Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Afrocentrism and Homophobia

Mainstream Christians are homophobic

Some Afrocentrics are Christian

Therefore  some Afrocentrics are homophobic.

Nothing spectacular here but your student

may also be speaking about the fundamentalist Afrocentrics.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2021 3:48 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Afrocentrism and Homophobia

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

Final grades submitted, phew!! What a semester--full of highs and lows. One ambitious and bold final paper stole the show, arguing that aspects of modern Afrocentrism thrive on homophobia.

The student supplied evidence from both colonial sources (colonial moralistic documents, bills passed in the British parliament, missionary sources, etc) and African narratives. One particularly striking source is a Nigerian psychologist arguing in the 1960s that homosexuality was alien to Africa and was a colonial influence.

It's clear that today's homophobia in Africa has a genealogy that runs deep.

It's also clear that, in some quarters, homophobic discourses and praxis are intertwined with discourses of anti-colonial reclamation, of decolonization, and even of decoloniality.

My student concluded that efforts to banish homosexuality, understood as an imported colonial practice, from Africa, and to restore an alleged precolonial African culture devoid of homosexuality and sexualities outside heteronormativity have at times been legitimized by narratives of Afrocentrism and decolonization.

Since, according to him, a heteronormative precolonial Africa never existed, purveyors of Afrocentric homophobia have wittingly or unwittingly appropriated and Africanized Victorian colonial moral panic about homosexuality in Africa in order to make their case against homosexuality.

Simply brilliant! Yes, he got an A on the paper.

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