The Scramble for Africa and the struggle for humanization

"The Scramble for Africa" is a name applied to the colonialist and capitalist ventures of literally stealing any land possible. This particular period of such, occurring in the late19th and early 20th centuries, was the endeavor of European nations seeking out Africa, which to them is really nothing more than a big black land of hopelessness and hut villages. Not only is this a capitalist practice, that is, one that values the art of "getting ahead" and, of course, making money more than anything else; it is also a racist one. To feel that one's acquirement of property is more important than even the concept that human beings might already be living in this land is absurdly condescending. The title this time period has been given even implies that the continent of Africa is something to be seized by outside parties, rather than it being composed of several individual cultures and populations that posses their own agency and abilities. This is an issue with colonialism and imperialism as a whole, of course, but the continent of Africa has historically been especially fetishisized for its mysteriousness, which white colonizers see as enough of a reason to kidnap its autonomy and claim the land as their own. The colonizer believes that the land they're invading will be worth something once their white, European point of view is applied.

This is exactly what occurs in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The novel has been clearly laid out to the class as as unreliable narrative, but it is not always taught this way. For many, the novel can be read as an adventure story. But as readers with knowledge -- or at least understanding of the concept -- of colonization as horror, we understand that for Conrad, the Congo is simply a backdrop for a story about some white guy doing something out of the ordinary. The Congo is then tokenized as an exotic adventure land. The point of view told in these kinds of stories, then, can never be that of a Congolese person. This is a type of connection (or maybe disconnection) that still exists. I once, in lecture, brought up an image that was circulating the internet a couple of weeks ago concerning the status of Ferguson and the related protests that swept the nation. The image, included below, shows a young black boy embracing a white cop. This is a classic image of realizing the humanity of another culture. The black person (in this case a child, so that even the most conservative of Facebook users can stop and say 'aw, wow, touching') is humanized because they are making peace with a white person, and in this case, a white person of the exact level of authority that is being questioned. White people seeing the image can sympathize with the black community because it is contextualized for the comfort of their perspective. Heart of Darkness and related works bring 'Africa' to a comfortable level for white readers because the experience of the Congo is being told by a fellow white person. This narrative is more obviously racist than those being presented today, but the general concept is still relevant. I hope that this connection isn't too much of a stretch, but I feel that the "scramble" to tame dark people and keep them within the context of white people is not necessarily of the past.