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Decolonization Quotes

Browse 168 quotes about Decolonization.

Decolonization Quotes

“Own your color, your accent, own your stories, your theologies, be proud of your sweat, your stubborn dignity – for the North wrote itself as civilized, but we, the Global South, authored humanity. They told us, history is white, holiness is western, progress is european – but the hands that built the world, with science, medicine, poetry, philosophy, astronomy and mathematics, were black, brown and indigenous.”

ColonialismWorld HistoryDecolonizationIndigenous PeopleAncient CivilizationsEurocentrismOrientalismColonizersGlobal SouthWestern Imperialism
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“South Earth Summon (Naskaristana 2800) I am the Son of South Earth, my spice-tolerance is superhuman, but lies-tolerance is nonexistent - my resilience knows no mortal limit, but I have zero tolerance for intolerance. I speak more languages than most northerners, I've devoured more scriptures than most northerners, I have assimilated more cultures and disciplines, which is why I say, there is no north, no south, when it comes to virtues and vices of human nature. So I'm not saying South is better than the North, but reparations are foundational to civilization; enlightenment was born in the South of Earth - math, medicine, poetry, philosophy, theology, almost everything was invented in the South, then the Northerners barged in, and pretended they invented astrophysics. I come from the other half of the world that has been systematically reduced to footnotes of northernized history normalized as world history, now I am a bigger giant than all your white giants combined, now I speak, and you listen.”

ColonialismImperialismWorld HistoryDecolonizationReparationsCultural AppropriationWhitewashGlobal SouthAncient CivilizationScientific History
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
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“Only Backward Minority of Earth (Naskaristana 2543) Eurocentrism is the biggest fraud in education, eurocentrism is the antithesis of education. The only minority that has historically caused irreparable damage to the world are the white people, yet you confuse every little mediocre literature from such backward population as default knowledge - and by act of conscience if a braveheart white defies the status quo, you declare them as woke infected. First sign of an educated mind - you don't start a conversation on philosophy mentioning greeks, you don't start a conversation on poetry mentioning the english. White people discovered nothing but other people's land, other people's science, other people's philosophy - Europe is the real footnote in the history of knowledge, till you understand what this means in your bones, your philosophy is just as fictional as your theology.”

PhilosophyEducationKnowledgeDecolonizationCultural AppropriationEurocentrismErasureHumanitiesAncient CivilizationIndigenous Knowledge
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“Eurocentrism - The First Global Catastrophe (Sonnet 2626) Climate change is nothing, the first humanly caused global catastrophe was eurocentrism - before colonials, science was rooted in society, and philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery, medicine was centered on people, not profit, religion was lived experience, not salesmanship - farmland was family, not property, innovation empowered life, not luxury - psychology prioritized understanding and healing, not analysis and isolation, poetry was the everyday way of life, not aristocratic escapism. Sure, there was superstition back then as well, but no superstition of the pre-colonial world comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions of the imperials marketed as progress. Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education - stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”

EducationWorld HistoryGeopoliticsDecolonizationColonizationScientific DiscoveryCultural AppropriationEurocentrismEurocentric EducationPhilososophy
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Before colonials, science was rooted in society, and philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery, medicine was centered on people, not profit, religion was lived experience, not salesmanship. Sure, there was superstition back then as well, but no superstition of the pre-colonial world comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions of the imperials marketed as progress. Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education - stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”

EducationWorld HistoryGeopoliticsDecolonizationColonizationScientific DiscoveryCultural AppropriationEurocentrismEurocentric EducationPhilososophy
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Unified Global South (Sonnet 2687-2688) White bias doesn't affect only white people, it affects colored people as well. For example, US citizens can practically travel to the entire world without visa, despite being the most undeserving, while rightful Africans cannot travel even within the continent without visa. This is why I say, white is not a color, white is a mindset of exploitation. If you want to rescue your plundered dignity, first you gotta decolonize your own mindset. Philosophy alone doesn't advance a society, you gotta build the infrastructure for it. For example, make the entire Global South Visa Free for all its citizens, and I guarantee, within a hundred years the Global South will be the Powergrid of the Human Race, like it once was, until the predators of Europe contaminated the world with their unwelcome touch. Foster the psychology, policy will follow. Foster the intent, intelligence will follow. The ultimate mission is a unified humanity, but practical integration of the human race beyond color and culture is not possible until we decontaminate the planet of every last trace of colonial vice legislated as virtue.”

