Some Africans still in identity crisis

As far as I’m aware, the bulk of African souls arrived in these parts in less-than-auspicious circumstances and were not welcomed to their “new homes,” or more precisely, “holding bays” with enthusiastic cheers and the blare of trumpets.

Ironically, after “so much blood, sweat and tears” that characterised the hiatus that started with enslavement and ended with manumission, the “African memory and African dreams” were far from being expunged. It’s therefore not surprising that, among the African Diaspora, there’s something of an urge to make that sentimental journey down memory lane in order to experience at least, “a psychological repatriation,” so to speak. That identification with one’s ancestral home, “in search of one’s roots,” is not peculiar to people of “African stock,” although the fact that they had survived “dehumanisation and deculturalisation” would provide that added incentive to catch up on past cultural amnesia in an attempt to achieve that elusive sense of self-discovery, “selfhood,” self worth, if not a larger ethnic identity.

Broaching the topic of “ethnicity,” the noted American journalist Walter Lippman surmised, “What is called pride of race is the sense that our origins are worthy of respect.” Now Emancipation is a significant benchmark for the African Diaspora, as it seeks to reclaim its “cultural heritage” in order to proclaim and define an “African identity.” There’s also what is called “catharsis.” Of course, we’re as much children as well as prisoners of our past. A black US senator, having made it to the top of the heap, said, “We, the descendants of slaves, do not wish to be reminded that at one time in human history we were chattel, property, and were bought and sold.”

Ironically, slave owners were “compensated” for “loss of property” when no provision was made for loss of freedom. Having regard to the fact that the African slaves were brought to the “New World” without even luggage tags for the purpose of identification, it’s not surprising that even today there are sections of the African Diaspora still wrestling with an identity crisis. Besides this, there’s the tendency for some blacks to continue to see themselves as “victims,” no matter what they have achieved and to see whites as “guilty,” simply because they are white. There is, I suppose, a political market for recycled pain and distress and synthetic indignation. There’s also the expedient of using the common memory of oppression as a bond which is, presumably, greater than the centripetal forces of chaotic rebirth and the reignition of the African spirit.

Admittedly, it’s been the proverbial “long and winding road” for the African who had been brought, unwillingly, in shackles and under the most inhumane conditions to the New World. In 1757 the black man was legally deemed three fifths of a man. In 1857 (100 years later) the US Supreme Court ruled that a black man had no rights that a white man has to respect. The Africans were not only denied their human rights but were stripped of their languages, their names and their identities. As noted American poet Mayo Angelou said, “The wrenching pain of the African slavery experience cannot be unlived.” Someone else claimed that black Americans were robbed of their history, and now they’re reclaiming it for future generations. Some cynics may tend to dismiss it as “mawkish sentimentality,” but, in my humble view, something can be said for Machel Montano’s “Take me back, Africa” — penned by calypso composer “Joker” Devine.

As Devine wrote and Montano sang: “I am a victim of disillusion/ a soul without a resting place/ a lonely pilgrim without a vision/ a wanderer in time and space/going from country to country — searching for my identity.” The “cry from the heart” continues, “It’s time for me to come home/ I want to be in your arms again/ Take me back, Africa/ ...I want to rediscover my culture/ My roots in Nigeria/...I’ve seen the faces of racialism, experienced the agony of wounded pride, and known the shame of colonialism/ I’ve been a slave and a soldier — a fugitive on the run/...” His final cry is, “I want to be a man —  not a nigga — with an equal right to the future.” I make no apology for quoting Montano’s expressed sentiments at some length, as it covers more and better ground than supposedly knowledgeable sources cover in an avalanche of words.

As much as we might empathise with Montano’s sentiments, it’s obvious that they don’t encompass a geographical or even a contemporary Africa but some idealised, romanticised configuration of an imaginative entity embodying Africa’s glorious past and rich historical heritage. The points, I think, that many an Afrocentric is endeavouring to make, is that African history didn’t start with its “discovery” by Europeans, and Africans weren’t enslaved because they were “inferior,” but those who enslaved Africans needed to persuade themselves that the slaves were “inferior” to justify their abominable acts of barbarism. All this notwithstanding, the slaves were not passive agents of their masters. Some ran away, some rebelled, some established separate communities of their own and others turned to their African heritage, their religion and their songs to maintain a sense of independence, even within the framework of slavery. Historian Dr Eric Williams might have been on to something with the long-winded title of his book, to wit, “The blackest thing in slavery was not the black man.”