Documenting precolonial African kingdoms freed educated Blacks from internalized historical racism

Evidence

Boas then astonished Du Bois and probably many of his Black students by recounting the glories of precolonial West African kingdoms like those of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Boas awakened Du Bois from the paralysis of his historical racism, or, as Du Bois explained it, “from the paralysis of the commonly held judgement taught to me in high school and in two of the world’s great universities”: that Africans had “no history.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 778

Categorization

• SEED: The idea that counter-evidence — historical facts — can dissolve internalized assimilationist beliefs is an angle for an essay on how antiracist education works.