IDEA 49
Metaphysical Racism
In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence — as for example, God, or law — in which the interest of man’s volition is involved and in which he realizes his own being. This distinction between himself as an individual and the universality of his essential being, the African in the uniform, undeveloped oneness of his existence has not yet attained; so that the knowledge of an absolute being, an other and higher than his individual self, is entirely wanting. The Negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality, all that we call feeling, if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character. [G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Introduction]
Thoughts like these are sophisticated tools of self-deception. They lend to our vices and prejudices an intelligent and scholarly air, as if listening to a professor telling us what a cloud looks like to him would be an improvement on listening to a child’s imaginings. Our minds greedily gobble up patterns, however absurd, like cotton candy at a carnival, and the pricier the better. It takes a humane and mature intellect to recognize the folly of consuming these sticky trifles and to expose their underlying falsity.
The first great civilization — and the mother of all Western civilization — was Egypt, in Africa. It was followed closely by ‘black’ lands further south, such as Nubia and Punt. Our prejudices regarding Africans, or other peoples, are generated in small, comfortable, ivory-white frames, constructed out of habitual or deliberate ignorance that protects itself by ignoring the complexities of history and culture. Whenever writers want to generalize in their own favour, they always start by highlighting their own ephemeral piece of land or time, e.g., Germany, Britain, and these recent centuries in which Europe flourished, and ignoring the greater spans of time and geographical regions where the facts belie their theories.
Even today, despite the recent centuries of humiliation by the West, the Arabs of Southwest Asia continue to look down on their African brothers and sisters, calling them ‘abd, khadim, or zunuj. There is no basis for this in Islam, and the Arabs lack a Muslim theologian of Hegel’s stature to invent some kind of rationalization for it. Many other Muslim groups are guilty of a similar ‘group-think’ by which a ‘whiter’ race allows its members to hold some darker-skinned group in contempt.
And among His signs are the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity you have in languages and colours. Verily in that are signs for those with knowledge. (Q30:22) Notice how our differences in skin colour are listed alongside the variety of languages we speak and the vast range of visible and audible experience opened up to us by what we see and hear upon land and in the sky. To demean any one of these signs and feel superior to others on account of them, i.e., because of their linguistic heritage or how their natural complexion differs from ours, indicates not only a lack of learning but a colossal dearth of respect for GOD and His Wisdom. Yet Hegel and those like him have the audacity to proclaim that they possess reverence and morality and the knowledge of an absolute being.
We see a similar dynamic at work in how famous male thinkers have generalized about women. Unlike Africans, who are kept apart from us by geography or class divisions, women are necessarily in close proximity to their male commentators, as mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and other close family members. Men and women are inextricably linked and mutually involved in ways that races never are. Yet much of traditional male discourse has been overtly defamatory and contemptuous.
Next week, GOD willing, I will examine what men from all ages and cultures, including supposedly Islamic ones, have said, so cruelly and irresponsibly, about women, and even what has been, rightly or wrongly, attributed to our Prophet (may GOD bless him and give him peace).
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