The Negro construct erased African history, space, and humanity itself

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Negro as distinct from African, Moor, or Ethiope by its denial of time and space situatedness.
• XREF: Connects to the proto-racial classifications of Europeans discussed earlier in the book (French peasants, Slavs, Celts). — connects to: Authentic understanding of the Negro requires breaking cultural crystallization; The black soul is a construct created by white civilization; American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352 (+11 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 428

Broader Connections

• The ‘Negro’ category erased Africa’s contributions to Western civilization #expands (0.80)
• Colonial racial thinking dehumanized Africans as they assimilated colonial culture #expands (0.70)
• Lumping all Negro peoples together erases their distinct national histories #expands (0.60) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 620
• The Negro construct reversed 3,000 years of African-European relations #expands (0.60)
• The colonial image of Africa forced blacks into self-contempt #expands (0.60) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 474
• A rediscovered Negro past confers no humanity or guidance on the present #responds-to (0.50) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 822