Colonial Mindset Quotes

Just because there’s no one living on a planet does not mean it’s yours for the taking. Do you not see how dangerous that mindset is? Do you not think that treating the galaxy as if it is something to be endlessly used will always, always end in tragedy? You think you’ve broken the cycle. You haven’t. You’re in a less violent period of the exact same cycle, and you don’t see it. And the line of what you find to be justifiable cause is going to keep slipping and slipping until you end up right back where you started. You haven’t fixed anything. You put a stamp and a permit and a shiny coat of paint on an idea that has been fundamentally damaged from day one. You engaged in bloody theft and you called it progress, and no matter how much better you think you’ve made things, no matter how good your intentions are, that will always be the root of the GC. You cannot divorce any of what you do from that. Ever.

When we hear radical stories of long-distance dispersal, it is all too easy to place a human mindset onto the events, and it is worth spending a moment to address this. There is a temptation to describe these rodents and monkeys as hopeful adventurers, with a narrative of pioneering spirit and survival against the odds in an unknown and inhospitable land, an inappropriate framing that owes much to the era of colonialism. Where an animal or plant from one part of the world appears in another, some might use the language of invasion, of a native ecosystem despoiled and rendered lesser by newcomers. Frequently, this is an appeal to nostalgia, to the landscape known in childhood, contrasted with the altered, often depleted world of today. It brings with it an implication that what was was right and what is is wrong.

The imperialist found it useful to incorporate the credible and seemingly unimpeachable wisdom of science to create a racial classification to be used in the appropriation and organization of lesser cultures. The works of Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Buffon, and Georges Cuvier, organized races in terms of a civilized us and a paradigmatic other. The other was uncivilized, barbaric, and wholly lower than the advanced races of Europe. This paradigm of imaginatively constructing a world predicated upon race was grounded in science, and expressed as philosophical axioms by John Locke and David Hume, offered compelling justification that Europe always ought to rule non-Europeans. This doctrine of cultural superiority had a direct bearing on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine. A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it, accordingly, he produced useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly or it was left to rot. This was imperialism as theory and colonialism was the practice of changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of Europe. It was this epistemic framework that shaped and informed Zionist attitudes towards the Arab Palestinian natives. This is the intellectual background that Zionism emerged from. Zionism saw Palestine through the same prism as the European did, as an empty territory paradoxically filled with ignoble or, better yet, dispensable natives. It allied itself, as Chaim Weizmann said, with the imperial powers in carrying out its plans for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The so-called natives did not take well to the idea of Jewish colonizers in Palestine. As the Zionist historians, Yehoshua Porath and Neville Mandel, have empirically shown, the ideas of Jewish colonizers in Palestine, this was well before World War I, were always met with resistance, not because the natives thought Jews were evil, but because most natives do not take kindly to having their territory settled by foreigners. Zionism not only accepted the unflattering and generic concepts of European culture, it also banked on the fact that Palestine was actually populated not by an advanced civilization, but by a backward people, over which it ought to be dominated. Zionism, therefore, developed with a unique consciousness of itself, but with little or nothing left over for the unfortunate natives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if Palestine had been occupied by one of the well-established industrialized nations that ruled the world, then the problem of displacing German, French, or English inhabitants and introducing a new, nationally coherent element into the middle of their homeland would have been in the forefront of the consciousness of even the most ignorant and destitute Zionists. In short, all the constitutive energies of Zionism were premised on the excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of native people in Palestine; institutions were built deliberately shutting out the natives, laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure the natives would remain in their non-place, Jews in theirs, and so on. It is no wonder that today the one issue that electrifies Israel as a society is the problem of the Palestinians, whose negation is the consistent thread running through Zionism. And it is this perhaps unfortunate aspect of Zionism that ties it ineluctably to imperialism- at least so far as the Palestinian is concerned. In conclusion, I cannot affirm that Zionism is colonialism, but I can tell you the process by which Zionism flourished; the dialectic under which it became a reality was heavily influenced by the imperialist mindset of Europe. Thank you. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.

Recognizing where you're at before you claim poverty, because that mindset keeps this system churning, and it involves recognizing your privilege and whether you are 'poor' instead of 'broke

You can take the colony away from the colonizer, but don’t even try to take away his mindset.

The Canadian government’s point of view was set in the imperial/colonial era. Our dominant mythologies were shaped in the same era. All our governments – federal and provincial – must simply let go of their paternalistic mindset. Aboriginals are not wards of the state. They don’t need charity. They want the power that our own history says is theirs by right. And that power contains economic solutions. What this means is that our governments should stop wasting our money fighting to maintain systems of injustice. What they need to do is digest reality and embrace reconciliation, which, as Taiaiake Alfred says, begins with restitution. This is more than good intentions. It involves a shift in power and in economic wealth. That shift in economic wealth is the solution to Aboriginal poverty.

Why not simply embrace the reality of the Aboriginal comeback? Why not accept that these court victories contain the elements for resolving the problem of Aboriginal poverty by creating the basis for Aboriginal power, which is in part economic power? We are dealing with a point-of-view problem. The Canadian government’s point of view was set in the imperial/colonial era. Our dominant mythologies were shaped in the same era. All our governments – federal and provincial – must simply let go of their paternalistic mindset. Aboriginals are not wards of the state. They don’t need charity. They want the power that our own history says is theirs by right. And

This land is a colony treated like a colony and acted upon like a colony; unless the colonial mindset changes, nothing will change. It will further deepen the exploitation, hatred and marginalisation.

