Improvised Africans: The
Myth and Meaning of Africa
in Nineteenth Century African America Thought
by
Corey D.B. Walker
A Review Essay of Tunde Adeleke.
UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth- Century Black Nationalists and the
Civilizing Mission. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.
xv + 192.
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly
upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks
and elms.
And the sooty details of the scene rose thrusting themselves
between the world and me
-- Richard Wright, “Between the World and Me,” (1968)
The poetic genius of Richard Wright captures with sublime eloquence
the tragicomic plight of the African American existential struggle.
Wright’s supreme gift in articulating the African American dialectical
struggle to attain self-conscious personhood while traversing a
landscape littered with the remnants of chattel slavery and darkened by
the shadow of prejudice and injustice echoes deeply in the natural
imagery of “Between the World and Me.” The continual struggle for
African Americans to strive and yet not yield in the face of
overwhelming obstacles present in the social, cultural, political, and
economic matrix of the United States hints of a natural order of things
– something that is perennial as the coming of spring yet as harsh as
the brisk winds of a New England winter.
Being located in the betweenness of the “world and me” is a
condition that has not only given rise to the literary eloquence of a
Wright, but also influences some genres in African American thought and
expression. From soul stirring spirituals to the jeremiad of African
American abolitionists to the scholarly anxieties articulated by black
intellectuals, the attempt to live the ideals of liberty, equality, and
justice has been fractured by the painful and disturbing alienation
brought about by the consequences of living in a society permeated by a
virulent anti-black racism. It is in this abyss separating the ideal
from the real where African American thought finds a critical ground.
With a backdrop of contradictory and conflicting impulses in the
larger American society – the espousal of an unqualified freedom and
equality while legitimating systematic economic, political, and social
inequality and injustice – African American thought has had to come to
grips with the inconsistency between the world and itself. This
situation propelled the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, the political
dynamism of Maria Stewart, the calculated words of Frederick Douglass,
the intellectual prowess of Anna Julia Cooper, and the theological
achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. Each of these individuals sought
to traverse the space that separated their self-understanding and that
of the society in which they lived. They each attempted a heroic
reconciliation of the diametrically opposing poles that marked their
existence. Engaging the promises and perils of reason, religion, and
race, these and many other African Americans sought to affirmatively
answer the just query posed by Frederick Douglass as to whether
“American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American
law, and American Christianity could be made to include and protect
alike and forever all American citizens in the rights which have been
guaranteed them by the organic and fundamental laws of the land.”1
A major stream of thought that arose from the African American
intellectual quest to reconcile the incessant striving for existential
security and mental solace was Black Nationalism. Emerging in the later
eighteenth century and becoming a distinctive body of ideas in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Black Nationalism articulates a
dream and ideal of creating a geopolitical space for African American
human fulfillment and cultural flourishing. The images of Africa as a
cultural reservoir and the premier place of emigration occupy a central
space in Black Nationalist thought. Indeed, Africa is viewed in a
mythical and sacred manner; the “Motherland” for African Americans in
their quest to articulate their message to the world. A romanticized
history buttressed these images of Africa as a shelter and safe haven
from the tragic drama of slavery and anti-black racism. Ideals of
tranquility, peace, and harmony were overlaid on this diverse continent
that resulted in a somewhat flat and static account of the dynamic
forces acting in and on the peoples, land, and societies of Africa.
Nevertheless, Black Nationalism created a complex web of entangling
images of Africa that were designed to elevate African American humanity
and the dignity of the “African race.”
The development of such a culturalist and nationalist vision of
Africa was not immune from the problem of internal inconsistency. Black
Nationalist thought exhibited profound cleavages as it sought to
articulate its cultural politics of representation and identification.
