“Against the minority of the African elite with enough intelligence and initiative to seek re-Africanization, the barriers are formidable. Among the strongest intellectual barriers is the Manichaean stigmatization of African values. It is impossible for anyone, African or foreigner, to co-operate harmoniously with Africans if that person has been trained to think of Africans as primitive, savage, barbarous or what have you— in other words, if culturally the person is a Westerner. The primitive-civilized mind-trap works in two ways against re- Africanization. First there is the ideological conviction, nurtured in ignorance, that African values are inferior to Western values. Secondly, Africans are materially poor compared to Westerners. Now, whatever else a Western education may or may not teach, it does not teach habits of solidarity with the poor. In plain words, the Western educational experience is tacitly structured to make the elite African incapable of democratic co-operation in any undertaking involving poor people. The former is trained to be a boss or a so-called leader— he makes a lousy comrade and one of the reasons is that he also sees poverty as primitive.”

-Ayi Kwei Armah, Masks and Marx