Aoki Seminar Fall 2019: Kassahun Gebremariam "A Critique of the Myths and Paradigms Underpinning White Privilege"_11/12/2019

A Critique of the Myths and Paradigms Underpinning White Privilege: A Black African's Perspectives on the Onto-Epistemological and Political Ideologies of Racial Capitalism in the United States Kassahun Gebremariam `20 The lecture will focus on an overview of the historiographical and epistemological fallacies that were utilized to justify European colonialism, slavery and white supremacy both in the US and the world at large. I will discuss the basic features, and underlying fallacies, of the myths and paradigms formulated by the oppressor European White mind to convince itself, and the oppressed, of the legitimacy of oppressive ideologies. There will be a general description of how these fallacies are reflected in the legal system. I will briefly touch upon the failure of the civil rights movement and the establishment's apparently "emancipatory" response to it. Finally, I will raise some of the salient features of my paper that won the Inaugural Angela Harris Prize for Critical Race Scholarship.