The Indo-British essayist Pankaj Mishra has been dissecting the colonial arrogance of the West for twenty years. Has anything changed since then? About freedom, deception and the difficult endeavor of shaking western self-confidence.
In his essay “The Souls Of White Folk”, the sociologist WEB Du Bois describes an encounter that brought him the core of white delusions of superiority in crystalline clarity. In small talk with a white man, a benevolent, compassionate contemporary, the Afro-American Du Bois sensed a merciless message among all the niceties. It read: “My poor non-white thing! Cry and don’t get angry. I know only too well what a curse of God weighs heavily on you.” If he, you Bois, only spent his days diligently and piously, so the promise, he could be reborn in heaven – as a white man.