Detaching From Western Approval As A Black Subject.
What power, pride and self confidence, can we, as black people seek to derive from a system of education, such as Britain’s, that has been designed by the white man?
Diasporic conversations on the return to Africa are generically centered on how we need to go back to our previously colonised countries to help develop them and ultimately close the economic gap that we see between them and Western countries. However, it becomes palpable that a physical return to Africa is meaningless unless preceded by a psychological return too. In 1971, Obi Egbuna asserted that older generations/first generation immigrants tended to study in England and indeed returned to their countries, yet they merely “tightened the chains on their people’s ankles” as opposed to redeeming them.
This thereby sheds some light onto the flaws in Western education systems, as well as why we have been stating, for nearly 3 generations now, that we need to return to our mother countries to develop them, yet change is stagnant across African countries. Not only is there a flaw in Western education and how we receive it, but it is also hard to ignore that the roots of colonialism continue to persist. It has been widely argued and believed (mostly by older generations) that countries such as Britain are the apex of development, hence, our parents may resettle in said countries to ensure that we, the children, have a ‘better’ education here. These beliefs are then passed onto the younger generations, consequently conditioning our perception of education in African countries to be less value than that of those in Western countries.
Moreover, once settled here, we also tell ourselves that we come to these Western countries to balance the economic and political equation. Yet I worry that somewhere along the line, the attachment those of us who have resettled here have formed with Britain could potentially be widening the gap by our decision to remain exposed to an education designed by the white man. The white man who wants to keep us subordinate. It’s a decision that some of us may continue to make for our children too. Of course, there are valid points in the argument that European schools have obtained a worldly status, thus acting as a baseline for why many Africans such as my Sierra Leonean mother, migrated to England. With that said, this argument that one cannot possibly thrive in the world unless they seek education in Western countries is equally damaging because it fails to consider the consequences of systematic racism in said countries.
One simple example that black people are familiar with is the constant reminder that we have to work twice as hard to gain access to an ounce of the position that the white man has. Such consequences of systematic racism not only hinders the black individual’s ability to thrive in the white man’s world, but it also panders to Frantz Fanon’s theory on the psychoanalysis of racism. Fanon mimics Sigmund Freud’s “what does a woman want”, when he questions “what does the black man want?”. He concedes that “the black man wants to be white”. Within the colonial context, this is to argue that black people seek to navigate in a world where they too can have (relatively) everything, in the same way that the white man does. This desire to be white is the outcome of a configuration of power, economic and cultural conditions that black people have been subject to. It has also shaped how first generation immigrants perceive the West. Fanon alludes to the domains of language, behaviours and dreams of black people to live the white man’s dream in relation to how black people tend to seek intellectual approval from the white man. Thus, some black people became conditioned to and desired to imitate the white man’s way of education and success. But at what costs?
This has recently led me to question: what is to say that the independent and private schools I went to in both Sierra Leone and Gambia could not have provided me with the tools to thrive in the world we live in today? Furthermore, how progressive are Western education systems for the black man if the black man struggles to navigate through them?
As stated, I have personally studied in Sierra Leone, Gambia and England, however, the larger chunk of my education resides in England. Therefore, I can speak on how the curriculum needs to be decolonised. Britain is intent on positing the views of their white national heroes such as William Gladstone and Winston Churchill — to name a few — even if it means they have to lop off their sins and canonise their virtues. It wasn’t until I finished my GCSEs in year 11 before I began to understand that education in Britain has been arranged to ensure that pupils learned the white man’s interpretation of the truth, not the actual truth. At 19 years old, I fully understood how Western education systems were designed, when I got to university to study History. I thought I had escaped the wrath of learning about World War I and World War II from the white gaze, only to find that two of my modules still dedicated a week to these wars. Yet, I learnt nothing new in either of these modules. Change did not occur until my final year, when I learnt about black movement in Britain (not America) during the world wars. As a mini primer on the black movement I speak of, Paul Gilroy has produced excellent research on the soundscapes of the Black Atlantic. This is an insight to how music augmented the power of words in the black sphere. This was my first real understanding of how the culture of sound and music were brought into the lives of the first and second generation immigrants and shaped their outlook on their positioning as a black subject in this British society.
For once, this newfound knowledge was not just embedded in how black people served Britain, but quite refreshingly, how they navigated in Britain — their supposed ‘motherland’ country. This is all at the age of 21 and I am still unlearning. While I’m young, there is no denying that 21 years is a significant chunk of one’s life, especially when you have to undo 19 years of conditioning.
In short, this is what happens when the white man has the power to publish or not to publish the black man’s work. It deprives the black man of their right to reflect the truth from their perspective as it relates to their experience in Britain. We have seen that systematic racism requires the black man to reduce himself and the entire race to a state of immoral idiots.
More recently, I have seen individuals such as Michaela Coel and John Boyega defy this through their refusal to compromise their integrity and reduce their worth at the price of good publicity. What is definitely a thinly veiled attack on the integrity and intelligence of black people, is finally being challenged by black intellectuals and creatives, even if it could put their career at risk. Many black people, myself included, have always felt inclined to judge the merit of their work on the basis of the white man’s reviews, publicity and/or hypocritical glorification. So, to have modern day individuals who are setting an example on why black people do not need to compromise their integrity for the approval of the white man in order to thrive, tells us all we need to know about how there has definitely been a shift in psychological return since first generation immigrants.
It’s not European education systems that are the apex of development, rather it is us, the black intellectuals and creatives. Thereby, when we, the children of first and second generation immigrants, do eventually return to our motherlands to balance the economic and political equation, change should no longer be stagnant as the psychological return that older generations lacked after studying in these ‘well developed’ countries will be present with us.
