by Ezinne Adibe
Atlanta Post (7-11-11)
Professor and author Kwasi Konadu discusses identity politics and what
it means to be African
One hundred years from now what weight will race and/or ethnicity have
on our understanding of identity? Are we moving towards a society
where race will become so ambiguous that notions tied into race will
become a thing of the past? The concept of a post-racial society
seemed to gain further traction during the election of President
Barack Obama, but as author Dr. Kwasi Konadu notes, there hasn't been
much of a post-racial anything in the years since President Obama's
election. Dr. Konadu recently shared his thoughts on identity, post-
racialism, and what it means to be African.
Ezinne Adibe: How has your identity shaped your work?
Dr. Kwasi Konadu: My work been very personal in that a lot of my
research has been shaped by my ancestry. For instance, it was after a
number of years of doing my family history through family elders that
a dream about my great-great-grandmother led me back to Ghana to find
out more. That led to my dissertation in Ghana, which led to a decade
of research and partnership in Ghana, another home of mine in the
African world. So, indeed, identity shaped by ancestry has been
critical to how I choose what I am interested in, how I approach those
matters with a kind of passion, and always the quest for getting the
story right.
Ezinne Adibe: I come across many conversations about identity,
especially with regards to national identity. There are some that feel
national identity is more important than racial or ethnic affiliation.
What are your thoughts?
Dr. Konadu: If we make the matter of identity an either or question,
whether it is the clan or the nation, in terms of how we define
nations and nationalism, or it is some other kind of affiliation, I
think we miss a very subtle but important point about how Africans,
and other humans, have historically identified themselves. Humans tend
to have concentric circles of a composite identity. So, at the same
time I can be a father, a husband, a professor, a brother to my own
biological kin or a brother in a communal sense. And there can be no
conflict with either of those circles, because these identities are
not in conflict but are expressions of a composite, whole identity. I
think they become conflictual because of the historical experiences
that brought Africans to whatever side of whatever ocean/sea they now
find themselves. Whatever means by which Africans were exported from
their homelands, they have endured a certain kind of transformation
where blackness became the demonic inverse, that is, it became the
opposite of Judeo-Christian whiteness, and blackness also became a
synonym for Africaness. And so, it's not surprising to find that many
of our peoples worldwide, but certainly in North America, are offended
if called African, because African, in their mind, is shorthand for
this package of barbarism, backwardness, idol worshippers, lacking
beauty and intelligence. All this is packaged into being African. So,
who wants to be African?
Ezinne Adibe: Yes, some take being referred to as African as an
affront.
Dr. Konadu: To the heart of your question, the crux of the issue is
realizing that where you are and who you are don't have to be in
conflict. That is, I can be an American citizen as a political status,
but culturally defined by my ancestry. You can be both African as a
cultural identity and still remain a political citizen in whatever
nation-state you reside. For instance, in Ghana, you can be Asante,
and at the same time you can be a citizen of the Republic of Ghana.
You can also be of the Oyoko or Agona or Bretuo clan. And similar
familial systems exist among the Yoruba, the Hausa, or the Igbo and so
this idea of concentric affiliations and therefore identities is not
exclusively a Ghanaian matter. For those Africans in whatever diaspora
they find themselves, they can be political citizens of Brazil, Cuba,
North America and the like and still culturally self-identify as
African. And the cumulative weight of one's African ancestry,
underlying our mannerisms, the way we use language, the ways in which
we greet, the subtleness of culture is a critical frame of reference
in determining cultural identity.
There's a game that's played with the term African, especially in the
media and in our school curricular or textbooks. At one point, the
term African is homogenized, that is, "you are all Africans." So, for
example, if there is corruption of whatever sort in Zimbabwe or in
Nigeria, then it is an "African" problem, where the behavior of
specific people becomes homogenized and the integrity and humanity of
all Africans come into question. A more common example of
homogenization is that "Africans sold other Africans during slavery."
The story is not that simple, nor should it be. All or most Africans
were not slavers nor did they engineer the transatlantic slave system.
Their humanity should not be undermined by such sound bites that –
after a while—becomes an unquestionable truth. The term "African" also
fluctuates between its homogenized form and its opposite. Thus, if
Africans in the diaspora self-identify as culturally African via their
ancestry, claiming, "Well, we too are Africans," the media or school
curricular response is "No, you're not. You have nothing to do with
them." So, when it suits certain purposes, we get situational and
contradictory responses, such as "you're all the same" and "you're not
same."
Ezinne Adibe: Right. Also, I'm noticing a lot more that some who have
lived their lives as say European, affirming a connection with Africa,
because they have discovered through DNA testing that they have maybe
1% or 2% African ancestry.
