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"Confounded it would seem by the cultural zeal that accompanies ascendant civilizations, they have mistaken for universal verities the structures and social dynamics retrieved from their own distant and more immediate pasts. Even more significantly, the deepest structures of
'historical materialism,' the foreknowledge for its comprehension of historical movement, have tended to relieve European Marxists from the obligation of investigating the profound effects of culture and historical experience on their science."— Cedric Robinson, "Black Marxism"
"Indeed, during much of the nineteenth century, one of the most persistent projects for which Western science was employed was the attempt to demonstrate what was already understood to be the natural order of the races."
Robinson quoting Edmund Morgan to show how American Indians utilizing the land more efficiently and reaping greater abundance dealt a blow to the white psyche's self-perception of superiority which then responded with brutal violence against them to soothe it.
"[T]he memory of Black rebelliousness to slavery and other forms of oppression was systematically distorted and suppressed in the service of racialist, Eurocentric, and ruling-class historiographies. The sum total was the dehumanizing of Blacks."
