FANON's CHILDREN

Botched Colonialism

We botched our attempt at colonization, leaving a trail of disease, poverty and contempt for those who never made the grade. Canada’s First Nation’s are treated with contempt and little empathy not because our politicians and policy-makers are forgetful or too busy doing more important things, but because they simply don’t count; they are non-colonial. Point in case, the Kashechewan ‘dirty’ water debacle that has finally brought media and public attention to the plight of an all but forgotten Canadian population: Indigenous peoples. The very nature and driving force behind colonialism is the complete accession of one culture to another culture, submission and eventual acculturation. When this cultural/social eugenics fails, the colonialist is left with a ‘partial peoples’, an impediment to a total and indifferent colonial foothold. When one culture does not play by the rules of colonialism, the colonizer is left with a messy socio-political problem. What to do with non-compliant, cultural specific peoples whom, by reason of difference, are incapable of accepting colonial rule and cultural pasteurization? The answer is a simple one, forget about them and hope they in turn forget about us. This raises the philosophical question of autonomy; ones right to human value and selfness. Canada’s First Nations people lack autonomy, they have been robbed of a culturally specific selfness. When this happens, which is an inevitable result of botched colonialism, the colonizer refuses to attribute autonomy or selfness to those who have been unsuccessfully colonized. This is more than evident in Africa, where the colonial failure has created a sub-cultural of people who, by virtue of their inability to accept or be colonized, are looked upon as being non-autonomous or lacking in selfness. When this occurs, it is easy to forget or simply relegate an entire peoples to a non-compliant ‘other’ with no chance of cultural pasteurization. They simply don’t count by virtue of their lack of cultural sameness or compliance to colonial rules. The colonizer, and here one can insert Canada, is left with a population of non-persons, those to whom the basic human rights of autonomy, inclusion and, yes, clean drinking water, becomes a moot point, one not even worthy of conjecture or further discussion. When a country as rich and culturally diverse as Canada fails to meet the needs of its people, we all fail. We fail to accept the importance of difference and non-compliance; we fail to accept the selfness and autonomy of those different than us. In this manner, and sadly so, Canadian citizens are robbed of their autonomy, and are perceived of as being less-than or lacking in colonial autonomy. When this is the case, they are relegated to the unimportant bin, a closure where difference and non-colonial values and cultural hegemony are seen as non-compliance, and thereafter, not worth the bother of attributing autonomy and selfness to. Canada has created a culture of partial-people, those to whom basic rights and necessities are withheld because of our own botched attempt at colonial homogeneity.

Social Conscious

You have no social conscious
She said—

You are a pretender and a mountebank
A bogeyman

You are colicky with imbecility
And ideas about ideas

I said—

You are an imbecile and a quacksalver
A bogeywoman

I hate you and your lack of social conscious
You’re frail brain

She said—

I despise your conscious consciousness
You’re a mountebank and an imbecile

A pretending pretender
I said—

You are my dream, my one and only
She said—

You too
I said—

Imbecile or not