lisa aubrey, african americans in the united states and african studies

African Americans in the United States and African StudiesAuthor(s): Lisa Asili AubreySource: African Issues, Vol. 30, No. 2, Identifying New Directions for African Studies (2002),pp. 19-23Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1535084 .

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African Americans in the United States and African Studies

Lisa Asili Aubrey

Current Paths That there is a strong historical intellectual tradition of Afri-

can Americans studying Africa is news to some. That there remains a demand among African Americans in the United States to study Africa is also a surprise. That these ideas are challenging to some is ludicrous to others. For many African Americans in African studies, affirming our engagement with Africa over and over is not only a nuisance but also a waste of precious time and intellectual energy. After countless efforts, many African Ameri- cans have simply disengaged, refusing to have these futile conversations. Others bear witness in perpetuity to the defense of Black nationality and global Pan-Africanism for themselves, the race, and the enlightenment of disbelievers. Both groups act with calculated rationality, yet denials of African Americans' interest in, engagement with, and effect on African studies abound. The denial within the community of scholars comes mostly from White Americans but also from continental Africans and other African Americans.

The primary reason for the varied interpretations of Afri- can Americans' interest in African studies is that African studies in U.S. universities remains a contested terrain. Those who control this terrain have the power to define Africa geo- graphically, ontologically, epistemologically, and ideologi- cally. They can and do decide who in U.S. academia is in and who is out of Africa, figuratively and literally. Likewise, directors of African studies programs that receive major fund-

ing from private foundations and the U.S. government, particularly the Title VI centers, have the power to influence who plays on this contested terrain. In the short run, directors have substantial influence over "who gets what, when, how, how much, under what circumstances, and at what costs," especially with regard to student recruitment and selection for

postgraduate training in African studies. It is no wonder that some directors of African studies

programs remain in the high seat seemingly indefinitely. Tenures of some African studies directors rival the tenures of

some tersely castigated African government autocrats, along with their authoritarian leadership styles, albeit with the ap- pearance of benevolence to some and simply backhandedness to others. Ironically, the pejoratives leveled at African dicta- tors by African studies experts are rarely publicly used to describe long-seated African studies "old boys." Some of these old boys are not officially directors; yet informally, they are institutions with gate-keeping prerogatives in African studies, creating and enforcing their rules of the game.

The debate around what constitutes African studies is not just a question of who controls the field but also of definitional issues such as "What is Africa?" and "Who are Africans?" While White Africanists are more likely to define Africa by its continental boundaries, and many still by its sub-Saharan de- lineation, more African American Africanists define Africa as the continent and its diaspora. By contrast, continental Africans appear divided. Some strategically apply the continental definition of African studies, while others have a more expansive and inclusive definition of Africa that parallels that of African American Africanists. This latter group of continental Africans is the progeny of elder Pan-Africanist scholars and leaders. The voices of this group are rising in pitch, in scholarship and activ- ism, as neoliberal policies have derailed African communities all over the world with structural adjustment programs in Af- rica and with cutbacks in social welfare and affirmative action in the West. This global derailment, viewed as Africa's mar- ginalization from a Euramerican center, further entrenches the underdevelopment of Africans.

For some White Africanists in the United States, defining African studies as engaging only the continent or the south of the Sahara strategically excludes Egypt and negates the global African diaspora. This definition also positions White Afri- canists at the apex of the U.S. racial academic hierarchy as delineators of others' identities, histories, and realities. Defin- ing African studies this way validates and reinforces interpre- tive inquiry that is European- and American-centered. At the same time, we see the work of scholars from Africa under- mined and dismissed, sometimes as "mere" folklore. Far greater damage is done as the body of inquiry of White Afri- canists becomes revered as the product of the highest level of knowledge, meeting universal objective scientific standards to be globally disseminated, consumed and used as the stan- dard against which all others are measured.

Choosing to deal with geographical and not cultural, ontological, global Africa, some White Africanists selectively deal with Black folks of their choosing and at a distance. More specifically, they deal with continental Africans on re-

Lisa Asili Aubrey is associate professor of political science and African studies at Ohio University. She is the author of The Politics of Development Cooperation: NGOs, Gender and Partnership in Kenya and articles on gender, development, democratization, and Pan-Africanism. She was a Ful- bright scholar at the University of Ghana, Legon, from 1998 to 2000. She is now working on manuscripts on Ghana, Kenya, and the African diaspora. The author may be con- tacted at [email protected].