The ideology of creating a “black nation” – either within or outside of
the confines of the United States or in a cultural or political form –
was strained by conflicting trajectories of differing intellectual and
political agendas.2 The unresolved tensions in Black
Nationalist thought begs the issue of the intellectual and political
consequences of this inability to reconcile the major tenets within this
school. In the paths not taken, what were some of the effects of an
unstable Black Nationalism? Did this stream of thought produce actions
that were not in the interests of the “African race?” How did the major
proponents of Black Nationalist thought appropriate and accommodate
themselves to differing conceptions of this ideology? Most importantly,
to whose detriment would the ambiguities and paradoxes of Black
Nationalist thought prove most damaging?
Tunde Adeleke’s UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth Century Black
Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission provides a provisional
response to such stirring questions regarding the conundrums of Black
Nationalist thought. Taking as his focus the various articulations of
Black Nationalism within the context of the precarious situation of
African Americans in the nineteenth century, Adeleke explores the
shifting sands of Black Nationalist thought and the repercussions of
this current of ideas within the context of African colonization.
Nineteenth century America proved to be a hospitable and fertile ground
for the promotion of Black Nationalist ideology. The continual
suppression and negation of African American personhood prompted the
political mobilization and agitation among this disinherited people to
struggle to attain the worth, value, and dignity of African American
life and culture. Crystallized within this environment, Black
Nationalism articulated this desire in relation to the redemption of an
“African Motherland.” Drawing on the wide reserves of religion – mainly
Christianity – race, and reason, the progenitors of this school
confronted the absurdities and ambiguities of African American existence
with a pronounced emphasis on the promises inherent within the “African
personality” aided by the Divine hand of the Christian God present in
the gift of Civilization. Black Nationalists faced the raging war
against African American personhood with a mindset that sought to
unravel the paradoxes of their existential situation and promote an
atmosphere of goodwill and justice. In its confrontation with these
paradoxes, especially in its appropriation of some of the dominant ideas
from American society, Black Nationalism could not completely avoid some
inconsistencies of its own. While mythically placing Africa in the
center of this new universe, the iron cage of European hegemonic
discourse circumscribed and relegated this stream of thought to a value
scale determined by the norms and values of European civilization. The
zeitgeist was invariably incorporated in Black Nationalist
thought which devalued and rejected indigenous African thought and
culture and in its place offered Euro-American cultural and thought
patterns encased in the minds and perspectives of New World African men
and women. Adeleke critically explores the interplay of these competing
and complex thought systems.
UnAfrican Americans begins by contextualizing the nature of
Black Nationalist discourse. Arguing against a strict historical
presentation of the emergence and evolution of Black Nationalist
thought, the text is situated in a “revisionist mold [as] it delves into
the intricacies and complexities of black American nationalism in the
second half of the nineteenth century” (8). Going further to articulate
the overarching aim of the work, Adeleke offers, “[The text] is a
critique of the values and orientation of some of its notable
proponents: Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Henry McNeal Turner”
(8). As a critique, UnAfrican Americans seeks to interrogate the
foundations, values, and orientation, as well as the effective and
affective powers of this school of thought.
Utilizing these three towering figures of the nineteenth century as a
point of entry, Adeleke anchors his study in the “European imperial
concept of the ‘civilizing mission’” (9). His exploration hinges on the
conceptual scheme of a reified Africa – a tabula rasa for
Euro-American civilization exploits – and the understanding and
promulgation of African American personhood in reflective and reflexive
relationship with an undifferentiated, undistinguished, and
indistinctive geo- political land mass. By engaging this critique in
this multi-pronged manner, Adeleke hopes to highlight the conflicting
character of Black Nationalist thought which aided in “shaping and
legitimizing European imperialism of Africa” (10). Through such an
exploration, UnAfrican Americans “[hopes] not only to illuminate
the pragmatic and complex nature of black American nationalism but also
to broaden [the] understanding of the dynamics and nuances of the
historical relationship between Africa and the black diaspora” (10).
Adeleke encapsulates the discursive context of his study within the
cultural and historical parameters of the nineteenth century. Black
Nationalistic thought developed within the broader cultural current of
Euro-American nationalistic thought. With the tide of “nation thought
and building” sweeping the countries and conquered lands of North
Atlantic civilization, European influence expanded across the globe.
