Rendering black people invisible legitimated colonial land seizure.

Evidence

The other characters acquiring farms and running them as viable commercial entities in the memoir are white. There is nothing in Harrison’s memoir to show that Rhodesia had any interest in the work ethic and land-ownership aspirations of black people. Land-ownership meant social, cultural, economic, and political power. Rhodesia was not in a hurry to share such power with black people. … In that regard, his memoir absolves the Rhodesian regime and helps mollify the consciences of the beneficiaries of racially lopsided Rhodesian policies. As deployed by Harrison, the myth that black people are invisible sustains the illusion that Rhodesians did not rob anyone when they parceled out land among themselves. Invisibility implies insignificance. Positing given groups of people as invisible implies that such people do not have rights worth respecting. When a given people are deemed to have no rights worth respecting, their humanity is placed in jeopardy. — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists, 56

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s framework on how dominant groups narrate displacement — the projective erasure of the other is a mechanism worth testing in the Zimbabwe case. — connects to: Harrison’s memoir minimizes colonialism’s dependence on coerced black labor — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 54; White farmer memoirs undercut their own entitlement claims by clinging to Rhodesian supremacist discourse — Tavengwa Gwekwerere, Davie E. Mutasa, and Kudakwashe Chitofiri, Settlers, Rhodesians, and Supremacists:…, 82; Poor fair-skinned colonists occupied a zone invisible to colonial documentary surveillance (+6 more)

Related

• Narratives of black invisibility legitimate land seizures by erasing prior claims (similarity 0.89)
• Harrison’s memoir minimizes colonialism’s dependence on coerced black labor (similarity 0.83)
• Farming a land long-colonized yet never renouncing its colonial ideology is paradoxical (similarity 0.80)
• Rhodesian memoirism erases 90 years of black land hunger as legitimate motive (similarity 0.80)
• White memoirists reduce black identity to colonial caricatures while erasing their own racial privilege (similarity 0.80)
• Settler values made white authors habitually erase black labor and humanity. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial settlement justified itself by declaring the land empty of legitimate people #corroborates (0.88) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 727
• Depicting Africans as primitive legitimized colonial invasion and plunder. #exemplifies (0.85)
• Colonial privilege operated through sanctioned refusal to witness rather than surveillance #expands (0.82)
• Colonial rule rests on perceiving colonized people as undifferentiated masses without names #corroborates (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 648
• Racial erasure renders non-whites into an ignored natural backdrop. #exemplifies (0.77) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 53
• Colonial natives appeared shadow-like, absolving European crimes of consequence #corroborates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 495
• Poor fair-skinned colonists occupied a zone invisible to colonial documentary surveillance #exemplifies (0.72)