VOLUME XXX/2 2002 19



search trips, continental African colleagues, students at White institutions, and few, if any, African Americans. Many never question the raging race disparities at their institutions- especially those between the White and Black communities and, at many institutions, the miniscule and declining African American faculty and student populations. Many continental Africans remain perplexed about why these types of questions are important to African Americans, until they begin to see themselves as Blacks and experience the racial politics of everyday life in the United States.

Many African Americans wonder why a substantially large and highly noticeable number of White Africanists find it effortless and rewarding on their side to interact with continental Africans when it is painstaking for them to interact with African Americans who are their fellow American citizens and the legacy of Africa. Is it because with continental Africans, White Africanists rarely have to broach the open wounds of chattel slavery; historical and structural racism; the

ever-increasing racial inequality in all aspects of life, includ-

ing education, widening economic and racial injustice, racial profiling, reparations, and White dominance of African studies? Yet, with African Americans, these issues are always part of the unspoken subtext. Perhaps the relationship between White American Africanists and African Americans is too tense, the power and privilege differentials too obvious, and White control too tenuous and precarious. Is it perhaps a bit uncomfortable for a White person in African studies to be face-to-face with African Americans, given this country's racist past and present, which continues to marginalize Afri- can Americans? Is it uncomfortable in a way that it is not with continental Africans and other White Americans? Are African Americans too demanding of their rights as citizens under the rule of law, making them not deferential enough for some? Are these the reasons why little effort is made to re- cruit African Americans into African studies programs? Per- haps it is too difficult to get African Americans, especially the young, to tow the mainstream and respect the powers that be. That African Americans are not interested in African studies is historically and factually inaccurate. Despite the hoopla about multiculturalism in U.S. universities, many predomi- nantly White universities, where the major African studies programs are housed, are, at the very least, neglected programs that may bring about greater diversity. So African studies remains fundamentally White, a microcosm of the larger racial academe.

For African Americans in African studies, the tendency is strong to define Africa as the continent and the diaspora together, inextricably linking Africans by continent of origin, color, and condition. This position has both inherent primor- dial bases and acquired situational bases. Ethnicity, race, and culture, dynamically adapted over time and across space from a common source, create a unifying identity, where historical

and contemporary racist underdevelopment forged by slave trades, internal and external colonialism, neocolonialisms, and globalization have been catalysts of the vast African diaspora. Many African Americans see themselves as bridges linking transnational communities of Africans between the continent and the United States, not completely altruistically. These bridges allow prodigal sons and daughters to go back to their ancestral homes intellectually, psychically, spiritually, financially, and sometimes physically. For the many treated as second-class citizens and refugees without effective equal citizenship and contractual rights in the land of their birth, these relationships anchor individuals by providing strength from the collective.

W.E.B. Du Bois encapsulated all these identities. Du Bois is noted as the African American intellectual who began a strong tradition of African American scholarly interest in Af- rica with his 1896 dissertation 'The Suppression of the African Slave Trade." In this work, he was unrelentingly pro-Africa and pro-human rights. For many of us, Du Bois is the father of global African studies, playing a central role in organizing five Pan-African conferences that brought together Africans from all over the world between 1919 and 1945. Yet, it must be noted that other Africans from the diaspora engaged Africa as scholars and activists before Du Bois. Among them are Martin Delany, Robert Campbell (from Jamaica), and the Reverend Henry Highland Garnett.1 Many clergy and journalists were among the ranks of those writing about Africa, even document- ing African American perspectives toward the European partitioning of Africa in 1884-1885,2 more than a decade before Du Bois earned his doctorate. Du Bois, along with his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, served as a bridge between the diaspora and Africa when they moved from the United States to Ghana in 1961 at the invitation of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. Disillu- sioned by American racism and political harassment, Du Bois denounced his U.S. citizenship and assumed Ghanaian citizenship. Africans worldwide memorialize Du Bois at the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Center for Pan-African Culture in Accra, Ghana. Various directors of the center have come from the continent and the diaspora.

