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The World and Africa” by W.E.B Du Bois
The Eurocentric anthropological grouping titled “African Traditional Religion” is a misnomer, but some acknowlege this while still drawing arguments from it. It assumes a unitary portrait of the religions of African people, as well as denying that "world religions" can form "traditions" in African lives; especially when Islam and Christianity in Africa pre-date many modern ATRs.
Just as Europe launched forward to a new civilization of beauty, a new freedom of thought and religious belief, a new demand by labor to choose their work and enjoy its fruit, uncurbed greed rose to seize and monopolize the uncounted treasure of the fruit of labor. Labor was degraded, humanity was despised; the theory of “race” arose. There came a new doctrine of universal labor: mankind was of two sorts—the superior and the inferior; the inferior toiled for the superior were the real men, the inferior half men of less. Among the white lords of creation there were “lower class” resembling the inferior darker folk. In line with this conviction, the Christian Church, and protestant, at first damned the heathen blacks with the “curse of canaan,”then held out hope of freedom through “conversion,” and finally acquiesced in a permanent statues of human slavery. Luxury and plenty for the few and poverty for the many was looked upon as inevitable in the course of nature. In addition to this, it went without saying that the white people of Europe had a right to live upon the labor and poverty of the colored people of the world.