Europe actively degraded the African’s image despite accumulating knowledge

Evidence

The denial of the African’s social order and history was not simply a question of Europe’s or colonial America’s ignorance of Africa. David Brion Davis, while reconstructing the descent of the African’s image in eighteenth-century European thought, has sifted through materials that indicate that at least in this instance knowledge had not been cumulative: It was known two centuries ago that Negroes lived in settled, agriculture societies; that they cultivated a variety of crops, raised large herds of cattle, and planted groves of shade trees. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 405

Categorization

• QUESTION: What specific Davis materials show knowledge was not cumulative? Worth chasing the evidence of willful distortion rather than ignorance.