The Importance of Intellectual Detachment From American Society

In Swahili, the words for black and white were never used to distinguish people of African descent from people of European descent. If they used Muayupi and Muayu-see, which are black and white in Swahili,. They were using them the same way we might speak of someone as blonde or brunette as light complexion but it also is just a color. When they were actually trying to distinguish white from black, the way Americans might do it, they had words that refer to national origin. So an African was a Mafrika, a person of European extraction, was a Mzungu, which could also be an American.