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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Identifying with ancestral home

by

20100721

Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions this year, I sup­pose, will have added sig­nif­i­cance for those of the African di­as­po­ra who con­sid­er that their spir­i­tu­al navel strings are buried on the con­ti­nent of Africa, es­pe­cial­ly as the World Cup ven­ture was a spec­tac­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess. In­ci­den­tal­ly, the foot­ball ex­trav­a­gan­za was con­ceiv­ably Man­dela's part­ing gift to Africa as well as Africa's fi­nal trib­ute to him.

One ex­pects that they would be hold­ing up their cal­abash­es toast­ing their hered­i­tary links, es­pe­cial­ly those who are aware of the old African folk­lore tale that, "hu­man­i­ty first set foot on the African con­ti­nent" or, as sug­gest­ed by an­thro­pol­o­gists, "ho­mo Sapi­ens" (that's us) first ap­peared on African soil.

Be that as it may, We've been told that "They–Africans–came to the so-called New World be­fore Colum­bus." How­ev­er, the bulk of African souls ar­rived in less aus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances and, as far as I know, were not wel­come to their "new homes" or, more pre­cise­ly, "hold­ing bays" with en­thu­si­as­tic cheers and the blare of trum­pets.

To bor­row a Churchillian ex­pres­sion, "Much blood, sweat and tears" have flowed un­der the bridge that con­sti­tut­ed the hia­tus that start­ed with en­slave­ment and was for­mal­ly ter­mi­nat­ed, sup­pos­ed­ly by man­u­mis­sion or the much longer drawn-out process of eman­ci­pa­tion. 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 a psy­cho­log­i­cal repa­tri­a­tion," so to speak. That iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with one's an­ces­tral home, "in search of one's root," is not pe­cu­liar to peo­ple of "African stock," al­though the fact that there were cal­cu­lat­ed ef­forts at de­hu­man­i­sa­tion and "decul­tur­al­i­sa­tion, "per­haps pro­vide an added in­cen­tive to "catch up" on past "cul­tur­al am­ne­sia" in an at­tempt to achieve that elu­sive sense of "self­hood", self-worth and, if I may say so, "a larg­er eth­nic iden­ti­ty."

Broach­ing the top­ic of "eth­nic­i­ty," the not­ed Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Wal­ter Lipp­mann 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 the psy­chol­o­gists call "cathar­sis." It should not, how­ev­er, go un­heed­ed that we are as much chil­dren as pris­on­ers of our past.

A black US sen­a­tor, hav­ing made it to the top of the heap, said that: "We (de­scen­dants of slaves) do not wish to be re­mind­ed that, at one time, we were chat­tel, prop­er­ty to be bought and sold." 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.

There is, I sup­pose, a po­lit­i­cal mar­ket for re­cy­cled pain, and dis­tress and syn­thet­ic in­dig­na­tion. There is al­so the ex­pe­di­ent of us­ing the com­mon mem­o­ry of op­pres­sion as a bond. 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 3/5 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 a not­ed black Amer­i­can po­et Maya An­gelou said, "The wrench­ing pain of the African slav­ery ex­pe­ri­ence can­not be un­lived."

How­ev­er, some­one else claimed that black Amer­i­cans were robbed of their his­to­ry, and now they were re­claim­ing it for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. There are, pos­si­bly, cyn­ics who would dis­miss this as mis­placed ef­fort. How­ev­er, in the Unit­ed States, the re­sponse, to what some African-Amer­i­cans see as be­ing rel­e­gat­ed to the pe­riph­ery of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, is to cel­e­brate their own "Black his­to­ry month." In our own ca­lyp­so/lament sang by Machel Mon­tano and penned by com­pos­er "Jok­er" Devine, there ap­pears to be, for seek­ing to have "blacks" as the sub­jects rather than the ob­jects of his­to­ry. As Mon­tano sang it, "I'm a vic­tim of dis­il­lu­sion (a com­pos­ite of the African slave and his de­scen­dant)/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." He con­tin­ues, "Take me back, Africa... 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." While em­pathis­ing with the im­plic­it nos­tal­gia, it's ap­par­ent that "his Africa" is an ide­alised, ro­man­ti­cised, imag­i­na­tive em­bod­i­ment of Africa's glo­ri­ous past and rich his­tor­i­cal her­itage.


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