Authentic understanding of the Negro requires breaking cultural crystallization

Evidence

For many reasons, however, it is fair to say that the most significant of the obliterations of the New World’s past was that which affected the African. The African became the more enduring “domestic enemy,” and consequently the object around which a more specific, particular, and exclusive conception of humanity was molded. The “Negro,” that is the color black, was both a negation of African and a unity of opposition to white. The construct of Negro, unlike the terms “African,” “Moor,” or “Ethiope” suggested no situatedness in time, that is history, or space, that is ethnoor politico-geography. The Negro had no civilization, no cultures, no religions, no history, no place, and finally no humanity that might command consideration. Like his eastern, central, and western European prototypes, in their time, and the French peasants, the Slavs, the Celtic peoples, and more recently the American “Indians,” the Negro constituted a marginally human group, a collection of things of convenience for use and/or eradication. This was, of course, no idle exercise in racial and moral schemata since it directly related to a most sizable quantum of labor disciplined and applied in a most extraordinary way. Slave labor in the New World, as we have seen in the precapitalist societies of Europe, was an inextricable element in the material, commercial, and capital development that took place. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428 (#expands, via linked claim)

This anthology, which puts Antilleans, Guianans, Senegalese, and Malagasies on the same footing, creates a deplorable confusion. In this way it states the cultural problem of the overseas countries by detaching it from the historical and social reality of each of them, from the national characteristics and the varying conditions imposed on each of them by imperialist exploitation and oppression. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 620 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cataloguing Negro reality always feels incomplete — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 619; The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428; Lumping all Negro peoples together erases their distinct national histories — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 620 (+11 more)

Related

• The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself (similarity 0.92)
• The ‘Negro’ category erased Africa’s contributions to Western civilization (similarity 0.90)
• The category of the Negro was fabricated in the West, not Africa (similarity 0.90)
• The black soul is a construct created by white civilization (similarity 0.87)
• Lumping all Negro peoples together erases their distinct national histories (similarity 0.85)
• Portuguese expansion into Africa produced the historical category of the Negro (similarity 0.83)
• The Negro identity was manufactured in the West, not brought from Africa. (similarity 0.83)
• The invented Negro erased Africa’s civilizational contributions from Western memory (similarity 0.83)
• The Negro in Europe is made inferior, not self-made inferior (similarity 0.82)
• Europeans hold a fixed, condescending concept of the Negro (similarity 0.82)
• Europe’s contact with black peoples made Negroes the projected principle of evil (similarity 0.82)
• Western definitions of Africans served domination rather than understanding. (similarity 0.82)
• The Negro problem is economic exploitation, not racial coexistence (similarity 0.82)
• Portugal’s African expansion inaugurated the Age of Discovery and produced the Negro (similarity 0.81)
• Scientific and religious reason proved Negro humanity, yet this victory proved hollow. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself #expands (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428
• Lumping all Negro peoples together erases their distinct national histories #expands (0.60) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 620
• The Negro’s creation served Western economic and industrial development requirements #expands (0.60)
• The ‘Negro’ category erased Africa’s contributions to Western civilization #expands (0.60)
• Cataloguing Negro reality always feels incomplete #expands (0.55) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 619
• The Negro construct reversed 3,000 years of African-European relations #expands (0.55)
• The African-European relationship inverted over three millennia before the Negro #expands (0.55)
• Portuguese expansion into Africa produced the historical category of the Negro #expands (0.55)
• The Negro and whiteness were invented in Europe through scholarly effort #expands (0.55)
• The myth of the Negro can itself become a decisive cause of psychological alienation. #expands (0.50) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 718