European thought, culture, and ideological machinations legitimated a
contested expansion of control and exploitation of conquered lands and
peoples. In a world viewed through an interpretative lens which “saw a
vast external world of fundamental difference defined by ‘primitivism’
and ‘absences’ (that is, absence of the ‘superior values’ and cultural
and material accomplishments of Europeans),” European imperialistic
efforts were validated by a complex humanocentric theosophy which
understood Europeans as the only divinely inspired inheritors of the
gift of civilization whose missionary efforts were explicitly directed
toward those who had not ascended to the position of European Man on the
great chain of being (14). This raw, unchecked and unrestrained power
undergirded by the strong currents of a domineering ideology concluded
with the occupation and exploitation of foreign lands and peoples. This
dominant ideology manifested itself in the cultural milieu in the
interlocking matrices of race and reason – theories of the hierarchal
ordering of humankind according to specific doctrines and laws of
nature. Hume, Locke, Hegel, Blumenbach, and Voltaire engaged in a
spurious racial dialogue that posited the European as the crowning
achievement of humanity and, in a vulgar and grotesque sense, as the
only members of the human race.
The humanist ethos just described stood in tandem with the historical
reality of the radical displacement and dehumanization of African
Americans. The second half of the nineteenth century was witness to
close to a decade and a half of chattel slavery, a flawed and failed
effort in reconstruction, and the rise of a virulent Jim and Jane Crow
which not only marginalized African American life, but also increased
the level of violent acts – beatings, lynching, and rapes – experienced
by blacks. In this crucible, Black Nationalism came to occupy a central
area in the individual and collective consciousness of African
Americans. Despite the trauma of these offenses against black
personhood, in their striving toward actualizing and exercising their
rights and dignities as individuals African Americans did not submit to
the prevailing reality. “Paradoxically, the more blacks were demeaned
and alienated, the stronger their national consciousness grew” (31).
Manifesting itself in the increased involvement of African Americans in
the anti-slavery crusades, propagating the complete adherence of the
southern political machinery to the spirit and letter of Reconstruction,
and the development of viable infrastructures and institutions designed
to promote African American cultural flourishing, Black Nationalism
sought to develop a black nation within a nation. At times, this
critical consciousness appealed to “the creation of an independent
nationality outside of the United States” (34). The impulse toward
either internal or external nationhood for black Americans was
necessarily intertwined with the spirit of the times sweeping across
North Atlantic civilization. In this crucible, the search for
existential security by African Americans also exhibited the underside
of Euro- American civilization – the exploitative, imperialistic quest
which subordinated and “effectively sealed the African past” (40). Thus,
Black Nationalists demonstrated a pronounced paradox: “Although
compelled to identify with and embrace Africa, these nationalists
harbored strong reservations. Socialized in a Eurocentric environment,
where they were imbued with negative conceptions of Africa, they
approached Africa with the same paternalism and condescension that the
Europeans had adopted” (42).
Using the contributions of Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and
Henry Turner, Adeleke organizes and focuses his critique of Black
Nationalist thought by plumbing the depths of the intellectual
articulations of each of these three towering figures. Martin Delany,
“the father of black American nationalism,” serves as the paradigmatic
figure of the nationalist consciousness of African Americans in the
nineteenth century. His unwavering dedication to achieving full
recognition of African American personhood and its full membership at
the common table of humanity placed Delany at the vanguard of this
struggle. His life and thought often oscillated between the two extremes
of achieving the “American dream” and creating a black nation in Africa.
