"Wages paid to workers in Europe and North America were much higher than wages paid to African workers in comparable categories. The Nigerian coal miner at Enugu earned one shilling per day for working underground and nine pence per day for jobs on the surface. Such a miserable wage would be beyond the comprehension of a Scottish or German coal miner, who could virtually earn in an hour what the Enugu miner was paid for a six-day week....

When discrepancies such as the above were pointed out during the colonial period and subsequently, those who justified colonialism were quick to reply that the standard and cost of living were higher in capitalist countries. The fact is that the higher standard was made possible by the exploitation of colonies, and there was no justification for keeping African living standards so depressed in an age where a higher standard was possible because of the work output of Africans themselves."

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

"A number of Africans served as colonial soldiers with pride because they mistakenly hoped that the army would be an avenue for displaying the courage and dignity of Africans, and, perhaps, in the process, even earning the freedom of the continent, by making Europeans pleased and grateful. That hope was without foundation from the outset, because the colonialists were viciously using African soldiers as pawns to preserve colonialism and capitalism in general."

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

i just watched society of the snow. i did love it & at the risk of sounding like a ridiculous person i love how much weight was given to their faith. i’m so used to seeing religion either ridiculed as superstition or used as a club against marginalized people (or both) & it was rly so beautiful how their faith was so integral to the movie. especially since it was such a big part of the real story. i can’t believe they didn’t put this in the movie but apparently one of the ways they convinced the more reluctant among them to eat their dead friends was to say it was just like receiving communion that it was the body of christ. I almost cried man that’s so beautiful. i went in blind so i was expecting a more typical hollywood “they went crazy got violent and ate each other” type of movie but it so was not at all. also the guy who played numa kinda looked like a handsome adam driver so that was nice

i had this little mental project where i improve on my city's transit system in my head whenever i see a map of it but it occurred to me a few days ago that if everything i had planned out was actually built the rent would get so high so fast me & my entire family would be priced out to the next state immediately and now i cant even enjoy my fake train in my head

"The question as to who, and what, is responsible for African underdevelopment can be answered at two levels. First, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Second, one has to deal with those who manipulate the system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said system. The capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively extended their exploitation from inside Europe to cover the whole of Africa.

In recent times, they were joined, and to some extent replaced, by capitalists from the United States; and for many years now even the workers of those metropolitan countries have benefited from the exploitation and underdevelopment of Africa. None of these remarks are intended to remove the ultimate responsibility for development from the shoulders of Africans. Not only are there African accomplices inside the imperialist system, but every African has a responsibility to understand the system and work for its overthrow."

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa