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Abstract

This essay argues that the racial identities assigned to Ethiopia in the late 19th century and early 20th century were a direct result of the sexualized racial identities that were due to racist philosophies of colonialism. Teshale Tibebu’s and Harold Marcus’s essays on the national identity of Ethiopia and Lewis Gordon’s philosophical views of the sexual nature of racial identities serve a foundation for the rationale behind Ethiopia’s identity redefinition. Ethiopia, defeating Italy at Adwa, could not be seen as Black by many in the global community. Key contributions of this essay are how Ethiopians themselves defined their own nation and a discussion of how this identity was redefined in the discourse surrounding the global response to Italy’s occupation in 1936. This new characterization allows us to move beyond traditional motivations of colonization and examine the racialized and gendered bodies of the colonized and colonizers in the context of modern Ethiopia.

Keywords

race Ethiopia colonialism gender pan-Africanism

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From White Males to Black Females

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