The category of the Negro was fabricated in the West, not Africa

Evidence

For many reasons, however, it is fair to say that the most significant of the obliterations of the New World’s past was that which affected the African. The African became the more enduring “domestic enemy,” and consequently the object around which a more specific, particular, and exclusive conception of humanity was molded. The “Negro,” that is the color black, was both a negation of African and a unity of opposition to white. The construct of Negro, unlike the terms “African,” “Moor,” or “Ethiope” suggested no situatedness in time, that is history, or space, that is ethnoor politico-geography. The Negro had no civilization, no cultures, no religions, no history, no place, and finally no humanity that might command consideration. Like his eastern, central, and western European prototypes, in their time, and the French peasants, the Slavs, the Celtic peoples, and more recently the American “Indians,” the Negro constituted a marginally human group, a collection of things of convenience for use and/or eradication. This was, of course, no idle exercise in racial and moral schemata since it directly related to a most sizable quantum of labor disciplined and applied in a most extraordinary way. Slave labor in the New World, as we have seen in the precapitalist societies of Europe, was an inextricable element in the material, commercial, and capital development that took place. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428 (#expands, via linked claim)

What I am asserting is that the European has a fixed concept of the Negro, and there is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: “How long have you been in France? You speak French so well.” — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 135 (#expands, via linked claim)

The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist who creates his inferior. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 341 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The slave trade supplied the cause that turned racialism into the Negro; The African-European relationship inverted over three millennia before the Negro; The Negro and whiteness were invented in Europe through scholarly effort (+21 more)

Related

• Authentic understanding of the Negro requires breaking cultural crystallization (similarity 0.90)
• The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself (similarity 0.89)
• The ‘Negro’ category erased Africa’s contributions to Western civilization (similarity 0.89)
• The Negro in Europe is made inferior, not self-made inferior (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial use of ‘black’ did not necessarily denote African descent (similarity 0.86)
• Europeans hold a fixed, condescending concept of the Negro (similarity 0.85)
• Racial categories were administratively imposed on people formerly counted as white in the 1760s (similarity 0.85)
• Western definitions of Africans served domination rather than understanding. (similarity 0.84)
• The colonial category ‘Negro’ was invented alongside slave labor growth (similarity 0.83)
• The colonized person’s inferiority is created by the European’s superiority, not pre-existing. (similarity 0.83)
• The black soul is a construct created by white civilization (similarity 0.83)
• Local Africans rejected racial categories until Europeans imposed them (similarity 0.83)
• Portuguese expansion into Africa produced the historical category of the Negro (similarity 0.83)
• Europe’s contact with black peoples made Negroes the projected principle of evil (similarity 0.82)
• The Negro problem is economic exploitation, not racial coexistence (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself #expands (0.95) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428
• Europeans hold a fixed, condescending concept of the Negro #expands (0.90) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 135
• The colonized’s inferiority is created by the racist, not innate #corroborates (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 341
• Inconsistencies in colonial racial categories reveal latent distinctions rather than errors #qualifies (0.80)
• Colonial race was judged by conduct and affiliation rather than appearance #expands (0.55)
• Capitalism differentiated peoples into racial categories rather than homogenizing them #expands (0.55) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 205
• Haratin identity was forged by culture and language, not race #expands (0.50) — Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky, 355
• Colonial policy disputes centered on how race should be assessed, not what race is #expands (0.50)
• Colonial ethnic categories broke down under acts both personal and political #complicates (0.40)