By Ralph L. Crowder, Ph.D.
http://africaunbound.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83
During the late nineteenth century, Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912)
was the best known and highly respected African intellectual in the
Western world. Blyden was born on August 3, 1832 in St. Thomas, Virgin
Islands. His free and literate parents were of Ibo descent. In 1851,
he emigrated to Liberia, which had become an independent republic only
four years earlier, after the settlement of freed African American
slaves.
Unlike his peers in the West, Blyden articulated a vision of African
development that profoundly disagreed with conventional views. His
often controversial positions were discussed in the numerous books and
pamphlets that he published, including A Voice from Bleeding Africa
(1856), Liberia's Offering (1862), the Negro in Ancient History
(1869), The West African University (1872), From West Africa to
Palestine (1873), Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1887), the
Jewish Question (1898), West Africa before Europe (1905), and Africa
Life and Customs (1908).
Blyden, who was a nominal Christian, argued that a legion of
Christianized and Western educated "Negroes" would not lead Africa to
the promise land of modernity and continental development. He argued
that Christianity has had a demoralizing effect on blacks whereas
Islam, on the other hand, has had a unifying and elevating impact. He
also believed that education was being used as one of the critical
instruments to support and continue the colonization and exploitation
of Africa. According to him, "All educated Negroes suffer from a kind
of slavery in many ways far more subversive of the real welfare of the
race than the ancient physical fetters. The slavery of the mind is far
more destructive than that of the body."
As an educator and college president, Blyden waged a battle for what
he called the "decolonization of the African mind." In his 1881
Inaugural Address as the newly installed president of Liberia College,
he talked about his vision of independent African colleges producing a
new generation of African youth. He declared, "It is our hope and
expectation that there will rise up men, aided by institution and
culture, …imbued with public spirit, who will know how to live and
work and prosper…how to use all favoring outward conditions, how to
triumph by intelligence, by tact, by industry, by perseverance, over
the indifference of their own people, and how to overcome the scorn
and opposition of the enemies of the race…"
Blyden argued that education "…should aim…not simply [for the
provision of] information, but [for] the formation of the mind. The
formation of the mind being secured, the information will take care of
itself. Mere information of itself is not power – but the ability to
know how to use that information – and this ability belongs to the
mind that is disciplined, trained, [and] formed. It may be a pleasant
pastime to store the mind with facts…but if the mind is not trained to
apply them, they will lie there like so much useless lumber."
Through the proper educational curriculum and sensitivity to the value
of native African culture, Blyden believed that a generation of
African leaders and scholars could be groomed to defeat colonialism
and embrace modernity that could be blended with native cultural
resources. He maintained that the core of Africa's educational
curriculum should be based upon traditional concepts of education. At
its core, this curriculum must acknowledge that, "the African view of
the universe is based upon the truth that man, nature, the universe,
and God are in harmony. There is no alienation. The basic mode[s] of
human action [are] cooperation, peace, and building great projects.
Th[ese are] diametrically opposed by the European worldview which sees
man as alienated from God, at war with nature, and surrounded by an
indifferent universe."
Blyden was a pioneer in the struggle to liberate and decolonize the
African mind, and to establish an independent African educational
institution. At the turn of the century, he stood alone with his
articulate defense of traditional African cultural institutions and
their compatibility with modernity. In 1893 Blyden issued this
challenge to the African world:
It is sad to think that there are some Africans, especially among
those who have enjoyed the advantages of foreign training, who are
blind enough to the radical facts of humanity as to say, 'Let us do
away with our African personality and be lost, if possible, in another
race'. Preach this doctrine as much as you like, no one will do it,
for no one can do it, for when you have done away with your
personality, you have done away with yourselves. Your place has been
assigned you in the universe as Africans, and there is no room for you
as anything else.
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