On 2 November 1917, five weeks before Allenby walked through the Jaffa Gate, the government in London had issued a document that was to have a fateful and lasting impact on the Holy Land, the Middle East and the world. The foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, wrote to Lord Rothschild, representing the World Zionist Organization, to inform him that: His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The sixty-seven typewritten words of the Balfour Declaration combined considerations of imperial planning, wartime propaganda, biblical resonances and a colonial mindset, as well as evident sympathy for the Zionist idea. With them, as the writer Arthur Koestler was to quip memorably – neatly encapsulating the attendant and continuing controversy – ‘one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third’.8 Lloyd George highlighted sympathy for the Jews as his principal motivation. But the decisive calculations were political, primarily the wish to outsmart the French in post-war arrangements in the Levant9 and the impulse to use Palestine’s strategic location – its ‘fatal geography’ – to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India.10 Other judgements have placed greater emphasis on the need to mobilize Jewish public opinion behind the then flagging Allied war effort. As Balfour told the war cabinet at its final discussion of the issue on 31 October: ‘If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal [Zionism], we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and in America.’11 Historians have spent decades debating the connections and contradictions between Balfour’s public pledge to the Zionists, the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement between Britain, France and Russia about post-war spheres of influence in the Middle East, and pledges about Arab independence made by the British in 1915 to encourage Sharif Hussein of Mecca to launch his ‘revolt in the desert’ against the Turks. The truth, buried in imprecise definitions, misunderstandings and duplicity, remains elusive.

A western colonial mind-set says: "Westerners are rational and scientific while Asians are irrational and superstitious. Therefore, Europeans must rule Asia for tis own good" A liberal mind sets says: " All humans have the capacity to be rational and scientific, but individuals will vary widely. Therefore, all humans must have all opportunities and freedoms." A postmodern mind-set says: " The West has constructed the idea that rationality and science are good in order to perpetuate its own power and marginalize nonrational, nonscientific forms of knowledge production from elsewhere". An applied postmodern mind-set says: " The West has constructed the idea that rationality and science are good in order to perpetuate its own power and marginalize nonrational, nonscientific forms of knowledge production from elsewhere. Therefore we must now devalue white, Western ways of knowing for belonging to white Westerners and promote Eastern ones (in order to equalise the power imbalance)".

...postmodern focus has consequences. Theirs is not an investigation of the material realities affecting countries and people that were previously under colonial power and the aftermath of that but an analysis of attitudes, beliefs, speech, and mind-sets, which are sacralised or problematized.

Traversing borders is a threat – and in the colonial mindset, the borders of class and nationality are at one with the borders of gender. Binary gender is a colonial and capitalist project, what feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa called the ‘absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other’.

The evil that let three million people starve in the Bengal Famine wasn’t that different from the evil that was with us still. It was the same evil that had led those soldiers to lie about the people they had murdered in Khataba. That evil was the inability to recognize the humanity in experiences that were not your own, in experiences that seemed alien. So, in a way, Kaval had been right. She’d asked me why it mattered what Churchill had done almost a century ago. By itself, it didn’t. Whether Churchill was a hero or a monster was not a problem we really needed to face. The problem we had to face was that the story that allowed Churchill to be monstrous—the colonial mind-set, the mind-set of supremacy based on race and nationality—was still alive. This was not about Churchill the man. This was about Churchill the legacy.

A western colonial mind-set says: "Westerners are rational and scientific while Asians are irrtional and superstitious. Therefore,Europeans must rule Asia for tis own good" A liberal mind sets says: " All humans have the capacity to be rational and scientific, but individuals will vary widely. Therefore, all humans must have all opportunities and freedoms." A postmodern mind-set says: " The West has constructed the idea that rationality and science are good in order to perpetuate its own power and marginalize nonrational, nonscientific forms of knowledge production from elsewhere".

Universal Zulu Nation, an international hip-hop awareness initiative. “We had the saying: ‘This is not a gang. We are family. Do not start trouble, let trouble come to you, and then fight like hell.” 70 Taylor considered the Zulu Nation to be a mindset and a community across dimensions, connecting inner-city Black youth back to the motherland and heritage through a wider musically accessed religious theodicy.71 The name “Zulu” was lifted from the eponymous 1964 film about the 1879 war between the British colonial army and the South African Zulu Kingdom, and applied to a street gang called the Organization (later renamed the Black Spades).72 Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine created empty spaces, and these spaces had to be filled by Jews from anywhere they could be found, including Jews from the Middle East, even those who had no desire whatsoever to relocate to Israel. The same colonial institutions that displaced the Palestinians were tasked with absorbing the Jewish migrants from the Arab lands. And the same arrogant, Eurocentric, Orientalist mindset greeted the Jewish newcomers from the East.

The deep scars of inherited trauma have left a lasting impact on leadership and governance in post-colonial Africa. Centuries of subjugation instilled a shared sense of powerlessness—a mindset reinforced by exploitative economic policies, rigid social hierarchies, and chronic political instability. Colonization wasn’t just a seizure of land or resources; it was a profound assault on identity, culture, and self-esteem. When independence arrived, it didn’t bring a clean mental slate. Instead, many African nations inherited political systems designed to control rather than uplift, systems that perpetuated a reflection of the colonial framework rather than breaking free from it.

One of the most significant impacts of colonialism on collective mindsets came from the dismantling of indigenous governance systems and the imposition of foreign frameworks. Traditional leadership models—grounded in principles like consensus-building, community involvement, and accountability—were replaced with hierarchical, centralized systems that often alienated local populations. This disruption not only weakened local governance but also fostered a pervasive belief that leadership and authority were external, distant forces, rather than responsibilities that individuals within the community could naturally assume.