‘Invented racial construct’ and the effects of its internalization:

How we have consciously or unconsciously internalized and employed social and racial constructs, perceptions, and stereotypes to the detriment of our collective humanity

Born and nurtured in a small village in the heart of South Sudan, in the respectful proud tradition of the Jieng people, I knew little about the so-called humankind's physical and intellectual differences. Ethnic, tribal, or racial differences in the context of superiority or inferiority were not subjects our parents talked about. Mum and dad casually explained to us that our identity was/is Kongor-Paleh within Twic of Monyjang and that Nuer are Jieng’s distant cousins and that was it. In my innocent imagination, all human beings on earth were tall, dark-skinned, and had short hair, until one day in my village town, I saw a Caucasian lady with long blonde hair! ‘Look, she’s put on a cow tail,’ taken aback, I called my friends’ attention. The young lady’s long blonde hair looked like Amuor pabiec’s adorable tail. With wonder in our eyes and faces, we looked at her with keen interest. And with an infectious smile on her face, she waved at us. My blissful ignorance was fully employed, immersed in the exploration of the unknown.

Growing up, my parents engaged my curious mind in customary tales, folklore, and storytelling. Mum’s manner of storytelling penetrated my mind and heart. Tales of protection and heroism captured my imagination. In many of her narratives, the ugliness of character and personality was abhorred and the underdogs often triumphed. This soothed my heart. Similarly, Dad engaged my mind with mantras of responsibility about wealth creation and building, family support, and protection. In this agrarian, egalitarian society, wealth was measured in terms of the number of cattle a family owned and the granaries one’s hard work could fill. Personal responsibility through hard work was indispensable for one to earn family and community respect. Ethnic identity and physical appearance played an insignificant role in others’ perceptions of you. At around the age of six, I began to tend goats and sheep and ensured they all return home pastured, and satisfied. I later herded family cattle to green pasture. Dad expressed pride in my work and often threw praises my way. This filled me with pride and joy. Even though formal schooling was non-existent, I envied nothing. In this Jieng’s way of life, nurturing positive character and personality traits meant the meaning of existence and continuation of the exemplary family lineage.

The Sudanese civil war arrived in villages and things were not the same again. While these Southern rebels, who referred to themselves as SPLA/SPLM, depended on civilians and villagers for survival, they spoke with authority and intimidation and often demanded things at gunpoint – fat bulls and walwala with fresh milk. It did not matter whether the perpetrators were unruly, undisciplined elements; the rebels’ presence in and around the villages was nerve-wracking and unsettling. They conscripted men and boys to join their rank and file. Thousands of boys including me were robbed, deprived of their childhood, their care-free spirit, and playfulness, and forced to trek hundreds of kilometers into the unknown. My tools of personal protection and survival in this jungle became mum’s vivid moral tales and dad’s mantras of responsibility and perseverance deeply implanted in my developing conscience. In spite of the unforgiving, relentless physical and emotional pain, surrendering was not an option.

What was happening in Sudan? Why were political upheaval, oppression, and mistreatment flowing in towns and villages like morning dew? ‘Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, know that something is after its life.’ Chinua Achebe. Little did we know that the Sudanese protracted problems predated the colonization of Sudan by the British, who thought of themselves as ‘superiors of the superior race?’ In the 14th Century, for insidious reasons including the pursuit of economic and political power and domination of others at all cost, racist constructionists and ideologues categorized and divided human beings into a racial hierarchy. They placed Europeans at the top and Africans at the bottom. As centuries went by and slavery and colonization wreaked havoc, this social and racial construction succeeded in infecting the African peoples’ minds and consciousness. According to the racial constructionists, Africans were bestial, ruled by caprice, and therefore needed to be enslaved, and civilized. Much later, despite the British having physically evacuated Sudan, the ‘invented race construction and racial hierarchy’ had left footprints and traces of destruction in the diverse nation’s conscience. The new Sudanese rulers’ conscience and consciousness had been poisoned to the detriment of the Sudanese people. They were traumatized individuals. Racial and tribal identity dictated and shaped their behavior and policy making.

