A Deep Dive Into Decolonization - Part 1

"Decolonize Explained" with Dr. Bruce Gilley

Decolonization Deep Dive Part I. The shift from decolonization as the fulfillment of liberal society to decolonization as the abandonment of liberal society came about because of the rise of identity politics. What identity politics did was it rejected the fundamental premise of a free, liberal society, which is that people are all equal and all created with the same “stuff,” however you explain that. And so when people started to say, “let's decolonize something,” what they meant is, “we're going to give up on that equality of citizens and equality of reasoning, and approaches that we assume is the fundamental stuff of a democratic society.” And people started to think that was a good idea. Because, well, if people are fundamentally different, if a black person is just not the same as a white person, probably not able to do the things a white person can do, then you wouldn't want a black person to be held to the same standards of mathematical or scientific excellence as a white person. Indeed, you'd probably want to water it down a little. So, “decolonize” was a form of segregation. It was a kind of soft bigotry, actually, suggesting that some people couldn't measure up to the high standards of liberal society and needed to have a whole different cultural and normative system to govern their behavior in whatever realm of life that was. People who made those assumptions about fundamental incompatibilities of human beings based on their skin color, or based on their language, were the people who thought decolonization would be a great idea, because suddenly everyone would live in their own parallel universe and these parallel universes would be culturally sensitive.