Mahmud El Adwi

2018, at the prestigious University of Manchester, which is more than 150 years old, a number of students erased a poem, titled “The White Man’s Burden,” a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in 1895.
In the poem the poet urges the reader to launch the imperialist initiative and calls on Western countries to colonize other poor nations.
The funny thing is that the poem was written on a wall in the lobby of the building that houses the headquarters of the Student Union, which bears the name of the South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was a British writer, poet and short story writer born in British India. One of his most important works is The Jungle Book (1894).
But how can such an educated person believe in such theories?

The concept of races as we know it today, is not as old as some might think. This concept only emerged a few hundred years ago.
Of course, racism and slavery existed thousands of years ago, or maybe more, but it was not of an ethnic nature.
Professor Ibram X. Kendi believes that the first to invent the concept of race was the Portuguese Gomes Eanes de Zurara in his book, which he wrote between 1450 and 1459. In which said that all the people of Africa are genetically backward, savage and inferior to the white race.
Professor Kendi believes that de Zurara authored that book by order of the King of Portugal at the time to raise the economy of the Portuguese kingdom, as the king had a close relationship with the slave traders who captured and enslaved people from Africa.
Ofcourse, after that, much of Europe welcomed this idea, as it gave them the justification to get free labor.
This idea grew as the expansionist tendency of the Europeans increased. As professor Bill Ashcroft explained in his book Key concepts in post-colonial studies, European powers had a need to impose a moral dominance over the colonized people.
Many studies and theories that classified people according to their physical composition were made. Which established among many Europeans the concept of lower and higher races, and the white man was always at the top of that alleged racial pyramid.

Here are some books and theories that address the matter from a "white" point of view:

• François Bernier’s theory about races - 1648
• David Hume in his book National Characters quoted “I am apt to suspect the Negroes [sic] to be naturally inferior to the whites.” - 1754
• Georges Cuvier who assumed that there are 3 races, Caucasian (white) - Mongolian (yellow) - Ethiopian (black) - 1805
• Charles Hamilton Smith in his book The Natural History of the Human Species - 1848
• Robert Knox in his book the Races of Men - 1850

And the most interesting book, which influenced people who changed the course of history such as Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler and Friedrich Nietzsche. The Inequality of Human Races - 1853 by Arthur de Gobineau.
Gobineau (1816-1882), was a French aristocratic novelist, diplomat, and theorist whose ideas greatly influenced the development of racist thought in Europe and the United States. He rejected Enlightenment explanations for human diversity, including the impact of geography and cultural or political institutions, instead insisting on permanent and unequal racial characteristics passed down since the earliest days of humankind. He argued that human history was defined by the rise of pure races with superior characteristics who, through a process of mixing with inferior races, gradually lost their vitality and collapsed, leaving the stage clear for purer races to rise. In particular Gobineau championed Germanic “Aryans,” a concept borrowed from the study of ancient languages and then applied to an imagined, superior race with traces running throughout the white races.

He articulated these ideas in his lengthy Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853), which did not attract much attention until he became friends with the composer Richard Wagner and his daughter Cosima in the 1870s. They publicized his ideas within nationalist circles, forming an important link later to the Nazis, who appropriated much of Gobineau’s theory to suit their interests. A 1915 translation into English, excerpted here, really introduced Gobineau’s ideas to English-speaking nationalists and eugenicists. However, these later appropriations should not obscure the central focus of Gobineau’s work. Although German antisemites focused on Jews as the enemy of the Aryan race and American racists focused on the dangers of Black-White miscegenation, Gobineau had some positive, if also stereotypical, things to say about Jews and Blacks and their contributions to civilization, even as he firmly maintained the superiority of whites overall. Gobineau was far more worried about the threat posed to Aryans by other, inferior white peoples, Slavs and Celts in particular, whose traces could be seen among the lower classes. His frame of reference was the 1848 revolution and the threat posed by democracy, which had given him a glimpse of the collapse of European civilization.

Another quote by the American writer Mark Twain in a letter in December 1867:
I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

The US, in the period of apartheid, separated whites and blacks in public facilities, transportation, schools, etc., but not only that, in World War II, either than seprating the soldier pased on their color, the blood units and banks were separate as well. This despite the criticism and the great irony of this phenomenon.

The vehicle for spreading racism, which was flourishing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and also for much of the twentieth century, was what is called scientific racism.
The definition of scientific racism is the use of language, physical features, intellectual convictions and some other scientific techniques to support theories that assert that certain human groups are innately inferior to other groups.
Some scholars and thinkers countered these theories, such as the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who explained in his book The Mind of Primitive Man 1911, that there is no link between race, culture and language, and that there is no real difference between the skulls of people of different races, and that there is no such a thing as "pure races".

Also, the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who ridiculed Gobineau's beliefs and theories about racial inequality, as he explained that Gobineau's ideology would be circulated and promoted only among slave owners in South America.

Although science succeeded in refuting racist theories, it could not prevent massacres and exterminations. This was embodied in the blending of racism, modern medicine, and the nation-state, which led to the emergence of Nazi Germany.
One of the most prominent practices of the Nazis' brutality, was what they called "the erasure of the degenerate elements", as they began with a policy of forced sterilization of the mentally ill and alcoholics. Not to mention the implementation of "euthanasia" against infants and adults with mental or physical disabilities, as they were described as "burdensome lives, useless eaters and lives unworthy of life."
The term Lives Unworthy of Living was taken from a book published in 1920. entitled Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living. (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens), the book calls to allow doctors to end the lives of patients who suffer from complex illnesses or mental disabilities.
Many scholars and thinkers believe that Nazi ideology is not something abnormal from European ideas, or that it was an ideology that existed out of nowhere. Rather, it is an extension of ideas that have taken root in European minds since the invention of the term “the others” or “primitive peoples.” This ideology was not radically different from the ideology of Columbus, who invented the term “cannibals” to justify the killing of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the 15th century. It was not different from the German ideas themselves! That wiped out more than three-quarters of the Herero people in Namibia between 1904 and 1907.

Western racism still manifests itself in several patterns in the 21st century, we see it in many movies, advertisements, and even in football stadiums. And the most dangerous, is the manifestations and branches of racism, such as Xenophobia, Homophobia, and Islamophobia. Which always looks at the different person as being inferior and not worthy of living among those who are the finest.

Finally, we can say that, Racist minds always need "Another”, Another whom they can feel superior to, and to blame for all problems that happen. If not from another race or religion, can be from the same group but with different ideas or thoughts.

And the question remains:
Will racism live forever? Or will there be a day when we get released from its chains?

Leave a comment with your opinion.

Thank you