‘Race creates new forms of power: the power to categorize and judge, elevate and downgrade, include and exclude.’ Prof. Ibram X. Kendi. Now that the European colonizers had unwillingly abandoned Sudan and the so-called Sudanese Arabs found themselves the masters in the ‘liberated country,’ the invented and propagated racial hierarchy continued to be important more than ever. Nature’s given skin colour determined one’s place in Sudanese society just like the Europeans had preached it. The Sudanese Arabs, who perhaps perceived themselves as of Middle-Eastern origin, imagined their place somewhere in the middle of the ‘invented social and racial hierarchy.’ In their minds' eyes, the dark skin Sudanese majority deserved to be ruled and even enslaved. In these people’s heads, it could be conceivable that their quest for economic and political power combined with their own ignorance and trauma justified negative perception and oppression of others who do not look like them. The new Sudanese rulers had consciously or unconsciously internalized the racial hierarchy the Europeans had invented and employed. The worst was yet to come.

The brutal legacy of slavery and enslavement of the African people which culminated in colonialism vividly lives in the collective human psyche today. This phenomenon has thrown too many people, particularly people of African race under the bus because as Prof. Kendi pointed out, racism relies on arbitrary hierarchies. The race construction and racial hierarchy, positive for the Europeans and negative for the Africans offered privileges to the invented ‘White Race’. ‘The primary one is being inherently normal, standard, and legal. It is a racial crime to be yourself if you are not White in America.’ Prof. Kendi. In the 14th Century, Portugal was the first global power to construct race and became the first racist power and the first exclusive slave trader of the constructed race of African people. The first character in the history of racist power, the individual who orchestrated this trading of an invented people was Prince Henry of Portugal nicknamed the ‘Navigator,’ though he never sailed anywhere.

The Portuguese King, Afonso V commissioned Gomes de Zurara, a royal chronicler and a loyal commander in Prince Henry’s Military Order of Christ, to compose a glowing biography of the African adventures. Zurara finished The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea in 1453. The book was the first European book on Africa and in it; Zurara categorized the Africans into one single group of people, worthy of enslavement. Now that Zurara succeeded in creating race, prof. Kendi found out that he filled it with negative qualities that would justify Prince Henry’s evangelical mission to the world. ‘This Black race of people was lost, living “like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings,” Zurara wrote. “They had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in a bestial sloth.”

‘Other races, Asians, Latinx, and Middle Easterners, had been completely made and distinguished by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. Beginning in 1735, Carl Linnaeus locked in the racial hierarchy of humankind in his book, Systema Naturae. He color-coded the races as White, Yellow, Red, and Black. He then attached each race to one of the four regions of the world and described their characteristics. This Linnaeus taxonomy became the blueprint that nearly every enlightened race maker followed and that race makers still follow today. These were not of course neutral categories, because the race makers never meant them to be neutral categories. Racist power and hierarchy were created for a purpose.’ Prof. kendi.

Linnaeus positioned Homo sapiens europaeus [Europeans] at the top of the racial hierarchy, making up the most superior character traits: “Vigorous, muscular, flowing blond hair and blue eyes. Very smart, and inventive. Covered by tight clothing and ruled by law.” He made up the middling racial character of Homo sapiens asiaticus [Asians]: “Melancholy, stern, black hair; and dark eyes. Strict, haughty, greedy. Covered by loose garments and ruled by opinion.” He granted the racial character of Homo sapiens americanus [Red Indians and Latinos] a mixed set of attributes: “Ill-tempered, impassive. Thick straight black hair, wide nostrils, harsh face; beardless. Stubborn, contented, free. Paints [themselves] with red lines and ruled by custom.” And at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, Linnaeus positioned Homo sapiens afer [Africans]: “Sluggish, lazy. Black kinky hair. Silky skin. Flat nose. Thick lips. Females with genital flap and elongated breasts. Crafty, slow, careless. Covered by grease and ruled by caprice.”