In the late 1840’s, he preached “the gospel of moral suasion to northern
free black communities. He implored fellow blacks to cultivate the
habits of industry, economy, and temperance” (44). Delany adhered to the
positivistic philosophy of the civilization ethos that permeated all
facets of life and thought in America. However, the material and social
conditions of African Americans did not improve as the century
progressed. In the political and social turmoil of the 1850’s, Delany
witnessed the trauma of the Fugitive Slave law and Dred Scott case and
their lingering effects. As a result of the lack of significant progress
in the area of human rights for African Americans, Delany embraced a
nationalistic vision that underscored “the linkage between freedom and
participatory democracy. He offered emigration as a realistic and
realizable option, given the vast resources and opportunities in Africa”
(47). In light of the vast diffusion of anti-black racism throughout
American society, Delany rejected philosophical overtures that favored
integration. He viewed the imperial character of Euro- American racism
as the main inhibitor of the ability of African Americans to fulfill
their divine destiny.
His travels to Africa reinforced his emerging emigrationist ideology
for African Americans. In this vein, he came to accept the “civilizing”
efforts of his European counterparts. With the advent of the Civil War,
Delany came back to the American scene with a renewed confidence in the
American experiment with democracy. At the conclusion of the bloodiest
conflict in American history, Delany became closely aligned with the
radical Republican strategy of creating a more hospitable climate in the
former Confederate states for African Americans. “Nothing expressed his
elation and conviction so well as his declaration that blacks had become
‘an integral part and essential element in the body politic of the
nation,’ and the vehemence with which he strove to prevent other blacks,
especially the new political leadership, from upsetting and
destabilizing the new order” (68). The retreat from the goals and
objectives of Reconstruction and the subsequent rise of the New South
forced Delany to once again adopt his Black Nationalist philosophy.
Thus, in the latter years of his life, feeling “betrayed, abandoned,
despised, and threatened [Delany] once again turned to Africa”.
The legacy of Alexander Crummell in his “race work” to attempt to
resolve the tension between “the problem of identity and nationality,”
provides a quintessential insight into the convergence of Christian
themes and Black Nationalist ideology. The Episcopal minister spent
twenty years helping to shape and define the destiny of the African
American colony of Liberia. Incorporating the basic themes from his
liberal classical education at Cambridge and his racial pride and uplift
philosophy instilled in him by his parents, Crummell sought to effect
black emancipation through the moral suasion of Christianity coupled
with a positivistic comprehension of the power of “civilization.”
“Crummell appealed for a transatlantic black solidarity built on
historical and cultural ties and sustained by strong Christian values”
(74). His emphasis on racial solidarity within the larger context of the
Christian teaching of universal brotherhood served as the legitimating
basis of his missionary efforts in Africa. Also present in his
nationalist conscious was his increasing positive assessment of European
civilization and the promises it held for African advancement. Crummell
not only worshiped at the altar of the Christian God, he also held a
sacred reverence for the divinely inspired civilization of Europe. “He
praised Mungo Park, Hugh Clapperton, brothers John and Richard Lander,
and David Livingstone for bringing Africans in contact with
civilization” (80). His adherence to the “Fortunate Fall” doctrine
advocated a thankful and benevolent attitude for the institution of
slavery in that it providentially engineered the African introduction to
civilization. This vision of civilization – embracing “both dimensions
of European imperialism . . . political and cultural” – was a guiding
force in Crummell’s work towards the destiny of the race (90).
Crummell’s interesting and often conflicting combination of race,
religion, and reason represented his unique appropriation of the
ideological currents of Black Nationalism.
Ambiguities and inconsistencies also characterized the Black
Nationalist thought of Henry McNeal Turner. The minister of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church “visualized a distinct black nationality that
would ‘cure the evils under which blacks labor’” (95). Turner’s Black
Nationalist consciousness became prominently pronounced during the
waning years of Reconstruction. As the apparatus for the integration of
African American people into the life and culture of the former
rebellious states disintegrated, Turner was witness to the denied
promises of citizenship for millions of the formerly enslaved. With his
expulsion from the Georgia state legislature and subsequent resignation
from the Republican Party after the Supreme Court refused to uphold the
legality of the Civil Rights bill of 1875, Turner embarked on a course
which advocated unequivocal and unilateral emigration for African
Americans. He rejected any compromise of black self-identity and
determination and was unwilling to accept any compromised integration
into the American social fabric. “He perceived American society as
inherently and irredeemably racist” (97).
