Connections Between Imperialism and Institutionalized Racism/Patriarchy Home and Abroad | Henry Fina

    One of the central arguments posed thus far in Reconsidering Reparations is the similarities between America's institutionalized racism and the global history of imperialism. However, the structural hierarchies that birthed racial oppression and exploitation are evident in numerous other aspects of our society. Taiwo cites arguments from Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson to display how this reality came about. Europeans had a historical tendency to separate people into rigid hierarchies, and then produce historic, religious, and philosophical justifications for why such hierarchies exist (30). European nations produced these hierarchies long before the "Age of Exploration" began in the 15th century. After colonialism became the powerful economic and political means of building empire, race was introduced into these hierarchies. The argument seems undeniable when one begins considering the reasoning we have read for entering the Social Contract by authors like Hobbes. The patriarchal structures that Hobbes cited as justifications for absolute monarchy, and as a model for the King and his subjects, are clearly means of allowing arbitrary domination.

 

    When colonizing a nation, justification for domination becomes a necessity, and aspects of European society, such as rigid patriarchal structures that allowed for and supported feudalism, became tools to craft these justifications. Taiwo outlines modern colonial history throughout "Reconsidering World History," and much of it focuses on how race made its way into European Hierarchies as a means to justify exploitation of colonized people. I want to focus on another, briefer, aspect of his argument, gender, which although it is not the central focus of the novel, gender is undeniably connected to his argument. I want to focus on the use of European patriarchal structures to justify imperialism, and as a means of domination of native groups. 

 

    When you consider the use of patriarchy to uphold means of domination in Europe, such as feudalism, through labor divisions, who could own property, or inheritance, then it is unsurprising that this became a central aspect of European colonization. Many native populations did not have the gender norms or societal structures that Europeans had in place. Taiwo briefly discusses this phenomenon occurring in West Africa where Patriarchal structures were adopted to adapt to colonization (32). We read about the Huron and their ideologies, but some extra prying in other Indigenous tribes in the Americas shows that women had significant roles in many of these societies. Many Native American women had a significant say in politics, and could control the family to a much greater degree than European women. These aspects of Indigenous society disappeared in America through the coercive power of colonial rule, just as they did in West Africa. The case for reparations is being made on more racial grounds because it is undeniable when one traces back through history that inequalities, both domestic and global, have racial origins. What can we do as a society to rectify the gender imbalances we have created and the injustices we have inflicted on women? The topic is worth just as much debate and discussion as reparations. Correcting global inequalities through reparations may help rectify and correct these injustices, but what action must be taken, both culturally and politically, to directly address and rectify the gender imbalances that were brought about by the same predation and power structures as many racial inequalities.