How did/do Homo sapiens, the human race today deal with this history of insidious concoctions, infectious insinuations, racial construction, and hierarchy that physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually maimed, and continue to maim and handicap millions of human beings on this earth? Slavery, enslavement, and colonization that destroyed millions might have been abolished but the insidious legacy of these evils continues to live on. It has penetrated people’s consciences and consciousness in ways people are often unaware of. For over four decades, protracted civil wars characterized Sudan because one group of people imagined it was their ‘nature’s right’ to oppress, mistreat, dominate and subjugate those whom they deemed inferior to them. In Sudan, the SPLA rebels, the movement's arm wing brought it upon themselves to sacrifice lives at all cost to bring about liberation and justice in the country. In contrast, the Islamic rulers in Khartoum were determined to crush any opposition to their designed system of governance; ironically a duplicate system of the colonizing power they had previously waged wars against. The innocent thousands of us were victims of the dangerous; annihilating games the traumatized, power-greed-led, and directed human beings, who unfortunately call this planet home, began in the 14th Century. It all began with race construction and racial hierarchy. Unbeknown to us, the arrival of rebels in villages and the subsequent conscription of innocent children was the beginning of horrible things yet to come.

The Africans and people of African descent outside the continent might have vanquished chains of physical bondage and discrimination but the race-making ideology and racial hierarchy adopted different insidious forms that are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually draining. For example, what has been happening in the United States and the United Kingdom? How is race relation in the developed nations with significant populations of people of African descent fairing? What are the attitude of the developed nations and their institutions toward the African continent and its people including the Caribbean nations? Former colonial masters’ asserted insidious political interference, destabilization agenda, and assassinations of transformational political figures in the 60s, 70s, and 80, with the intention of stalling and degrading political and economic growth and development. Perhaps the asserted negative effort was intended to prove the legitimacy of racial hierarchy. This policy was /is nakedly ubiquitous. Why are globally demanded goods and materials leaving the African continent in raw forms? Why has it been impossible to establish win-win political and economic relations between the industrialized world and developing African nations? Are African people inherently sluggish, lazy, and careless and ruled by caprice as the racist constructionists claimed? Today, too many African children and youth born and raised in advanced nations have fallen between the cracks. Insidious negative societal perceptions and stereotypes are detrimental not just to a developing mind but also to adult minds. Do you see a relationship between the state of affairs of African nations and the race makers’ claims? Are these statements an acknowledgment of victimhood and responsibility evasion? The writing is clear. For centuries now, those who have attempted to judge, downgrade and exclude will never stop their diminishing attitude and behavior towards Africa and its people, even though they are a minority and secretive voices. Despite the growth and spread of enlightened tolerant behavior and the rise of interracial marriages, human beings are still divided along tribal and racial lines. From the race constructionist position, the human race has made huge progress and there is still a long way to go if at all Homo sapiens will ever achieve understanding, peace, and harmony in all corners of the globe.

So what possible remedies the African people everywhere they call home can adopt and employ? Can racial, ethnic, tribal, religious, or political identification and emphasis remedy the state of affairs of African nations? My short answer is an emphatic no. I believe an emphasis on spiritual consciousness through self-awareness is a tool that can remedy the current human condition. A conscious, self-aware human being can overcome any negative conditions and external influences designed to degrade and keep him down. There is an increasing realization that each human being on this earth is responsible for his or her salvation given a level political and economic playing field. When we become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually conscious and aware of our nature’s given power and ability, ninety percent of personal worries and concerns are resolved. You seek salvation from within rather than from without. We focus attention on the circle of influence and not on the circle of concern as Stephen Covey expounded. We can focus on things, and situations we can change, and not on situations we only talk about but cannot change. I claim that all races’ conscious and unconscious internalization of the racial construct and hierarchy, negative perceptions, and stereotypes towards a racial group, particularly the African people has been detrimental to the collective humanity. No one group of people is inferior or superior and no people can be kept down forever. History has proved this wrong, time and time again. Regardless of race, it is our collective responsibility as human beings to bring about understanding and harmonious living in all corners of the world. We can heal ourselves from historical trauma and seek the true self of what it is to be a normal human being.