Even pioneering Black historians accepted white racialist views of African degradation.

Evidence

His [the Negro’s] position, it is true, in all history up to the present day, has been accidental, incidental and collateral… . His brightest days were when history was an infant; and since he early turned from God, he has found the cold face of hate and the hurtful hand of the Caucasian against him. The Negro type is the result of degradation. It is nothing more than the lowest strata of the African race… . His blood infected with the poison of his low habitation, his body shrivelled by disease, his intellect veiled in pagan superstitions, the noblest yearnings of his soul strangled at birth by the savage passions of a nature abandoned to sensuality,—the poor Negro of Africa deserves more our pity than our contempt. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 889

Categorization

• QUESTION: This shows George Washington Williams, heralded as the first major Black historian, absorbing colonial-era racialist environmentalism — worth chasing how this internalized view shaped later Black nationalist historiographies that Robinson contrasts against the radical tradition.
• SHARE: A striking quote showing a foundational Black historian blaming African degradation on the land, sin, and sensuality rather than slavery — worth sharing with someone studying Black intellectual history.