User:AustinEmho/sandbox

Assignment: Article Evaluation

I decided to evaluate the article on Vladimir Lenin, the Marxist theorist who famously described imperialism as the final stage of capitalist expansion. Lenin’s writings set the tone for discussions of imperialism ands its effects for the rest of the century. Nothing in the article seemed out of place, and the language it used throughout maintained as neutral a position as possible. Lenin is a controversial figure and this article still managed to avoid being extremely biased. Using neutral language to describe his life, and presenting both sides of any arguments that arise over specifically contentious aspects of Lenin’s life (i.e. when there is reason to doubt ‘official’ sources the article provides the more higher-profile explanations and claims). As such, I felt that the article managed to not over represent any one viewpoint. 

The links for sources functioned properly and responded to the given claim made. For instance, a claim that Lenin (as a boy) excelled at sports was sourced properly, and the link to that section of the source (a Lenin biography from 1964) gave the same corresponding information. The sources in general are varied, and some seem to be openly critical discussions of Lenin’s life and his political theories, while others are more open theoretical discussions (typically by other Marxist theorists who came after Lenin and cite him at length). The bias can be seen in two ways: (1) more conservative historians, and (2) Marxist theorists who have been influenced by Lenin to some degree. Though in the actual writing of the article it is hard to feel either of these biases at play with any seriousness. Likewise, though many of the sources are from the mid to late 20th century, enough further additions come from more modern publications (the 2000s up to the present); which provide a wide range of time for the information gathered. 

This is a very high profile wikipedia article and the talk page and level of control over it reflect this fact (it is a semi-protected article). In the talk page there was a lengthy discussion over whether or not to compare Lenin to George Washington (in regards to cult of personality). The moderator ruled that those in favour of removing this quote were clearly from an anti-Lenin and anti-Soviet bias and that they intended to present bias information (from a bias source). Ruling that the quote was appropriate and from a suitably well known and respected historian. The talk page therefore upheld the stated goal of neutrality in presenting Lenin. It is also a featured article. Overall, this seems to be an acceptable wikipedia article, as it meets all the standards set by the evaluation training; this makes sense as Lenin is a very important historical figure (as his works on imperialism are still highly relevant) and, unlike lesser known pages, his is frequently cleaned up (having last been edited on October 8th) and locked so intellectual vandalism cannot take place.

Assignment: Add to an Article

I used the Citation Hunt tool to find an uncited sentence on the page for Colonial India. The statement was both uncited and tagged as dubious by another Wikipedia user. I used the library's database to find an article on the subject and both edited the statement to be correct and provided the proper citation to the journal article.

India suffered a series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century, leading to widespread famines in which at least 10 million people died. Responding to earlier famines as threats to the stability of colonial rule, the East India Company had already began to concern itself with famine prevention during the early colonial period. [13] This greatly expanded during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect. [14]

The bold sentence is what was added to the article. I also left a comment to explain my edit to other users.

Assignment: Choose Possible Topics

I've found two potential articles that seem like they could use further attention.

Potential Articles:

Kadakkal Riot Case- This article discusses an incident in India's colonial history which contributed towards its independence movement. The page is very small (only three short paragraphs in length) and is very poorly formatted (in comparison to more developed pages concerning similar events). Only one claim is actually cited (with only one corresponding source) and the article has not been edited since June 14th, 2016. The talk page is empty. I would improve by gathering information from more than one source, actually citing this information, and generally filling the page out with more information concerning the events of the riot and its place in India's colonial history.

Colonial Mentality- This article is about a topic highly relevant to the theoretical aspect of this course. It seems very underdeveloped at the moment– with small sections dedicated to colonial mentality in a few different contexts. The information presented seems erratic and is presented without much order all throughout. A more focused and stream-lined article could be developed out of it. The actual definition of what colonial mentality is is also not cited anywhere. The biggest addition I would make would by an etymology section discussing where the term came from and its relation to post-colonial theory (Rather than just fixating on examples of colonial mentality in numerous colonial contexts). Wikipedia users have already made numerous alerts as to the poor quality of this article (most recently 2016) which say that the articles neutrality and general quality is in question. As well as overlying on a few primary sources and many other claims that are completely uncited.

