"The interpretation that underdevelopment is somehow ordained by God is emphasized because of the racist trend in European scholarship. It is in line with racist prejudice to say openly or to imply that their countries are more developed because their people are innately superior, and that the responsibility for the economic backwardness of Africa lies in the generic backwardness of the race of black Africans. An even bigger problem is that the people of Africa and other parts of the colonized world have gone through a cultural and psychological crisis and have accepted, at least partially, the European version of things. That means that the African himself has doubts about his capacity to transform and develop his natural environment. With such doubts, he even challenges those of his brothers who say that Africa can and will develop through the efforts of its own people. If we can determine when underdevelopment came about, it would dismiss the lingering suspicion that it is racially or otherwise predetermined and that we can do little about it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 21
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eurocentrism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Eurocentrism
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Eurocentrism →
Related Quotes
"There is yet one more version of the culture hypothesis: perhaps it is not English versus non-English that matters bu…"
"With the accomplishment of the imperialist enterprise and the general confidence that space, people and nature could …"
"Because their own civilization hardly goes any further back than the Graeco-Roman period and derives for the most par…"
"As the twentieth century approached, therefore, the pace of technological change and uneven growth rates made the int…"
"For 400 years, world history was made by Europeans. Many of the great ideas by which we live — constitutional governm…"
"This is why the mainstream Western academics does not teach Abhinavagupta, Aryabhata, Bharata, Bhartrihari, Shankara,…"
"I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found on…"
"Better understanding of the Asian mind ‑ Indian and Chinese ‑ had one further consequence which needs emphasis. It ha…"
"Wherever there was the least similarity between Indian and foreign ideas, Indians were taken to be the borrowers. The…"
"There were two main reasons why decolonization happened on such a wide scale in the 1950s and ’60s. The first was the…"