Ms Alice Walker's book, the color purple portrays many social issues that existed in the past and are
still present in the twenty first century. In the Color Purple the social psychology of the Black people
relate to the Hamitic Theory, by how people influence our thoughts, feelings and actions which greatly
impacts the thoughts of inferiority, lack of achievement and relationships.
I Thoughts of Inferiority, are considered Proponents of ethnology a pseudoscience popular in the
nineteenth century, claimed that races of people were, in-fact separate human species. Some southern
pro-slavery advocates used the notion of ethnology to support the belief that as a separate species
individuals of African descent were an inferior race according to Finkleman (2006).
A. The Hamitic Theory, an abstract in the journal of American history states, “ The Anthro-
pological and historical literature dealing with Africa, abounds with references to a people called,
“ Hamites. “ Hamite as used in this writing, illustrates an African population supposedly distinguished
by its race Caucasian – and its language family, from the Negro inhabitants of the rest of Africa below
the Sahara. There exist a widely held belief in the Western world that everything of value ever found in
Africa was brought there by these Hamites, a people inherently superior to the native population. This
belief, often referred to as the Hametic Hypothesis, is a convenient explanation for all the signs of
civilization found in Black Africa. It was these Caucasoid, we read who taught the Negro how to man-
ufacture Iron and who were so politically sophisticated that they organized and conquered territories into highly complex states with themselves as ruling elites. This Hypothesis was preceded by another
elaborate Hametic theory. The earlier theory, which gained currency in the sixteenth century, was the 2
Hamites were black savages, natural slaves - and Negroes. This identification of the Hamite with the
Negro, a view which persisted through out the eighteenth century served as a rationale for slavery using
the Biblical interpretation in support of it's tenant. The image of the Negro changed, deteriorated in
direct proportion to the growth of the importance of slavery, and it became imperative for the white
man to exclude the negro from the brother-hood of races. Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798
became the historical catalyst that provided the Western world with the impetus to turn the Hamite
into a Caucasian. The Hamitic concept had as its function the portrayal of the Negro as an inherently
inferior being and to rationalize his exploitation. In the final analysis it was possible because the pre-
vailing intellectual viewpoints of the times, according to (Saunders). In the Color Purple there may not
be a physical slavery but there is a mental slavery that resides and it is possible because of the prevail-
ing intellectual viewpoints of it's times. No one should have the right to beat another person down the
way the sheriff beat Sophia down.
B. Slavery in my opinion is the venue in which the white man uses social psychology to try and
influence the African American into an inferior frame of mind. In fact the Slave trade era is when the
Western Scholars attitude began to turn for the worst. Myths and stereotypes began to appear. European
Slave traders, geographers and explores described the Africans as