Assignment: Illustrate an Article

I used the Wikimedia Commons search function to find a map of the Indian state of Kerala. I then added the image to the Kadakkal Riot Case article (which previously had no images at all). The image is of the state of Kerala showing the division of the state's different districts, with Kollam (where the riot occurred) being highlighted. As this is a poorly developed article already, the addition of a map is appropriate.

This is the image I added to the article.

Assignment: Finalize your topic/ find your sources

After looking into the existence of sources for the pages for Colonial Mentality and the Kadakkal Riot Case, it seems like it will be much easier to find literature for Colonial Mentality. As such, Colonial Mentality is the topic I have decided to work on.

First of all, the page is severely lacking citations and sources. Even the general definition of the term Colonial Mentality is in need of a citation. The need for citations was noted numerous times (going years back) on the talk page. Other users also brought up the strange organization of the page, and comments from years back point out the removal of entire sections that were found to be lacking in sources or writing quality (sections on Quebec and the Ukraine were removed for this). I feel like I can primarily expand the definition section of the term by referencing actual sources, introduce an etymology of the term itself (i.e. its history in post-colonial scholarship and how theorists have used the term), and perhaps expand the "English-speak societies" section beyond the two general examples that it gives at the moment.

Second of all, the talk page mentions the bias of the page (as the majority of it focuses on the colonial mentality present in the Philippines' colonial history). I would review the Spanish Empire section and either remove irrelevant information or add to what is there to be more coherent.

Third of all, a user in the talk page mentions that a section on Algeria ands it colonial history with France fit with the general themes of the page. I think that the page as is already leans too much towards Spanish examples, only referencing British cases in reference to India (and only incredibly briefly), so adding new sections to expand the page seems appropriate. I will specifically look into adding a well sourced section on Algeria (I already can think of sources we read in class that would be useful for this, as well as perhaps discussing how this has expanded to art– Caché (film)).

I think these improvements can be made using available literature, and will prove to be substantial additions to the Colonial Mentality page.

Relevant Books, Journals, Articles, and Other Sources

Silverstein, P. A. (2004). Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lyons, A. H. (2013). The civilizing mission in the metropole: Algerian families and the french welfare state during decolonization. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Loyal, S. (2009). The french in Algeria, Algerians in France: Bourdieu, Colonialism, and Migration. The Sociological Review, 57(3), 406-427. doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2009.01847.x

Seth, S. (2007). Subject lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Stephenson, A. (2012). The Whig Interpretation of History Applied to the Empire: Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education. Cercles: Revue Pluridisciplinaire Du Monde Anglophone, 24, 29-45.

Sullivan, Z. T. (1993). Narratives of Empire: The Fictions of Rudyard Kipling. New York; Cambridge [Eng.];: Cambridge University Press.

Felipe, L. (2016; 2015). The Relationship of Colonial Mentality with Filipina American Experiences with Racism and Sexism. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 7(1), 25-30. doi:10.1037/aap0000033

David, E. J. R. (2010). Testing the Validity of the Colonial Mentality Implicit Association Test and the Interactive Effects of Covert and Overt Colonial Mentality on Filipino American Mental Health. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 1(1), 31-45. doi:10.1037/a0018820

David, E. J. R., & Okazaki, S. (2010). Activation and Automaticity of Colonial Mentality. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(4), 850-887. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00601.x

Talk Page Addition

I've also posted on the Colonial Mentality talk page and listed these sources and generally stated my intent to improve the page.

