienation from their own selves and tribes before they were exposed to alienation in the colonisers’ society. After independence, there were many citizens of formerly colonised nations that tried to return to their cultures. They were, though, frustrated in this pursuit because they found that the psychological wounds that their societies had incurred in the process of colonisation were more than they could handle or were even consciously aware of. In addition, the world was playing to the tune of their former colonisers. These two factors contributed to the colonised peoples making the decision to ape their former masters. Many people from formerly colonised peoples felt that speaking the colonialists’ language would allow them the benefits that were enjoyed by Europeans (Clapham 2005). This was the basic underlying reason for those who left to work or live in European nations. The acquisition of new names, and religions further convinced them that they would be successful in this pursuit. When they went to the nations of their former colonial masters, the majority of them experienced further marginalisation (Van Amersfoort and van Niekerk 2006). This was a further indictment against colonialism; but the colonised populations could not see it that way because they had been trained to subconsciously see themselves as their former oppressors saw them (Kymlicka 2007). Instead of changing their way of thinking completely, the majority of the colonised masses have taken to defining their own numbers according to the principles that were held by the former colonial masters. This is where class consciousness based on the extent to which an individual resembles the colour of the former colonial masters’ skins comes in. This self imposed form of racial identity among brown and black peoples of the world is evidence that there was an undeniably critical separation or dislocation experienced by the colonised masses; and which is not easily corrected. On a collective level, there are even formerly colonised nations that identify themselves in terms of which nation they were colonised by when relating with other nations that were colonised (Duara 2004). It has been claimed that globalisation has further encouraged this trend. In today’s changing society, many immigrants to European nations or America will base their identity on shared experiences and not geographical origin. Moreover, the fact that formerly colonised nations claim this as a real reason for what would otherwise be defined as self hate shows that the traumatic affects of colonialism have still not been exhaustively addressed (Afolabi 2006). This means that skin colorism in Africa and caste systems in Asia will continue to be used as the basis for identity development in formerly colonised nations. Racial Identity and the Legacy of Racism among African Americans More than any other group, the African Americans, who are the descendants of African slaves who were forcibly relocated to America more than two centuries ago have experienced the greatest change in terms of the formation of self identity (Gunew 2004). Colorism, which is the supporter of self imposed racial tendencies among people of a single race where the lighter members are accepted and liked while the darker members are ignored and looked down upon is more prevalent in African American society than it is in African nations that were colonised but not enslaved (Gunew 2004). African Americans are the one group in the world that does not have a solid cultural identity. Their forefathers were uprooted from their true culture as Africans many years ago. Successive generations of African Americans were born to a culture which, though it had abolished enforced slavery, was not ready to accept the African American as a true American. The present day African American will find no culture to accept him in Africa because he cannot identify with anything he sees though he recognises that Africans have the same skin color as he does. On the other hand, he cannot identify with White culture because he is not fully accepted by it. This might be one of the reasons for the implosion that characterises African American society. In African American forms of expression such as music or even literature, there is an underlying anger or sense of frustration and desperation at the lack of being affiliated to a particular identity. Many African American youth will identify ‘Hip-Hop’ or ‘Hood Culture’ as Black culture and ‘Ebonics’ as its language (Gunew 2004). The reality is that this ‘Blackness’ is not authentic. Anything that claims to be African but has no inherent symbols of Africaness which identify it as belonging to Africa is an empty claim. The African Americans who claim that ‘Hood culture’ and ‘Hip-Hop’ are identities of ‘Africa’ and being ‘Black’ in that they do not have any trace of ‘Whiteness’ are not stating the truth because these definitions are not actual characteristics that mark societies in Africa but are merely negative behaviours espoused collectively by a displaced people with no identity. The acceptance of sub-standard lives in an effort to establish a difference between White American and African American society is probably one of the worst consequences of slavery. In a desperation to create a new culture for themselves, a large part of African American society has chosen to communicate through ‘ebonics’ and engage in negative behaviours such as extolling illiteracy (Gunew 2004). While the aim of the African American multimillionaire ‘Hip Hop’ start who praise these characteristics is to generate an alternative to White society in which African Americans are unquestionably accepted, all they are succeeding in doing is forcing African American culture to be a retrogressive subculture in the dominant culture of ‘Whiteness’. If the African American culture were truly concerned with returning the prominence of African culture to the forefront, its advocates would encourage African American citizens to be proficient in African languages like ‘Swahili’- not in broken English. It would encourage the wearing of African traditional apparel such as ‘Kitenges’- not the wrong wearing of Western created designer items. In essence, while all traditional African cultures in the African continent were concerned with extolling community spirit, the ‘New Blackness’ being championed by African American society is mainly concerned with showing the benefits of consumerism. What is most evident is that the ‘New Blackness’ removes an already ‘cultureless’ people further away from expressions of true African-ness to a sub-standard Western created identity trap which means that the people who believe in this idea will remain alienated from themselves as well as the main society, in addition to not having a basis on which to work on self-development. References Afolabi, A. B. (2006) ‘Political, economic and social development in Africa’ in Dele Afolabi Humanities and African Experience- Department of History, Adeyemi College of Education Ondo. Clapham, C. (2005) Africa and the international system: the politics of state survival, Cambridge University Press, New York. Duara, P. (2004) Decolonisation: perspectives from now and then, UK: Routledge, London. Gunew, S. (2004) Haunted nations: the colonial dimensions of multiculturalisms, Routledge, London. Kymlicka, W. (2007) Multicultural odysseys: navigating the new international politics of diversity, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Meredith, M. (2005) The state of Africa: a history of fifty years of independence, Free Press, London/New York. Van Amersfoort, H., & van Niekerk, M. (2006) ‘Immigration as a colonial inheritance: post-colonial immigrants in the Netherlands, 1945-2002’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 32, pp. 323-46. Read More