While it is often tempting to relegate colonialism to the pages of history, having recently had the privilege of living in Rwanda, I’ve learned to recognize a colonialist attitude in national and international decision making that is having damaging consequences for nations and societies. To emphasize its contemporary relevance, it may be helpful to use the term "modern colonialism” (Jo M. Sekimonyo, personal communication, 26 July, 2022) when discussing contemporary relationships.
The dynamic of colonialism is fundamentally psychological. Colonialism is founded on an assumption of superiority regarding the best and right way to structure society. Inequity, therefore, is an inevitable and inseparable complement to superior thinking which is vigorously maintained by those who believe they are superior (Jo M. Sekimonyo, personal communication, 26 July, 2022).
It is the unquestioned sense of superiority that binds together colonialism and white supremacy (Biswas, 2020; Jackson, 2009; Matias, 2016). The basic idea is "My way is right, and your way is wrong”. More than an idea of the "right” way to live one’s life is a willingness to act on that presumption. People living according to a different, inferior structure need to be governed, reformed, and educated until they copy, but never match, the practices of those who are more powerful and amply resourced (Gopal, 2019).
A particularly insidious aspect of the colonialist and white supremacist superiority is the belief that, because my way is better than yours, your way should be eliminated, and you should be "corrected” until you have adopted the "better” way. Despite the creativity of our ancestors with regard to the organization of our social relationships, we settled for the dynamic of dominance and subordination (Graeber & Wengrow, 2021) of which colonialism is one manifestation.
The problem with colonialism and white supremacy is that one person cannot dictate the correct way for another to live. Living is a first-person, inside-looking-out activity (Carey, Tai, & Griffiths, 2021). It is not something that can be manipulated and steered from an external observer’s perspective. At least not satisfactorily and not for any length of time.
Being manipulated is an affront to our fundamental, biological predisposition of control. Humans are designed as controllers (Marken & Carey, 2015). The most likely outcome where dynamics of superiority such as colonialism and white supremacy prevail is that the person or group of people who are being coerced will, ultimately, push back.
The pushback dynamic arises even when the more powerful person seeks to be benevolent and helpful. Whenever the help is determined by the helper rather than the helpee there is every likelihood that the apparently helpful efforts will be experienced as paternalistic, colonialistic, irrelevant, and irritating. Resources are needlessly wasted when the helping efforts are determined and delivered according to the preferences of the helper and not the helpee.
Recent global examples illustrate just how pervasive and routine attitudes of superiority are.
In May 2022, the Northern Territory (NT) Legislative Assembly in Australia passed new Liquor Act amendments without consulting the people who will be affected by the legislation. The new legislation drew a strong response from the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT, 2022) who condemned the changes because of a lack of proper consultation. The most defensible conclusion in this instance is that the NT Legislative Assembly assumed that they knew what was right for community residents with regard to alcohol management.
In the US, Justices of the Supreme Court have, in recent times, made decisions regarding gun laws, abortion rights, climate change, and prayers in school that could have monumental implications for different groups within American society. Importantly, the decisions made were in direct opposition to substantial bodies of robust evidence. By disregarding such evidence, the Justices demonstrated that they considered they know better about the right rules and laws by which people should live than people with accumulated expertise in each of those areas.
The COVID pandemic has showcased people in positions of power making decisions that substantially affect less powerful people in more poorly resourced jurisdictions. Vaccine inequity, for instance, has been a global concern practically for as long as COVID vaccines have been available. More recently, vaccine skepticism has been reported as a possible barrier to vaccine distribution in Africa (Leonhardt, 2021; Chutel & Fisher, 2021). When attempting to solve the "African vaccination problem,” however, it is important to understand that Africa is a continent, not a country. It is not unusual, for example, to read comparisons between the US or Russia and Africa (Solis Arce, 2021). There are, however, 54 countries in Africa. These countries have their own histories and cultures and governments. Even within countries the diversity is staggering. Cameroon, for example, has 168 indigenous languages, in addition to French and English.
It is therefore dangerous to make statements about the "problem in Africa.” Once "we,” from the well-resourced, wealthier locations have decided what the problem is, we are unlikely to take the time to understand the problem from the perspective of those who need help. Reporting on the problems of a small number of countries on the African continent can create a treacherous misperception of what the problem is for all countries in Africa. While South Africa struggles with vaccine skepticism, in Rwanda where I lived, there is no such problem.
To underscore the importance of revisiting the way in which relationships between those in the West and those in less well-resourced countries are structured, an open letter was written to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the eve of his visit to Rwanda (Karuhanga, 2022). Among other things, the letter calls for the establishment of partnerships "free of condescending positions”. There can be no stronger contemporary statement of the objectionable presence of colonialist attitudes of superiority.
It is the most delicious irony that our ability to help ourselves will be severely compromised as long as our efforts to help others are based on an attitude of superiority. While people in positions of power cling to the mistaken idea that they somehow know the right and correct way for others to live, everyone remains less than they could be. Only when our self-determining and controlling natures are at the center of decision-making concerning familial, community, society, and global relations will we begin to experience all that a connected and harmonious global village can achieve.
The writer is a Professor and Chair of Country Health Research and Innovation and Director of the WACHS-Curtin Alliance at Curtin University. Previously, he worked in Rwanda as the Director of the Institute of Global Health Equity Research and the Andrew Weiss Chair of Research in Global Health at the University of Global Health Equity.