The Case against Afrocentrism

238 Pages·2009·1.37 MB·English

by  Tunde Adeleke

The Case against Afrocentrism
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The Case
against

Afrocentrism
Tunde Adeleke
University Press of Mississippi Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of
American University Presses.
I wish to acknowledge the following journals for permission to include
versions of previously published articles: the International Journal
of African Historical Studies for adaption of my 1998 article, “Black
Americans and Africa: A Critique of the Pan-African and Identity
Paradigms,” in chapter 3; the Canadian Review of American Studies
for the use of portions of my 1999 award-winning article, “Who Are
We? Africa and the Problem of Black American Identity,” in chapter
1; and the Western Journal of Black Studies for excerptions from my
2005 article, “Historical Problematic of Afrocentric Consciousness,”
in chapter 4.
Copyright © 2009 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2009
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adeleke, Tunde.
The case against Afrocentrism / Tunde Adeleke.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60473-293-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Afrocentrism. 2. Pan-
Africanism. 3. African diaspora. 4. Africa—In popular culture. 5. Af-
rican Americans—Race identity. 6. Blacks—Race identity. I. Title.
DT15.A35 2009
305.896—dc22 2009008846
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
This book is dedicated, with love and affection, to my children
Tosin, Toyin, and Chinyere, and with gratitude from the entire
Adeleke clan, to James Ekere Usen, and Ayo Saddique, exemplars of
true friendship, and finally, in loving memory of my senior brother,
Raufu Bawa Alabi Adeleke “Bawan Allah,” patriarch of the Adeleke
family, Omo Mewu, Oroki, Sun re O
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Afrocentric Essentialism 3
1. Africa and the Challenges of Constructing Identity 23
2. Conceptual and Paradigmatic Utilizations and Representations
of Africa 59
3. Essentialist Construction of Identity and Pan-Africanism 94
4. Afrocentric Consciousness and Historical Memory 134
5. Afrocentric Essentialism and Globalization 151
Conclusion 172
Notes 190
Bibliography 202
Index 218
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Preface
The decision to write this book was made, rather subconsciously, in
1992 at the Annual Symposium in the Humanities jointly organized
and hosted by the College of Humanities, the Center for African Stud-
ies, the Department of Black Studies, and the Columbian Quincen-
tenary Committee of the Ohio State University. The theme of that
symposium was “The Black Diaspora: The African Experience in the
Americas.” The event—which attracted scholars from Africa, Great
Britain, Canada, the West Indies, Europe, and Latin, Central and South
America—was an occasion to reexamine the Diaspora in the five hun-
dredth year of Columbus’s “discovery,” an epochal stage in the constel-
lation of events and developments that were critical to the making of
the black Diaspora. Among the delegates from Africa, Europe, North
America, and the Caribbean was a euphoric undercurrent of satisfac-
tion at what had been accomplished despite overwhelming odds and
adversity. The dominant mood was one of celebration. I presented a
paper titled “The Diaspora: Dialectics of Enduring Contradictions,”
which interrogated what I then saw as some of the ambivalences and
contradictions that have characterized the relationship of continental
Africans and blacks in the Diaspora.
I envisaged the conference as more than just an occasion to cel-
ebrate the Diaspora. In my judgment, it should go beyond celebrat-
ing the social, economic, political and cultural developments of blacks
over these centuries and showcasing their intellectual worth and
wealth, beyond interrogating the relations between Diaspora blacks
and dominant groups in their respective locations. The conference
should be an opportune moment for critical introspection, a time to
reexamine Diaspora blacks and continental Africans in relation not
only to the outside “Other” but also, more significantly, to the inner
“Self.” Therefore, I decided to focus my paper not on the traditional
and popular binaries—Europeans versus Africans/Blacks, exploiter-
exploited, and superior-subordinate— but on a completely differently
and often invisible but unacknowledged binary: continental Africans
versus black Americans. What kinds of contradictions and ambiva-
lence have informed their relationship over these centuries? How have
continental Africans and blacks in America, for example, dealt with,
and conceptualized, each other through history? What forces, factors,
and circumstances shaped the relationship? In other words, rather