Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 10: The Colonial Hangover

In Chapter 10 of the series, Chisom turns to coloniality, the empire that stayed behind after the empire left, the quietest form of the machine and the one that leaves no graves because it no longer needs them. Colonialism was the occupation, the flag and the date it ended. Coloniality is what did not end, the ranking installed in the mind and left running, and the chapter’s line is that the wrong is never the contact but the ranking bolted to it. It walks that ranking through six rooms, the language you think in, the god you answer to, the face in the mirror, what counts as knowledge, the map with Europe at the top, and the shape of what you want, crediting Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Aníbal Quijano, and it refuses to let the word soften, because the ranking was installed by force, the sediment the violence left once it had finished with the body, which is why it still carries the word white terrorism. It proves the intent was written down, by Verwoerd building Bantu Education in 1953 and Macaulay in 1835, names the gendered ranking through Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, and closes on the smallest freedom in this episode, that seeing coloniality does not delete it but converts the reflex from a master into a choice, with Chisom admitting it is still in her, and that she expects to be digging it out for the rest of her life.