reading this reminded me of several occasions when I was doing my graduate work in europe and in the course of discussions about some issue of history or other i happened to cite examples of how various other parts of the world (and not just the usual suspects in places where everything was built in stone) were unquestionably far more advanced or modern than any part of europe in certain aspects of development at given times in history... it never failed to amaze me what violent reactions the mere suggestion that non-europeans -- especially those from regions typically deemed ahistorical in european academic parlance, e.g., subsaharan africa, north america, australia -- could even fleetingly have been more developed than europeans would inevitably unleash... not only were my fellow graduate students and professors (highly-educated historians all) almost completely unaware that the things i was talking about even existed, but the viciousness and force of the unvarnished racist response which invariably followed (presumably on account of my having the temerity to somehow compare exalted europeans to their supposed inferiors in benighted places whose only claims to civilization might be attributed to whatever contact they may have had with europeans) makes me shake my head in astonishment as i remember it, even now, twenty years later... sometimes the most ‘educated’ people really are the most ignorant (and potentially dangerous) siliconafrica/terra-nullius/
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 16:41:17 +0000
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