Built on Racism

Thank you Samuel Mbugua Muturi. I'm grateful when I hear the truth, even when it makes me uncomfortable. You are my dear friend. I am still learning even as I celebrate dead white men. It's sad that so many voices are missing. We are so much richer when we are free to celebrate all humanity. I hope more of us here on Facebook will open our hearts and minds just a little more. May we be free.

"Europe's standing in the world would not have been possible if it weren't for barbaric colonialism, violence and enslavement, says professor Kehinde Andrews. The myth of Europe as an enlightening force across the globe helps us to sleep at night, he argues, but is ultimately based on racism. It's time we faced that.

There is a European canon we are taught. We are taught this is special knowledge, this is somehow the idea the Enlightenment that European knowledge is to civilize the dark savage. And these ideas go to the heart of the problems of society today and we need to understand and unpick them so we can move forward.

Of course the Enlightenment was racist, it is built on the idea there is a special knowledge from Europe. You think about someone like Immanuel Kant who is still revered, who comes up with the idea of the 'Taxonomy of the Races' which is so important to how we understand that I wasn’t deemed to be a person by Immanuel Kant when he was writing. If that isn’t racism, I don’t know what is.


Dr Andrews was not advocating that philosophers like Plato and Kant should be banned, rather he was defending the point that the curriculum should be broadened to have a more balanced syllabus. According to a statement issued by SOAS they wish to revamp the syllabus so 'that the majority of the philosophers on our course are from the Global South or its diaspora. SOAS's focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers…' and 'if white philosophers are required, then to teach their work from a critical standpoint. For example, acknowledge the colonial context in which so called "Enlightenment" philosophers wrote within."

Kehinde Andrews is associate professor in sociology at Birmingham City University. His research specialism is race and racism and is author of ‘Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement’ (2013) and co-editor of ‘Blackness in Britain’ (2016)