Role Of Colonialism In America

J.M. Blaut said that “eurocentrism is quite simply the colonizer’s model of the world.” The ideas that Blaut talks about are encompassed throughout the several different short stories that were read throughout this unit. In “Kura,” by Patricia Grace, Kate takes her little sister, Riripeti, to school. There she and her culture are both consistently mistreated and considered inferior to the Western culture. In “Homeless” by Ovo Adagha, the native people of Nigeria are exploited by the previous colonizers for their land and resources. “Imitation” by Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of Nkem, a woman who is moved to America to raise her family. Throughout this story, the author portrays an image of the superiority of both culture and economics. By looking at the exploitation
To begin with, theorists, such as Abdul R. JanMohamed and Albert Memmi, have formed several theories regarding the treatment of native people during postcolonial times. In JanMohamed’s “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature,” JanMohamed talks about the reasons for colonialism, both covert and overt. He explains the covert reasoning behind colonialism is the need for resources; colonies are used for natural resources and are economically exploited (JanMohamed 81). He goes on to say that “the European desire to exploit resources… drastically disrupted the indigenous societies… European colonists promoted the destruction of native… systems” (JanMohamed 80). He is saying that this covert cause ultimately ruins the native society. Further in the theory, JanMohamed explains how the overt cause of colonization is the idea