----- Original Message ----- 
From: Amadu Kabir Njie 
To: Balangbaa 
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 10:02 AM
Subject: [balangbaa] Fw: IMPROVISED AFRICANS: THE MYTH AND MEANING OF AFRICA IN NINETEETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN THOUGHT



      West Africa Review (2001)
      ISSN: 1525-4488
      IMPROVISED AFRICANS: THE MYTH AND MEANING OF AFRICA IN NINETEETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN THOUGHT  

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).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc. 

Citation Format

Walker, Corey D. B. (2001). IMPROVISED AFRICANS: THE MYTH AND MEANING OF AFRICA IN NINETEETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN THOUGHT. West Africa Review: 2, 2 [iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.2.2.6] 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------