The Rise and Fall of Internal Colonialism as a Theory of Race in Black Political Movements and Academia
Abstract
Throughout black/African history in the United States, various competitive ideas have emerged over time to take on the arduous task of theorizing race. From W.E.B. Du Bois’s famed assertion of the issue of race being one of racial discrimination--- summed up aptly as the“color line”--- to Malcolm X’s gradual recognition of the problem as one of Euro-American imperialism, to others, there has been no shortage of race theories. However, the ascension of contemporary theories of race has belied this diversity, obscuring the roles of other paradigms in shaping a mass consciousness of race, such as internal colonialism. This thesis applies a historical lens to the rise of colonial comparison and the internal colonial thesis in the US--- which argued a colonial status existed for black people residing in the US--- in Black political movements as well as in the American academy, investigating the conditions that nurtured its emergence and gradual decline as a prominent view of race, class, and society.
