Decolonising the Mind & Writing as Struggle

Essay by masroorahmedUniversity, Master'sA+, September 2010

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Decolonising the Mind & Writing as Struggle

Introduction

Decolonising the Mind is about influencing people's race and culture by taking authoritative control. The culture becomes dominated by the influencing individuals and can cause the group of people oppressed under them, to commit suicide and can cause destruction in a systematic way. In exploitation, there can be only one true aim, "to control the individual's wealth: what they made, how they grew it, and how it was divided up, to check in other words the entire realm of the language of actual world" (Cooppan; pp 300-302)

Discussion

The author says that the written aspect of language is what completely alienated the child from his environment. The tie between a spoken word and written word in the child's environment was simply non-existent. The written language that was taught in class and read in books, usually cantered on Europe and little (if anything) to do with the current social environment in Africa.

Sometimes in the reading they would come across a European depiction of their language.

So in this way, imperialism can be seen as a lesser form of mentacide or the initial step to the process. To understand the motives behind Mentacide one must also understand Xenophobia. Early nomadic white were confined to a hostile environment (typically the cold north). This leads to a jealous view of black people. The whites' lack of melanin producing quality led to their subtle admiration of the Africans. The trust between two cultures leads to the abuse of the other culture.

Imperialism soon followed. Mentacide would be the continuation of the imperialism in modern times. The control of the African Americans mind today is not very different from the colonising of the mind that took place. According to Dr. Bobby Wright, "The White race has at...