Dr. Konadu: It's comical. That's why we should revisit the criteria of
ancestry. I think ancestry is a very important criteria and anchor; a
foundational part of our self-understandings, because we come to this
earth through families. And those family members, who transition into
another form of living, where they are no longer visible, are still
part of that family. So think of ancestry of a large ball of yarn that
keeps accumulating people each passing away. The oldest skull remains
were found in Northwestern Chad in West Africa and dated to about 7
million years old. So if we use that as a starting point, Africans
have at least 7 million years of this large mass of ancestry. When you
put that on any scale imaginable against, let's say, a number of
European or white or even Asian or Islamic intruders and liaisons into
that gene pool, the weight is definitely disproportional. Now, this
disproportional weight towards making sense of the world as an
"African" would mean that the person will have to choose to remain (or
not) culturally African. Since Africa's interactions with Eurasia and
later the Americas, much disruption, confusion, forgetting, and some
"mixtures" have occurred, which makes taking ancestry into account in
matters of cultural identity so significant, even liberating. And this
enlarged yarn of ancestry acts on us in a myriad of ways. For
instance, there are times in which some of us, whether it's in college
or not, we begin to question certain assumptions of our parents about
religion, spirituality, identity, and the like, but not questioning
for the sake of undermining your parents but rather questing, trying
to find some resolve to fundamental "feelings" in your being which
you, at times, can't put to words. Those questions come because you're
outside of the stranglehold of usually your parents and the
environment that made you think and believe whatever you believed up
until that point. With this breathing room, what happens is ancestry
infringes upon your being and says, "Hey, I don't feel this
Christianity or Catholicism. It's not speaking to me. It feels or
seems contradictory." Those kinds of ancestral memories and impulses
come from that mass that is always acting on us. This partially
explains why every 15 to 20 years in North America there is some form
of cultural nationalism or movement with Africa and things African as
reference points for African and African diasporic peoples and we can
trace or document this continuity with ease over the past few
centuries.
Ezinne Adibe: There is another interesting conversation related to
identity, which is this idea that we will all be mixed sometime in the
future. There are a lot of people who say that it will be great once
we can move to that point where race is so ambiguous, because then
people won't be racist. What are your thoughts on this post-racial
idealism?
Dr. Konadu: Well, I'm sorry to disappoint the people that feel that
way or have come to that conclusion. You can have racism without race…
I'll give you a historical note. In the 15th century Spain and
Portugal, there were dominant and pejorative ideas about African
peoples as savages, barbarians, non-Christians, and therefore
heathens, and under Papal or Catholic doctrine these Africans could be
enslaved. The concept of race wasn't truly refined as we know it
today, but there was racism. Take for instance, the first group of
Africans taken from the Senegambia region, what is now Senegal and the
Gambia, and transported to Portugal. They were stripped naked and
paraded through the streets of the capital city, Lisbon. It was a
spectacle. You can imagine, from the Africans' perspective, the sheer
terror of having all these white folks stare at you as kind of a
voyeur, and especially with the belief these white folks were
cannibals. That was the introduction of Africans into this and perhaps
other early European societies. So, there were ideas about race and
racism; however, race wasn't fully refined, whereby it was linked to
the institutional terror and injustices as we find today. But there
was racism without race. So, racism need not race as an appendage in
order to be real. You can have the end of race as the New York Times
announced when Barack Obama was elected, "a post-racial
society" (laughs). Since his election, whatever people think about him
and his administration, African folks in Africa and in North America
have suffered greatly. There is greater racial violence, whether it is
the unleashing of these white supremacist groups and even allied
Chicano Mexican groups terrorizing black folks. There is another kind
of violence – economic violence. In this so-called recession, black
folks have felt it the hardest, in housing, jobs, prisons, hospital
and educational program closings, the poorest quality foods,
criminalization, and so. The point is the quality of black folks lives
has exponentially declined since his inauguration and since the New
York Times announced a post-racial society. So, if that's any cue that
this is what post-racialism looks like, I don't think African folks
want anything to do with it.
For those persons who self-identify as African, doing so is not about
what you wear, the incense and oils and how you smell, or the name you
carry. I think it's reconciling our convergent ancestry: the beauty,
the pain, and the violence through which it endured the past four
centuries. That said, family histories are some of the best tools that
people can use to reconcile the challenges of survival and claiming to
be culturally who you are. One can certainly go through an
organization for ideological or other reasons to address such
important matters, and that's fine, but those institutional means
can't satisfy some questions that are internal to whom you are via
your layered family history. Thus, I think family history is the most
important mechanism for reconciling and even clarifying cultural
identity. And cultural identity can stand and co-exist with political
citizenship, and therefore you can be a member of any society and
still be who you are and whatever you are. These are powerful ideas
and practices that can halt the homogenizing or post-racial vision.
For if the face of post-racialism looks like the above, we need to ask
some serious, introspective questions about where we are headed as a
people, as families, and as individuals with the orbit of both.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment