ABSTRACT
Modern imperialism has given added impetus to the tendency to classify human peoples as “superior” and “inferior” for race has been a convenient device for the imperialist. Under imperialism’s zone of conquest the population of the earth has been arbitrarily divided into “advanced” and “backward” races or peoples. Imperialist propaganda has taught the world to regard certain peoples as helplessly backward and incapable of keeping step with the modern industrial world. In fact, strenuous efforts are made to make these peoples think of themselves as backward. But this classification is not a mere theoretical one. It is used as the basis for justifying conquest and exploitation and for dividing the world into dominant and subordinate peoples. Thus imperialism has attempted to mask its cruelly selfish motives under high-sounding titles. Powerful industrial nations have raped Africa under the false pretense of shouldering “the white man’s burden”. It has been held to be the particular mission of the dominant peoples to bring civilization to the backward peoples of the earth; to convert them to the Christian religion and to expose them to the benefits of an advanced European culture. A new “moral” philosophy is invented which holds that some peoples are naturally backward and therefore properly may be kept in a more or less permanent state of subjection to the advanced peoples. But since the backward peoples have often been reluctant to receive these blessings they have been forced to accept them at the point of the bayonet. In this way Italy is bestowing the “blessings of civilization” upon the hapless Ethiopians today. After the conquest has been completed, the backward peoples bitterly learn that the “blessings” consist of brutal suppression, greedy economic exploitation of the natural and human resources of a country which is no longer their own, forced labor, the introduction of previously unknown diseases, vice and social degeneration. …
