Latin American view on Du Bois reading

    Throughout the reading Of the Culture of White Folk, Du Bois lays out many reasons for his distaste for International Relations, as well as his critique of European and white society as a whole. While many scholars during the time, especially those from America and countries throughout Europe would have disagreed with the view of international relations, many Latin American countries and scholars would have agreed with Du Bois in his claims that the “international relations” employed by the white man during this time was not only catastrophic to countries and cultures at the time but continues to have a lasting effect on these countries. 

The first major claim that Du Bois makes in his article is that Christianity as a religion is a major failure, which can be seen when the article states, “A nation's religion is its life and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure. Nor would we be unfair in this criticism: We know that we too have failed as you have, and have rejected many a Buddha even as you have denied Christ. But we acknowledge our human frailty while you, claiming super-humanity, scoff endlessly at our shortcomings” (Du Bois 434). This quote from Du Bois begins to explain the arrogance of the white culture, especially when it comes to religion. Throughout imperialism, the Europeans believed that it was their duty as “a more advanced culture” to push their views of life onto others. Europeans did not only do this in Africa but also in Latin America. When the Europeans “discovered'' Latin America, they began sending more people over to explore the culture. Throughout the years, the European countries chopped up the Latin American lands into territories and began putting systems in place to convert the indigenous people. Even though the Latin American people had their own religion, the colonizers forced them to convert and learn about Christianity, showing their arrogance in Latin America much like how they did in Africa. 

Throughout the rest of the Du Bois article, he continues to go on about the culture of white people, how the Europeans resorted to violence to uphold their cultures and religions, and the cost of this to other people around the world. During the time period of World War 1, European countries were all in desperate need of money and resources to aid their cause in the war effort. In order to do this, they began extracting resources from the places they controlled for free labor in the form of slavery. The integration of slavery into these environments was devastating in both the lands of Africa and Latin America. In Africa, slavery in Congo and other areas was so brutal that many people we dying daily from injuries and fatigue, whereas in Latin America, slavery started a social hierarchy that has plagued countries to this day. Even now, Latin American countries are known to be very racist because of the use of racism and the ideas of white people. For example, Chile is one of the more openly racist countries in the world because of the hierarchies slavery created. With the white people on top of this hierarchy, and the indigenous people in the middle, descendants from Africa are still segregated and disadvantaged in the country today. Furthermore, Brazil was one of the last places to finally abolish slavery, a system that was put in place because of the greed of the Europeans. Overall, the destruction and exploitation of Latin America through “international relations” would cause many Latin American scholars to agree with the ideas that Du Bois puts forth in his article because they apply to many of the same issues the Latin American countries faced.