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The African Redefined: The Problems of Collective Black Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

Ladun Anise
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Extract

In 1960, Wellesley College invited eminent scholars (Africanists!) and diplomats to discuss the question: “Does Africa Exist?” The symposium was organized to resolve “Whether or not Africa really exists as any sort of political, economic, cultural, or other concept.“ The challenge facing the experts was to determine whether Africa constitutes an entity, whether it has a real ethnic, geographical, economic, cultural, or political identity. Fortunately, most of the speakers agreed with the late Ralph Bunche that “There is an Africa seen as a continent, as a physical entity which takes concrete political and economic shape.“ That Africa, Bunche argued, is exploding onto the international political scene with an increasingly militant and demonstrable renaissance in terms of heightened and unified aspirations for true selfdetermination, human rights, rapid economic transformation, and the assertion of a collective dignity and unity for all peoples of African descent.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , Winter 1974 , pp. 26 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1974 

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References

1 1 Wellesley College, Symposium on Africa,Wellesley, MA, 16-17 February 1960.

2 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

3 3 See, for example, Abner Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 1-28,183-214. This conceptual and perceptual view of Africa has been reinforced generally by the existing body of literature in comparative politics, anthropology, and sociology.

4 Symposium on Africa,pp. 27-29.

5 These fluctuating alliances in the attempt to define African unity and identity have been discussed more fully in Anise, “Pan- Africanism as an Ideology of African Unity” (unpub. master's thesis, 11 Syracuse U., 1969), pp. 101-158.

6 This problem and its cluster of social, cultural, religious, historical, and psychological dimensions have been termed “Disjointed Historicity,” discussed fully in ibid., pp. 57-67. Frantz Fanon provides a comprehensive psychoanalytic explanation of this problem in Black Skin, White Mask(New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967). See also J. Jahn, Muntu: The New African Culture(New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961).

7 See Anise, “The African Redefined,” Pan-African Journal,vol. 6, no. 4, December 1973. liberty is seldom compatible with collective conformity. Contemporary Black American revolutionary rhetoric is little inclined to recognize other claims or individual differences, nor does it easily accept that African interests differ from those of Black Americans. Those who employ such faulty rhetoric end by believing in it themselves. To insist on the same solutions for dissimilar problems is to compound existing crises. This is most unfortunate, especially because the collective goals of Black Americans are sometimes defined either by a handful of self-appointed revolutionary leaders or by black leaders who have been foisted on the black c o m m u n i t y by the white establishments of business, government, media, and philanthropy. It is urged that greater attention be paid to Black African interests-which will continue to be distinct from those of other black peoples in the diaspora. Man, after all, is a product of society, and any given society is a product of the peculiar processes of socialization and the collective force of its time-tested value system. The collective identity of black people everywhere can continue to serve as a basis for mutual cooperation and respect for their integrity and self-determination only if the inherent dilemmas are clearly understood. The new definition of the African creates new dilemmas even as it solves some ancient ones.

8 Part of the confusion comes from the search for Black American identity itself. Blacks have moved from “Coloreds” to “Negroes,” from “Negroes” to “Afro-Americans,” “African-Americans” to “Black Americans,” and now, finally, to “Africans.” The transition from one to the other is charged with enormous emotionalism and confusion.

9 It has become fashionable for a number of Black American men to plait their hair the way only African women plait their hair in Mother Africal This may well be a form of the Black American contribution to traditional African culture.

10 Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1963), pp. xii-xiv, 49.

11 A.A.I, is African-American Institute; E.I.L. is Experiment in International Living; A.I.D. is Agency for International Development; A.S.P.A.U. is African Scholarship Program of American Universities; S.A.S.P.A.U. is Southern African Scholarship Program of American Universities—is designed for refugee students from South Africa, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique; A.F.G.R.A.D. is African Graduate Fellowship Program; and I.I.E. is Institute of International Education.

12 This should not startle anyone. Most of the African students brought to the U.S. in these scholarship programs are generally toplevel students with unusually high academic performance. It is normal that they should be highly motivated, since they have come to the U.S. to take advantage of the advanced educational opportunities they hope to take back to their countries. scholarship programs are generally toplevel students with unusually high academic performance. It is normal that they should be highly motivated, since they have come to the U.S. to take advantage of the advanced educational opportunities they hope to take back to their countries.