ColonialismInfrastructureGeopoliticsDecolonizationNation BuildingCultural AppropriationPan AfricanismGlobal SouthColonial MentalityPan African
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“This is exactly what it means to be caught in the colonial matrix of power. It is to be constantly suffering from lack of options, and constantly finding oneself in such a position that all the choices available have already been chosen for you. As a result, you are constantly trapped and unable to think or do otherwise. You are consistently deprived of the possibility of working with other possibilities.”

KnowledgeColonialismImperialismCritical ThinkingCurriculumDecolonizationDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“For me, to decolonize knowledge production does not mean to dismiss or never engage with Western knowledge. Rather, as many decolonial thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, it means that the terms of engagement must change. It means that we should not only engage with Western knowledge, but also deeply engage with knowledge from all over the world. It means that we must not use Western knowledge as a compass to measure the value of other forms of knowledge produced around the world…[T]o decolonize knowledge production is to reject and dismantle the Western hegemony of knowledge production; the Western control on what counts and what does not count as knowledge.”

ThinkingKnowledgeCreativityColonialismCurriculumDecolonizationHegemonyDecoloniality
Author:Louis Yako
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“One of the most serious damages caused by the domination and hegemony of Western knowledge is that it makes you dismiss knowledge from every other part of the world – even your own – as less than or inferior. To decolonize, then, means to believe in our ability to be producers not just consumers of knowledge. In any walk of life, being just a consumer carries the danger of being deprived and impoverished as soon as the suppliers choose to block their production from you (be it knowledge, goods, mobility, and so on), which is precisely what happens when the West practices its favorite vicious game of sanctioning and cornering any country or group of people that dares to challenge its hegemony, or seek to change the rules of the game as we know it.”

KnowledgeColonialismImperialismCurriculumDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“If I could summarize everything I have learned from my praxis, it is this: Every human being can and must contribute to this world. I believe that contributing to the world in meaningful ways is non-negotiable. Yet at the same time, most people never realize their dreams of making meaningful contributions. Most people I have met in most places, including in the West itself, feel unfulfilled. They feel alienated from what they love and what they do, regardless of where they are or what they do. Fulfilment seems to be reserved solely for the few privileged elites primarily interested in dominating everything under the sun, including knowledge production.”

PowerSelf RealizationFulfillmentColonialismImperialismCurriculumDecolonizationDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“Unlike Penn and those who stood to profit from the acquisition of land, Lenape sachems sought trade goods and payments for their lands in order to distribute the wealth to their communities. Penn, an eyewitness and careful observer of Lenape sachems, noted that 'wealth circulates like blood, all parts partake.”

CommunismNative AmericanCommonwealthDecolonizationNative American WisdomCircular EconomicsLenape
Book:A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman
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“Hiba S. is one of the pioneer Iraqi women academics and authors in the field of media and journalism, currently exiled in Amman. During a visit to her office in summer 2014, Hiba shared that the early days of the occupation in 2003 were the most difficult she had ever experienced. She recollected: ‘I was sitting in my garden smoking when I suddenly saw a huge American tank driving through the street. I saw a Black soldier on the top of the tank. He looked at me and did the victory sign with his fingers. Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have immediately shot myself in the head right then and there. The pain I felt upon seeing that image is indescribable. I felt as though all the years we had spent building our country, educating our students to make them better humans were gone with the wind.’ Hiba’s description carries strong feelings of loss, defeat, and humiliation. Also significant in her narrative is that the first American soldier she encountered in post-invasion Iraq was a Black soldier making the victory sign. This is perhaps one of the most ironic and paradoxical images of the occupation. A Black soldier from a historically and consistently oppressed group in American society, who, one might imagine had no choice but to join the military, coming to Iraq and making the victory sign to a humiliated Iraqi academic whose country was ravaged by war. In a way, this image is worthy of a long pause. It is an encounter of two oppressed and defeated groups of people—Iraqis and African Americans meeting as enemies in a warzone. But, if one digs deeper, are these people really 'enemies' or allies struggling against the same oppressors? Do the real enemies ever come to the battlefield? Or do they hide behind closed doors planning wars and invasions while sending other 'oppressed' and 'diverse' faces to the battlefield to fight wars on their behalf? Hiba then recalled the early months of the occupation at the University of Baghdad where she taught. She noted that the first thing the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) tried to do was to change the curriculum Iraqi academics had designed, taught, and improved over the decades. While the Americans succeeded in doing this at the primary and high school levels, Hiba believed that they did not succeed as much at the university level. Iraqi professors knew better than to allow the 'Americanization of the curriculum' to take place. 'We knew the materials we were teaching were excellent even compared to international standards,' she said. 'They [the occupiers] tried to immediately inject subjects like "democracy" and "human rights" as if we Iraqis didn’t know what these concepts meant.' It is clear from Hiba’s testimony, also articulated by several other interviewees, that the Iraqi education system was one of the occupying forces’ earliest targets in their desire to reshape and restructure Iraqi society and peoples’ collective consciousness.”

