Quinoa Achebe

"But it was a profitable business, and so those who were engaged in it began to defend it -- a lobby of people supporting it, justifying it, and excusing it. It was difficult to excuse and justify, and so the steps that were taken to justify it were rather extreme. You had people saying, for instance, that these people weren't really human, they're not like us. Or, that the slave trade was in fact a good thing for them, because the alternative to it was more brutal by far.”

These words from Chinua Achebe really spoke to me while I was reading his interview this week. It is clear, not only through history but in daily life, that people don’t like to be wrong. I don’t. As humans, we like to think that our arguments for what we believe or do could pin the contradictory arguments down and beat them until they’re begging for mercy, but sometimes those counter arguments reverse the pin, and ours are being beaten, yet still the ones yelling “Say mercy!” at their opponents. Seeing an older brother doing this would make him look stupid from an outside standpoint, as it looks when the Europeans mentioned above attempt to justify their historically detrimental actions. They are so used to having their way and being right, like an older brother, that when they are wrong, they don’t realize it in the ignorant mindset they have.

This mindset that we spoke about in class – a one-way (our way) mentality – causes them to think that any way which is not their own is wrong or less in value. The whole idea of slave trade being better than their previous way of life mentioned in the quote brings to mind a hypothetical situation where person A is sitting on a chair and person B on the ground (both comfortable), but the A is stuck believing that they can improve the other’s life, so tells B to be A’s footrest.

This example seems ridiculous, but I guess that’s where personal perspective comes into things: how you see things. I see these two situations alike.