Turner’s nationalist ideology incorporated the rhetoric of
Christianity and was instrumental in his promotion of African American
colonization of Africa. As a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, Turner used his office to endorse missionary efforts to Africa
and to implore “the church to make Africa the centerpiece of its
missionary activities . . .”(99). His travels to Sierra Leone and
Liberia allowed him to witness, first hand, the advancements of these
areas in adopting and appropriating the products of Euro- American
civilization. Despite the progress of the “civilizing mission” in
Africa, Turner felt that it “remained ‘the grandest field on earth for
the labor of civilization and the Christian Church’” (106). Delighted
with the state of Africa in some respects while simultaneously dejected
by what he viewed as its inherent inferiority, Turner’s nationalist
vision was unable to penetrate deeply into his valued emphasis on the
superiority of European civilization interwoven with his Christian
faith.
“The ambivalence and contradictions evident in the nationalist ideas
and schemes of Delany, Crummell, and Turner suggest a potent and complex
dimension to the cultural transformation and alienation that shaped the
black American experience in the New World” (147). Each of these
towering figures, in their quest to effect a positive change in the
situation of African Americans, had to traverse the enormous gulf
separating the ideals of a fulfilled life and the reality of residing in
a society that negated and marginalized the hopes, dreams, and
personhood of African Americans. In addition to the dilemma which
circumscribed their existence, the nationalist consciousness they sought
to promote was subverted by conflicting and often contradictory messages
coming from them. Africa held a sacred position in this ideological
maelstrom while simultaneously being subjected to a scathing critique
for its apparent “backward” and “primitive” society. In this vein, it
became a prized target for the civilizing efforts supported by Black
Nationalists in that through the redemption offered by Christianity and
Euro-American civilization, Africans throughout the Diaspora would be
able to take their place alongside Europeans on the great chain of
being.
“The critical and theoretical postulations of black American
nationalism included a set of contradictions – a strong profession of
commitment to the defense of Africa, coupled with a reluctance to
identify too closely with Africa; a critique and rejection of
Eurocentrism, and a frenzied determination to identify with Europeans”
(151). In an age of the solidification of cultural and racial hierarchy
supported by nationalist narratives, proponents of Black Nationalism
found themselves in a prison house of intellectual and existential
thought and action whereby norms and values were dictated by the
oppressive socio- cultural structures of Euro-American civilization. In
a heroic attempt to break the vicious circle that delimited African
American existence, these individuals sought to traverse the binary
oppositions that circumscribed their existence. The contradictions of
life and thought however were not easy to overcome and in the process of
attempting the heroic feat of self-determination, these freedom fighters
incorporated the grotesque of their environment – they inherited and
promoted a species logic that denigrated the cultures and indigenous
persons of Africa. In essence, their positive self-constructions in the
face of the betrayal of the ideals of freedom and equality of North
Atlantic civilization failed to overcome the betrayal of Africa and
Africans inherent in the civilizing impulse guiding the conquest and
exploitation of Africa.
Although UnAfrican Americans demonstrates the brilliance and
insightfulness of Adeleke’s thesis, the work does fall short with
respect to the issue of religion. Specifically, Adeleke fails to
incorporate to any significant length a discussion and understanding of
the religious forces propelling Black Nationalist thought. He does pay
attention to the religious vocation of Crummell and Turner and their
labors as religious workers in the mission civilisatrice. While
pointing out and underscoring the heightened ambiguities and
contradictions in their Black Nationalist philosophy with respect to
their implicit adoption of European norms and values, he fails to
recognize the manner in which their religious articulations were
intertwined with their conceptualization and representation of
civilization. As such, their formulation and understanding of
Christianity was imbued with an organic connection with a European
civilization and its articulation of modernity. Thus, their civilizing
efforts were validated by their Christian consciousness. The structural
and organizational apparatus of Euro- American civilization, in turn,
legitimated this validation. To overlook the connection between
Christianity and Euro-American civilization is to ignore two key
components of the self- legitimating apparatus for European imperialism.
Such recognition handicaps our understanding of the apparent blindness
of African American nationalists. Furthermore, such a move subjects
these historical agents to a revisionist mold that has not adequately
taken into account the inseparable nature of their religious
articulations and their conceptualization of Black Nationalism.
Adeleke’s groundbreaking work also suffers somewhat from the
excessive and overreaching claims of the author. UnAfrican Americans
does provide a much- needed corrective in the area of African American
intellectual history, specifically the aims and goals of Black
Nationalist thought with respect to its impact on Africa in the
nineteenth. The contextualization of this stream of ideas within the
metaphilosophical discourse of nationalism aptly situates this
intellectual current in the larger narrative of the articulations of
individuals and groups and their emerging nationalist consciousness.
Although it is very much true that Black Nationalism was unable to
transcend the boundaries of the norms and values of Euro-American
civilization, it is inaccurate to suggest that “instead of opposition
and stiff resistance from black Americans, who had been alienated and
affected as much as Africans by the negative and racist postulations of
Eurocentrism, the Europeans received (often unsolicited) encouragement
and support” (30). Adeleke undermines his extremely perceptive argument
by making monocausal, linear relations between Black Nationalist
discourse and European colonization and exploitation of the peoples and
cultures of Africa. Adeleke admits as much when he writes, “As an
independent force, black American imperialism failed to mature beyond
the stage of theoretical posturing, due to a combination of factors –
the lack of national backing, the failure to attract and mobilize a
significant portion of the black middle class, and the conflicting
nationalist agendas of its proponents,” however he attributes this
marginal but potent stream of thought a key role in the colonization of
Africa (111). This concession did not deter Adeleke from speculating:
“It is therefore plausible to suggest that colonial economic, political,
cultural, social, and educational policies were predetermined long
before the actual occupation of Africa, and black American nationalists,
perhaps without quite realizing the full implication of collaboratory
nationalism, played a key role in the process” (147, emphasis
added). The causal connections he affirms between the African American
critical production and appropriation of ideas – advanced in a different
manner and towards different goals – and the imperialistic exploits of
European colonizing activities are theoretically suspect. By analogy,
one might suggest that since indigenous Africans had a role in promoting
European colonization – either through direct effort or by promoting
Eurocentric values, as is the case with native African missionaries –
they were a key component in laying the foundation and actively
legitimating European imperialist ventures in Africa. The question must
be raised here, “Are we blaming the victim(s)?” As demonstrated
throughout the course of the text, Black Nationalist thought was always
in a provisional status by its adherents and meant different things at
different times dependent upon the context. To implicate Black
Nationalist thought as a key legitimating and validating force – despite
its marginal (if any) presence within the larger discourse of African
colonization by European powers – that crucially aided the effects of
the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 is beyond the scope of the thesis of
this work and beyond the research itself. But Adeleke ought to have
shown more sensitivity to the complexities of Black Nationalist thought
and been more evenhanded in recognizing both its liberatory aims and its
oppressive dimensions. In this respect, it is important to heed the
admonition of Wilson Moses: “If black social thinkers have sometimes
appeared to be tortured, inconsistent, and ambivalent, that is only
evidence that they have reflected with honesty on the human condition.”3
These two drawbacks highlight and point to what can be considered a
central deficiency in the theoretical framework of the text. Adeleke
understands quite perceptively the contradictory and conflicting nature
of Black Nationalist thought. Indeed, he writes, “Nineteenth-century
black American nationalism therefore entailed a balancing act between
the components of a complex, multicultural experience, precipitated by a
dialectical interaction between African, Euro-American, and
Anglo-American dimensions of the black experience in the diaspora”
(148). By creating the crucial nexus whereby Black Nationalist thought
is brought into a sustained, critical dialogue with its Euro-American
and African sources and trajectories, Black Nationalism is seen within
the larger context of the “Atlantic world.” However, instead of reifying
this stream of intellectual consciousness within the dialectical
framework of contradiction, it may prove more beneficial to interpret
this oscillation in terms of its provisional character. A new framework
is needed in which a system of absolutized opposites is replaced with a
more nuanced and critical apparatus that takes into account the dynamic
nature of the context in which these individuals were thinking and
acting.4 What this engenders is recognition of the fluid
boundaries of Black Nationalist thought as it incorporates and comes
into contact with differing dynamics in the socio-cultural fabric.