WarColonialismImperialismIraq WarHigher EducationDecolonizationHegemonyMiddle East ConflictMiddle Eastern Studies
Book:Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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“It still shocks me to see countless academics who consider themselves intelligent, deep, or critical who constantly post and share articles from places like NYTimes, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and other such sources that, at the surface, appear to be intelligent, objective, and critical even of the power under which they operate (the Western elites), but if you dig deeper, you will discover that they are, one way or another, in perfect harmony with the imperial and colonial agenda of the West against the rest.”

MediaPropagandaDeceitControlImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“Decolonizing knowledge shouldn’t put us in the position of only producing knowledge as a reaction to Western knowledge. Our existence should not become one in which everything we produce is to justify our intellectual existence vis-à-vis the West. It means to produce what we see as important, fit, and nurturing to our communities, countries, and cultures, in separation from the West and its colonial and imperial agenda. This way, we will ensure to not waste our energy in simply reacting to the West to justify the value of our contribution to knowledge.”

ThinkingWisdomCreativityColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialitySubaltern
Author:Louis Yako
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“Second…decolonizing is about reeducating ourselves in ways that allow us to reconnect with our own souls, minds, and bodies. To rebuild all that has been damaged by the colonial wounds and the disciplinary institutions we dealt with throughout our lives. It is indeed about reeducating ourselves in such ways that we realize our full potential to contribute to our communities and to the wider world. We must learn (or relearn) how to harvest the fruit of knowledge from every part of the world, not just the West.”

WisdomKnowledgeSelf WorthColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonial Option
Author:Louis Yako
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“One of the biggest and most invisible – which in the long run becomes visible— wounds of coloniality is to make those at the receiving end of it question themselves; their physical, mental, and spiritual value and meaning; their ability to think, invent, innovate, and theorize. It happens so slowly, viciously, and unconsciously that many people suddenly see themselves at a point where the only expertise and knowledge they deem valuable come to them from the heart of Europe and North America. The colonized, slowly but surely, become at once the dagger and the wound to themselves. We come to such a place where we cooperate with the dagger against our own wounds. It takes a long time and reflection to realize that the wound (the colonized mind) will never stop bleeding so long as it is cooperating with the dagger (coloniality).”

ThinkingWisdomCulturePowerColonialismImperialismDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“For example, the colonized people have ‘regimes’ and ‘dictators’, whereas the West has ‘democracies’; the people in the ‘first world’ ‘tolerate’ cancer chemotherapy and ‘tolerate’ refugees or other religions and beliefs; if you go to work and settle in the West, you are an ‘immigrant’, but when Westerners come to plunder your country and get overpaid jobs (often despite mediocre qualifications), they are ‘expats’; and on goes the list of how we devalue ourselves and glorify our killers and plunderers without even realizing it simply through the language we use daily.”

ColonialismExploitationImperialismThird WorldDecolonizationHegemonyDecolonialityPlundering
Author:Louis Yako
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“As a scholar of Iraqi origin, the West not only reduces me into a token or an informant to write about Iraq, but even more damaging than that, I have to write about Iraq on their terms, if I am to be acknowledged or given the ‘honor’ of getting a place in their ‘prestigious’ institutions and publications. I understood this game early in my intellectual life and chose to opt out (to delink) to save my mind and to preserve my value and self-respect. I did not see a point in reaching ‘prestigious’ institutions while losing self-respect, knowing that I am not really writing, thinking, and doing knowledge conscientiously on my own terms.”

