Dear Editor,

It is true, as Mr. Dev says, in his article on “Mental Slavery,” (KN. Feb 25th) that hegemonic control established by the Europeans over Indians and Africans was facilitated by a brainwashing process “to which we all still bow,” to use his words in the Feb 18th article on “Addressing Fears.” But the mental enslavement concept of Dr. Kimani Nehusi depicts a difference in degree in hegemonic control that does explain “a constant by a variable,” contrary to Mr. Dev’s earlier observation.

Dr. Nehusi writes: “The psychological enslavement of Africans was achieved mainly through cultural genocide and the falsification of history in processes in which fundamentally racist values were established, perpetuated and maintained in every institution of western society and their colonies: church, school, police, media, etc.

“Today western institutions are still fundamentally racist, history is still ethnically cleansed of important Africans and African contributions to humanity