Published in 1987, Dr. Robert Staples’s The Urban Plantation, correctly analyzes the position of Africans in the settler colony of the United States as that of an internal/domestic colony. While this theoretical model of analyzing the plight of Africans in United States as an internal/domestic colony is not new—one only has to research the Black Panther Party for a similar analysis—Dr. Staples brought over twenty years of intensive research on the subject leading up to this publication.
Dr. Staples defines the urban plantation as an extension and refinement of antebellum plantation life. In this context, he examines the Pan-Africanist model (see chapter “Pan Africanism As Ideology and Utopia”) and discusses his own emerging Theory of the Fourth World (see chapter “Towards a Theory of the Fourth World”). In the former chapter, Dr. Staples fittingly disabuses the reader of the patently false notion that Africans in the United States do not have a culture, by explaining the cultural connections between Africans in the United States and Africans on the continent, and the idiosyncratic differences based on geographical location. In the latter chapter, Dr Staples apprises the reader of invaluable information about the Indigenous people of Oceania and the numerous depredations endured by them at the hands of European settlers.
Ultimately, what makes the urban plantation so effective and efficient in the subjugation of Africans in the United States—and in Africa—is its ability to make superficial changes, while foundationally remaining the same—via neocolonialism. Neocolonialism’s effectiveness is predicated on the effective deracination and the European, settler population’s hegemonic cultural imposition on Africans in the United States. In the chapter “Colonialism and the Crisis of the Black Family,” he details the priming of Africans in United States to internalize European cultural values and the detrimental effects this has on Africans in the United States. On page 161 he states the following:
In high income black families, the men complain of the financial demands placed upon them by their wives, demands which colonial society does not allow them to meet. The women protest what they call the insensitivity and sexual infidelity of their husbands. A basic problem with these high status couples is their acceptance of colonial values relating to roles and performance in marriage. A couple of black psychologists claim that blacks who try to emulate whites have the most problems whereas blacks just living and making do with what they have are the most adjusted.
He insightfully concludes with the following on page 168:
In sum, the black family is dialectically linked to the functioning of internal colonialism. The relationship between changes in the economic order and black family functioning are quite clear. What is not understood is that culture is a two-edged sword: It can act as a mechanism, for survival or as an apparatus of control. To the extent that blacks forsake the family and the role they must play in it, the greater their vulnerability to the destructive forces of racial colonialism. Diffused groups of people who are detached from their cultural roots are powerless to resist the forces of oppression that they must eventually encounter in a society which is based on race and class exploitation. The family represents the basic collectivization of the black community and contains within it the potential for black survival in a world composed of the colonizers and the colonized.
From this elucidation of how cultural hegemony is used to destroy Africans in the United States, it’s easy to see how the maintenance of the urban plantation is kept upon a solid foundation. Here is an example from Dr. Staples’s chapter titled “Blacks in Politics: A Case Study in Neo-Colonialism”:
However, a number of black politicians have been nothing but neo-colonial pawns, whose primary allegiances have been to white institutions and values. Few of these black politicians have developed or implemented a single new program or policy of any benefit to urban blacks. Moreover, black mayors have carried out cutbacks in social services, opposed school desegregation, participated in strike-breaking attacks on government employees, ordered police attacks on black communities, tolerated police brutality, and done little about high rates of black unemployment…On a national level, black political strategy has been equally ineffective. Black leaders and organizations have encouraged the traditional black loyalty to the Democratic Party. On occasion, blacks have subordinated demonstrations and protests to their greater goal of electing Democrats to office. Most of the mainstream black organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League joined in the “elect Democrats” strategy. Meanwhile, both the Republican and Democratic candidates are owned and controlled by the wealthy banks and corporations who profit from the exploitation and oppression of blacks (pg. 211–212).
In conclusion, at the end of the day, Dr. Robert Staple’s The Urban Plantation is an indispensable tool for conscientization. Check it out today!