ColonialismExploitationImperialismDecolonizationAppropriationDecolonialityInformant
Author:Louis Yako
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“When we talk about any particular park, or city parks in general, what we are really talking about is how urban space could and should be allocated and used. Entwined within those conversations are presumptions about how human relationships with the other-than-human world can and should be mediated and controlled. The notion that parks are “good for people,” whether they are immense national parks far from cities or small urban parks set amidst dense residential, commercial and industrial activity, rests on highly questionable ideologies that tend to obscure far more than they illuminate. Claims to “diversity” habitually feign a commitment to commonality. When we talk about any particular park, or city parks in general, what we are really talking about is how urban space could and should be allocated and used. Entwined within those conversations are presumptions about how human relationships with the other-than-human world can and should be mediated and controlled. The notion that parks are “good for people,” whether they are immense national parks far from cities or small urban parks set amidst dense residential, commercial and industrial activity, rests on highly questionable ideologies that tend to obscure far more than they illuminate. Claims to “diversity” habitually feign a commitment to commonality without asking after the rationalities that structure the subjects of those commons: who is allowed in and under what conditions? without asking after the rationalities that structure the subjects of those commons: who is allowed in and under what conditions?”

DecolonizationUrban PlanningSettler ColonialismParks Planning
Book:On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land
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“Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for hat we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.”

StruggleCapitalismAngerFrustrationCapitalistColonialismIndigenousDecolonizationPerserveranceIndigenous Feminism
Book:A Small Place
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“A notable quote from this chapter could be: "By embracing the term 'bulan,' we are reclaiming our true identity as the descendants of the 'mother of mankind,' acknowledging the rich history and cultural heritage of the African continent, and letting go of the colonial labels and language imposed upon us.”

IdentityDecolonizationBulanAfrican DiasporaAfrican DescentCultural RespectAfrican HeritageAnti BulanismCultural ReclamationLanguage Redefinition
Author:Reuel-Azriel
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“Another painful irony is that, in exile, many refugees strive to stay alive, while watching an absurd show of fraud politicians, experts, pundits, academics, and journalists on the empire’s payroll fighting about them merely to serve their own careers and fortunes. Some promise to imprison refugees, some promise to build walls to stop their influx, some promise to deny them any human rights, others promise to publicly shame and attack them. Many ask refugees to ‘fuck off and go back to their countries,’ forgetting that their empire left nothing to go back to. Yet, conveniently, nobody promises to stop waging wars against refugees. Nobody promises to stop destroying and economically exploiting the places from which refugees escaped. They discuss everything except the actual solution to the refugee crisis, which is simple: stop waging wars of any sort against other people! Everyone loves hearing themselves talking about the refugee crisis, but almost never talking with refugees in meaningful and honest ways. If they talk with them, it is only to depict them as victims or villains in the unjust courts of the empire’s arrogance. They defend them or hate them, depending on the direction in which they wish to advance their fortunes and careers. It all depends on what they need to put on their CVs at any given time or in any given situation. The last piece of this absurd game is that the careers of every self-appointed mouthpiece for refugees are almost always dependent on paychecks paid by those who directly or indirectly run the military-industrial-complex, the biggest producer of refugees. This last piece is precisely what makes breaking the vicious cycle almost impossible. And such continues the game, all while refugees are sitting and watching in bitter silence.”

WarViolencePropagandaColonialismImperialismRefugeesDecolonizationMilitary Industrial ComplexMiddle East Conflict
Author:Louis Yako
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“Rather than considering the Iraqi regime solely responsible for these sanctions, many exiled and displaced academics believe that the UN bears the main ethical and human responsibility for the damage the embargo caused for Iraqi people and society. Many academics saw these sanctions as the UN’s method to obtain the consent of Iraqi people to the 2003 occupation through starving and weakening the people, as well as destroying Iraq’s strong institutions and infrastructure.”

WarViolenceMiddle EastColonialismImperialismSanctionsIraq WarDecolonizationEmbargo
Book:Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile
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“The Christian Church is the original religious persecutor of planet earth, British monarchy is the original terrorist organization of planet earth, Druncle Sam is the planet's longest running pandemic, Israeli state is the planet's youngest delinquent.”

ColonialismImperialismBritish EmpireZionismDecolonizationIndigenous RightsChristian MissionaryChristian NationalismReligious PersecutionEthnics Cleansing
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“9 Billion Shades of Brown (Black History Month Sonnet) Nothing is black and white in this world, everything is a shade of black, even white is just a pale shade of black, or we should say, brown - nothing is black, nothing is white, everything is a shade of brown, everyone is a shade of brown. Ethnicity is a commodity of fear, prejudice is a commodity of power - Mother Africa is the cradle of humanity, Global South is the cradle of civilization. Everything that white people have ever written consists of only 1 percent of the human condition, yet you confuse it as the entire human condition. There is no black history month, the entire human race calendar is black.”

