On stolen ideas, and how people need people

23 April 2013 - 13:10 By Bruce Gorton
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Image: Gallo Images/Thinkstock

A letter last week spoke about how black people need whites – and it got me thinking about colonialism.

You see I think there was an error in that letter that is commonly made by people who want to talk about Western civilisation, and that is forgetting that colonialism wasn’t just stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down, it stole the very ground that stuff was being nailed down to, and then swiped any ideas that were lying around for good measure.

The Renaissance had to happen alongside the Age of Exploration, because the Age of Exploration represented not simply resources being appropriated from the rest of the world, but ideas.

A lot of what we consider to be Western ideology was essentially nicked from somebody else, or promoted by the very people the colonialists were enslaving. The oppressed helped shape the oppressor, though being oppressed they seldom got any credit for it.

America remembers Abraham Lincoln as ending slavery, how many Americans remember the black leaders who were actually fighting for their own freedom?

These are people that had to play a role in shaping the entire of American history, and yet how well are they remembered? One month in twelve for the people who helped define what America would become.

Think of the French trade-marking rooibos tea. You have a product which has been employed for quite a long time in South Africa, but because it is African it somehow becomes acceptable to trademark it in Europe.

Meanwhile we can’t call our sparkling wine champagne.

When I hear something like how blacks need whites, a part of me rebels because to a large extent it forgets just how important and integral to history black people have been, many of their names lost because of the legacy of the same kind of colonial thinking that has France trade-marking traditional African products.

It isn’t black people need white people; it is that people need people. Everybody in the past contributed towards creating the world of today, and everybody right now is contributing to the world of tomorrow.

We need to recognise our anti-culture, that which doesn’t define us or them but celebrates how we are all improved by all. We cannot say where our ideas really come from, they have shaped each individual they have come into contact with and in turn been shaped by each individual.

But we need to remember that all includes us, and that includes people we will never know about, this is not simply about humility but pride, that we can say this is not black or white but us, all of us, in this together.

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