Assignment: Article Draft (Colonial Mentality)

*** Notes for draft***

"Every colony tends to turn into a huge farmyard, where the only law is that of the knife"- 307

"Western bourgeois racial prejudice as regards the nigger and the Arab is a racism of contempt; it is a racism which minimizes what it hates. Bourgeois ideology, however, which is the proclamation of an essential equality between men, manages to appear logical in its own eyes by inviting the sub-men to become human, and to take as their prototype Western humanity as incarnated in the Western bourgeoisie."- 162

" Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized, in a word, savage. There, all day long you may hear unpleasant remarks about veiled women, polygamy, and the supposed disdain the Arabs have for the feminine sex. All such remarks are reminiscent in their aggressiveness of those that are so often heard coming from the settler's lips. The national bourgeoisie of each of these two great regions, which has totally assimilated colonialist thought in its most corrupt form, takes over from the Europeans and establishes in the continent a racial philosophy which is extremely harmful for the future of Africa. By its laziness and will to imitation, it promotes the engrafting and stiffening of racism which was characteristic of the colonial era. Thus it is by no means astonishing to hear in a country that calls itself African remarks which are neither more nor less than racist, and to observe the existence of paternalist behavior which gives you the bitter impression that you are in Paris, Brussels, or London."- 161

"We have said that the colonial context is characterized by the dichotomy which it imposes upon the whole people. Decolonization unifies that people by the radical decision to remove from mit its heterogeneity, and by unifying it on a national, sometimes a racial, basis."- 44

"In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values. In the period of decolonization, the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up."- 42

Peer Review due November 26th; November 29th.

Peer Review- email your peer, send link to draf, send feedback; receive response; CC Helin Burkay

Clare Maier

clare.maier@cmail.carleton.ca

***Notes for Draft***

***I've copied the article as is from the real colonial mentality wikipedia page for drafting purposes.***

*** Additions and changes to the article will be noted in comments marked by "***" and afterwards a paragraph will note what sections constitute the 'draft.'***

*** I completely reworked the introduction paragraph and the main definition of colonial mentality given***

***I've also added a section on Frantz Fanon– discussing how his work contributed to the development of the concept of colonial mentality in postcolonial theory***

***There is also an empty section on the French colonization of Algeria which will be filled out***

*** I will be adding to the section "Indian Subcontinent" by adding for comments on Kipling and Macaulay's "Minute on Education"***

A colonial mentality is the internalized attitude of ethnic or cultural inferiority felt by a people as a result of colonization. It corresponds with the belief that the cultural values of the colonizer are inherently superior to one's own. The term has been used by postcolonial scholars to discuss the transgenerational effects of colonialism present in former colonies following decolonization.

In psychology colonial mentality has been used to explain instances of collective depression, anxiety, and other widespread mental health issues in populations that have experienced colonization.

Notable Marxist influences on the postcolonial concept of colonial mentality include Franz Fanon's works on the fracturing of the colonial psyche through Western cultural domination, and the concept of cultural hegemony developed by Italian Communist Party Founder Antonio Gramsci.

Contents

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• 1English-speaking societies
  • 1.1Indian subcontinent
• 2Spanish Empire
  • 2.1Philippines
  • 2.2Latin America
• 3See also
• 4References
• 5Bibliography

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon

*** I put an image of Frantz Fanon from wikimedia commons here but it was removed by another user. I plan on putting it back or find another free use images***

Frantz Fanon's Marxist writings on imperialism, racism, and decolonizing struggles have influenced post-colonial discussions about the internalization of colonial prejudice. Fanon tackled the problem of "colonial alienation of the person" as a mental health issue through psychiatric analysis. In The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre), published in 1961, Fanon used psychiatry to analyze how French colonization and the carnage of the Algerian War had mentally affected Algerians' self-identity and mental health. The book argues that during the period of colonization there was a subtle and constant mental pathology that developed within the colonial psyche. Fanon argued that the colonial psyche is fractured by the lack of mental and material homogeneity as a result of the colonial power's Western culture being pressured onto the colonized population despite the existing material differences between them. Here Fanon expands traditional Marxist understandings of historical materialism to explore how the dissonance between material existence and culture functions to transform the colonized people through the mold of the Western bourgeoisie. This meant that the native Algerian came to view their own traditional culture and identity through the lense of colonial prejudice. Fanon observed that average Algerians internalized and then openly repeated remarks that were in line with the institutionalized culture of racism of the French colonizers; dismissing their own culture as backward due to the internalization of Western colonial ideologies.

According to Fanon this results in a destabilizing existential conflict within the colonized culture:

"In the West, the family circle, the effects of education, and the relatively high standard of living of the working class provide a more or less efficient protection against the harmful action of these pastimes. But in an African country, where mental development is uneven, where the violent collision of two worlds has considerably shaken old traditions and thrown the universe of the perceptions out of focus, the impressionability and sensibility of the Young African are at the mercy of the various assaults made upon them by the very Nature of Western Culture." – The Wretched of the Earth, 194-195.

English-speaking societies

Indian subcontinent

*** Section to be added to***

Critics claimed that Rudyard Kipling's portrayals of Indian characters generally supported the colonialist view that colonized people were incapable of surviving without the help of Europeans, describing these portrayals as racist.

The term "Macaulay's Children" refers to people of Indian ancestry who adopt European culture. The term is usually used in a derogatory fashion, connoting disloyalty to India. It derives from 19th century British historian and colonial administrator Thomas Macaulay, who regarded British culture as superior to Indian culture and who was the prime mover in replacing Indian languages/dialects with English as the medium of instruction.

Spanish Empire

Many Spaniards, however, objected to this encomienda system, notably Bartolomé de Las Casas, who insisted that the American indígenas (natives) were human beings with souls and rights and were, in the words of Queen Isabella I, "to be treated with justice and fairness".

The Spaniards were committed to converting their Amerindian subjects to Roman Catholicism, and were quick to purge any native cultural practices that hindered this end. However, most initial attempts at this were only partially successful, as Amerindian groups simply blended Catholicism with their traditional beliefs. On the other hand, the Spaniards did not impose their language to the degree they did their religion, and the Roman Catholic Church even evangelized in Quechua, Nahuatl, Guarani, etc., contributing to the expansion of these Amerindian languages and equipping them with writing systems.

Philippines

Main article: Filipino mestizos

Prior to colonization by the Spanish (1565-1898), the Sulu Archipelago (located in southern Philippines) was a colony of the Majapahit Empire (1293–1527) based in Indonesia. The Americans were the last country to colonize the Philippines (1898–1946) and nationalists claim that it continues to act as a neo-colony of the US despite its formal independence in 1946.

In the Philippines colonial mentality is most evident in the preference for Filipino mestizos(primarily those of mixed native Filipino and white ancestry, but also mixed indigenous Filipino and Chinese, and other ethnic groups) in the entertainment industry and mass media, in which they have received extensive exposure despite constituting a small fraction of the population.

The Cádiz Constitution of 1812 automatically gave Spanish citizenship to all Filipinos regardless of race. The census of 1870 stated that at least one-third of the population of Luzon had partial Hispanic ancestry (from varying points of origin and ranging from Latin America to Spain).

The combined number of all types of white mestizos or Eurasians is 3.6%, according to a genetic study by Stanford University. This is contradicted by another genetic study done by California University which stated that Filipinos possess moderate amounts of European admixture.

Evidence suggests that fair skin was a characteristic of the cloistered binukot, who were often kept indoors from a very early age. In historical epics of the Philippines their fair skin was presented as a standard of beauty among the upper class.

Physical consequences

One of the more adverse physical consequences in the idealization and acceptance of colonial mentality can be seen in the high rate of consumer demand for skin bleaching products used by some indigenous women and a smaller percentage of indigenous men and dark-skinned mestizas and mestizos, in the Philippines.

Demand in the Philippines and in some other tropical countries continue to be widespread.

Latin America

Racial forgery in Latin America is often accompanied by oral accounts of a Spanish ancestor and a Spanish surname. Most mixed-white and white people in Latin America have Spanish surnames inherited from Spanish ancestors, while most other Latin Americans who have Spanish names and surnames acquired them through Christianization and Hispanicization of the indigenous and African slave populations by Spanish friars, especially in order to ease record-keeping and tax collection, in the case of the Native Americans and Afro-Latin Americans.

French colonization Of Algeria

***Section to be filled in***