Understanding the dynamic nature of Black Nationalist thought requires
us to recognize that in the nineteenth century, ideological boundaries
were fluid and permeable, and the ability of different agents to
appropriate and transform particular ideas depended upon the context and
the ends that they sought. Incorporating this critical component into
the structure of the argument opens up new understandings not only
within the history of Black Nationalist thought, but also new readings
and interpretations in the intellectual biographies of the prominent
Black Nationalist figures who were the focus of Adeleke’s study.
Inclusion of this theoretical dynamic underscores the importance of the
role that the politics of identity played in the theorization and
promotion of their different Black Nationalist philosophies. This
provisional hermeneutic also empowers a critical conception of Black
Nationalist thought, meaning that areas of religion, race, and reason
are assessed in a broad and open manner in the construction of Black
Nationalism. Through such an assessment we may come to understand that
the Black Nationalist discourse is a dialogic site for critical
investigation. In such a new frontier, Black Nationalist thought is
neither wholly indebted to European or American or African sources, but
is a new creation.
Tunde Adeleke’s UnAfrican Americans develops an interesting
hermeneutical lens for interpreting African American nationalist
thought. He opens up a new critical space for the interrogation of Black
Nationalist thought. While recognizing the violent constraining forces
limiting the full expression and flowering of African American life and
culture, Adeleke forces our attention to recognize the imperial motives
operating within the Black Nationalist consciousness which acts as an
inhibiting force for a full and unhindered African development. These
dynamics are, as Adeleke posits, “a historical reality and it deserves
to be confronted if the phenomenon of Black Nationalism is to be
appreciated in its complexity” (29). Jettisoning the conventional
hermeneutical frameworks that justify Black Nationalism only within the
confines of the United States, Adeleke’s hermeneutics of suspicion
dissects the grand narrative of this intellectual stream to reveal it
darker, more sinister effects. By placing Africa at the center of the
discussion and exploration, UnAfrican Americans sheds light on an
often hidden character of Black Nationalism – the denigration and
rejection of indigenous African cultures and peoples and the
legitimation and exaltation of the values and mores of Euro-American
civilization. The synthesis promoted by such Black Nationalists as
Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Henry Turner sought to reconcile
the opposing ideals of American democracy with the reality of an
unabashed lack of human rights of African Americans in the matrix of a
redeemed Africa and an African race. This synthesis however was at the
expense of a free and self-determining Africa. To this end, they
remained in the betweenness of the “world and me” and in this
light they were UnAfrican Americans.
References
Howe, Stephen. Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and
Imagined Homes (London: Verso, 1998).
Logan, Rayford. The Betrayal of the Negro: From
Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (1954; New York: Da Capo
Press, Inc., 1997).
Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. Afrotopia: The Roots of
African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
Wright, Richard. “Between the World and Me.“ In Black
Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature ed. Abraham Chapman
(New York: New American Library, 1968), 437.
Zachernuk, Philip S. Colonial Subjects: An African
Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville: University Press
of Virginia, 2000).
Endnotes
1. Cited in Rayford Logan, (The Betrayal of the
Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (1954; New York: Da
Capo Press, Inc., 1997), 4-5.
2. See Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts
and Imagined Homes (London: Verso, 1998) and Wilson Jeremiah Moses,
Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
3. Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia, 95.
4. Philip S. Zachernuk argues a similar point in his
new work on Nigerian intellectual history. See Philip S. Zachernuk,
Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000).
reprinted from West Africa
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