Ethiopian elites’ disdain for Blackness fractured pan-African solidarity with African Americans.
Evidence
It is said … that a number of the influential Ethiopians like [Workineh] Martin and Heroui… considered themselves as not being Negroes. In fact, Ethiopians were said to have betrayed the same attitude when, after Haile Selassie’s coronation, a delegation came to America. Dr. Workineh Martin was on it, and he refused to lecture even at Howard University. And when the delegation took with them back to Ethiopia only two or three very fair-skinned Negroes, this again seemed to prove that they thought themselves to be white people. … This apparent preference for mulattoes, and the Emperor’s refusal to receive the Garveyite delegation, made Garvey bitter about Haile Selassie until the time of the former’s death. It was one of the issues that George Padmore and I used to fight him over, because at that time in London, Haile Selassie symbolized our unity in Europe. And yet from the time of the Emperor’s arrival in England, Garvey castigated him as a man who, instead of dying on the battlefield in the tradition of Ethiopian leaders, had slunk away to England to find refuge; how could such a coward, Garvey alleged, be the leader of such a great nation? — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2415
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: Connects to the broader arc of pan-Africanism and Black radical internationalism being developed in this book — the tensions between Africa and the diaspora.
- SEED: An essay angle: how African elites’ internalized color hierarchies undermined unified Black internationalism in the interwar period.
Related
- Ethiopia’s 1935 invasion triggered a worldwide outpouring of Black radical solidarity. (similarity 0.79)
- Ethiopia’s invasion drew mass Black support across three continents, not just elite protest. (similarity 0.79)