Anyone who has ever sat in a college sociology class learns about the role of public education in socializing or programming people to accept the norms and values of a society. No government offers education for benevolent reasons but for the strict purposes of creating loyal productive citizens who help bolster the nation in world politics. During the colonial era from the late 1800s to the present, Europeans designed education systems in Africa to create a class of elite of indigenous people who would be loyal to the colonial government and rule the masses.
Colonial schools taught the African elite that despite their black skin they were Europeans on equal footing with those in Europe, endowed with education and power that the working classes in their countries were not worthy enough to earn because they held on to their indigenous beliefs and customs. Africans adopted European names,mannerisms and mentalities.
What these pawns of the European Colonial system didn’t realize was that they were being used to rape their countries of valuable resources and oppress their own people. In an American context, the African educated elite were like slave overseers who made sure the slaves didn’t revolt under extreme working conditions. While the wealth of Europe and the African educated elite grew, the overall conditions Africa grew worse. From raw materials like rubber, diamonds, gold, cocoa, wood, etc. harvested by the indigenous people, European countries were able to build great industrialized nations with technology and infrastructure.
The basic economic dynamics of European colonization are basically as such: An European country will perhaps extract oil from an African country for $300 million dollars but sell it to America for $2 Billion with a profit of $1.7 Billion dollars. Instead of that $300 million going into the hands of an African nation’s masses it goes into the Swiss Bank accounts of maybe 200 African elite who buy European goods like Gucci, Mercedes, etc. These African elite are also the ones responsible for extracting the oil through slave labor. The Europeans rarely get their hands dirty in violating the rights of African indigenous people but simply supply the weaponry and knowledge to the African elite so that they can exploit their own people.
This vulture mentality of the African elite creates very unstable nations and eventually the masses do revolt. So where do these elite run to ? To the very people who empowered them: America and Europe. The African elite raid their Swiss bank accounts of money they stole from their government and people to pay for tickets to the West that are worth more than what the average African makes in a 5 lifetimes. Make no mistake the African person you see driving your cab or who is your doctor never was some bush man living in a tree or trying to figure out if the bottle that dropped from the sky is from the gods. No that African person is probably part of an African royal family VERY VERY highly educated but escaping the pitch forks (military rifles) of the countrymen they oppressed. They don’t mind being nurses, working like dogs or driving for hours because if they went back to their country they would probably be killed. Better a slave and alive in a white man’s country, than dead in your own.
However, these Africans (and sometimes Caribbean) people have no education beyond what Europeans wanted them to know. They have no concept of racial politics, but simply the math and science of how to exploit their own people. They were taught as long as they were good agents of the colonial system and never questioned its oppressive nature they would be rewarded financially. This colonized mindset makes them blind and ignorant of the 400 years of slavery that existed in America. These Africans no very little about the black blood that was shed in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s or the crack that was specifically flooded into the black communities in the 80s. They know nothing about the pain and suffering that black people still go through today in racial discrimination cases.
All these Africans in America believe is that their plain hard work is what earned them their jobs in middle management. They don’t know what it means from that from the time you are born you are taught that for generations black people have and still are second class citizens in the freest nation on earth. They never grew up being called nigger or jungle by classmates while simply trying to get an education. They don’t see the dismissive looks of white people or hear the patronizing tone in their voices. All these Africans know is work hard for the white man and you’ll get paid.