CivilizationRacismHuman RaceAnthropologyEthnicityDecolonizationIndigenous PeopleBlack History MonthEurocentrismWhite Fragility
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“Outside the Gutters of West (Sonnet 2679) If you grew up with western media, you get brainwashed into asking, why are most terrorists muslim! But grow up and study actual history of the human race, then you start asking, why is every terrorist white! To look at Islam through western lens is like looking at the sky through a woodworm's eyes, the same is with Sindh, the same is with China, the same is with Africa, and Latin America. Objectivity is an impediment to understanding - if you yourself are not right smack in the middle of the experience, you have zero grasp of the truth, even if your head is full with facts and figures. But then again, this is not something a stubborn eurocentric mule can fathom, even to entertain the possibility that the prized imperial commodity of objectivity could be a fallacy, you have to have a decolonized mind.”

CivilizationColonialismDecolonizationIslamophobiaEurocentrismOrientalismWhitewashColonizersWestern Imperialism
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Most white scholars eventually turn out to be just another colonial twit, no matter how brilliant, how learned they are, because animal conditioning doesn't wear off with mere education of the intellect - your soul must be disinfected of colonial filth, which is not possible until you intrinsically embody the pain, indignity, and humiliations of the oppressed, subjected through generations.”

PhilosophyColonialismDecolonizationEurocentrismWhitewashDecolonizingWestern ImperialismDecolonialEurocentric Education
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“Happiness is not lame sex with diseased dickheads from the internet with no social or sexual charisma, whose entire personality is PureGym, and then finding yourself constantly dashing off to 56 Dean Street to make sure you haven't contracted chlamydia or worse. Happiness is not the School of Oriental and African Studies, or the Royal African Society, or any Africanists and Orientalists who schlep to cities like Kolkata and Kampala, and find endlessly inventive ways to weaponise their whiteness by explaining decolonisation to folks their own ancestors are still fucking over from beyond the grave.”

Happiness QuotesDecolonizationAntiracismSomali WritersQueer AfricanRadical JoyBlack QueerQueer Somali
Author:Diriye Osman
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“Great works of literature from other places are not only censored by banning them, but even more so by silencing them, by refusing to translate them in the first place. Marginalization is the worst form of censorship and intellectual assassination. Likewise, choosing what gets translated into a certain language and what gets marginalized is a form of shaping and constructing the historical memory of a place according to whims of those who own the money and means of knowledge production.”

KnowledgeColonialismTranslationDecolonizationMarginalizationWorld LiteratureKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“Racists, then, are indoctrinated citizens who think they are entitled and superior to all others, and therefore capable of committing racism and violence against them. I contend that indoctrinated individuals are prisoners to the walls built around them that keep them indoctrinated. Therefore, instead of seeing them as ‘enemies’, we need to apply the same methods of reform some thinkers have suggested to the prison system in that rather than being purely punitive, prisons should aspire to rehabilitate prisoners in such ways that they may return to society with better attitude, understanding, and healthier minds and bodies (all things lacking in racist people, if you think about it deeply). Even more important is to build a society in such a way that there would be little need to have prison systems in the first place.”

JusticeRacismEqualityRacism In AmericaIndoctrinationDecolonizationSubjugationPrison SystemRacism In The WestRacist People
Author:Louis Yako
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“Arabs & Garbage" Strange is the Arab story with garbage! Who told them who taught them to toss garbage randomly wherever and however they please? When will the Arabs understand that placing garbage in its right place will solve half of their environmental and societal problems? And the other half of their problems will be solved, too, as soon as they stop tossing out their human gems forcing out their most talented and qualified human capital to serve foreigners in foreign lands? When will the Arabs stop getting rid of their best minds, replacing them with foreign garbage they glorify simply because the foreign individuals have white skin and blue eyes and claim to possess skills and expertise the Arabs can’t survive without… When will the Arabs understand that placing garbage in its right place -be it the garbage that govern their countries or the foreign garbage they import – will solve all their problems? [Original poem published in Arabic on February 20, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

EnvironmentRacismClimate ChangeImmigrationColonialismExileDecolonizationInferiority ComplexDecolonialityGarbage Disposal
Author:Louis Yako
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