African Americans in the United States have a complex identity, one that is made more perplexing by its duality- they are African by ethnicity and American by birth and citizenship. Situational propositions, personal aspirations, and realistic calculations often prompt African Americans in Af- rican studies to choose or, perhaps more appropriately, to yield to our "American-ness." We yield when what is at stake is deeper entr6e into the White world of African studies, major grants for individual or institutional research, or seats within powerful policy- and decision-making bodies. The bottom line is that our presence and voices will help Africa, and in helping Africa, we help ourselves. Moreover, as Americans, as descendents of enslaved Africans, who con-

20 AFRICAN ISSUES



tributed not only with labor but also with blood, sweat, tears, and life to building this country3 and who fought to be re-

garded as human and to be recognized as citizens, we deserve that entree, perhaps most after Native Americans. The Bamana proverb Do ni don koma4 accurately describes the situation in which many African Americans with strong intellectual and activist identification with continental Africa find themselves. In the United States, we must constantly negotiate a relational environment in which we deny our ontological selves. There is little chance to win in this environment, so we perform damage control and are grateful to merely survive. We detest the beast. Yet, we are sometimes part of it, living in its belly. And some of us grow fat from the beast, always wary of its violent reactions. Do ni don koma means "If you dance backward, your father dies; if you dance forward, your mother dies; if you don't dance, you die."

African Americans in African studies are a self-selected group. Hence, we likely do not represent the diversity of opinions of the larger population of African Americans. Among the larger group are African Americans who prioritize their American-ness, over their African-ness. Some do not acknowledge their African-ness. Some detest their African- ness, especially when they have internalized Euramerican

ideologies. Moreover, de-Africanization has recognizable and

long-term psychological effects. Improper education about Africa and African Americans also contributes to our curious subjective positioning in this society vis-a-vis Africa. The

psychology of learned Black self-hatred in a Eurocentric and America-centric world cannot be dismissed in any genuine attempt to understand Black people's relationships with Af- rica and with themselves.

For continental Africans, a continental definition of Af- rica is rational. Many continental Africans want African Americans to be more American than African so they can

lobby on Africa's behalf5 in the belly of the policymaking beast. This calculation is politically rational. For this group of continental Africans, Africa is the continent only, not the diaspora. This group wants their long lost kin to be Black Americans with fond memories of Africa as their once-home. This group's charge is for Black Americans, with roots in Africa but now citizens of an American homeland, to be a

strong political-pressure group arguing for Africa's benefit. The United States is the political and economic power center of the world, where the consensus of the U.S. Treasury, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund makes major decisions that affect Africa. Continental Africans want Black Americans to stay connected to Africa politically and economically. The calculations made by continental Africans may be realistic, but their assessment of the power of African Americans as a lobbying force may be overly optimistic; so, too, their belief in the U.S. government's responsiveness to lobbying on Africa's behalf.

Other continental Africans define Africa differently, see- ing Africa as both the continent and the diaspora. This group6 carries the torch of many of their immediate forebears, such as Kwame Nkrumah and Nnamdi Azikiwe, who were staunch Pan-Africanists. Many in this group are leading intellectuals who continue to carve intellectual and activist spaces for other Africans from the diaspora to pursue the study of Africa further. They challenge the White African studies establish- ment to deal with racism and call for African Americans to keep close intellectual and emotional ties.7 This group clearly recognizes the ability of African Americans to see inside-out and outside-in.8 Ayi Kwei Armah is perhaps chief of intellectual healers for many of us, as he unites African Americans and continental Africans through Ast and Asar's revolution- ary resurrection of Afrocentric African studies in Africa in Osiris Rising.9 It boggles the mind that Armah's most recent novels and piercing social critiques are rare finds in U.S. universities, libraries, and bookstores.

New Directions

New directions for African Studies must navigate old paths and revisit the issue of race. In doing so, the field can then acknowledge the strong historical intellectual tradition of African Americans' engagement with Africa. Otherwise, we continue to move in the same circle, with the same antago- nisms, complaints, and divisions. Acknowledgment of the past, however, only sets the record straight. Beyond acknowledgment, we must redefine African studies in a way that places Africa at the center of our intellectual foci, with an opening for all voices, including African American voices on their own terms. What follows are not recommendations. Instead, I recount movements, events, and progressive actions already taking place, some of which I am intimately involved in. Moreover, there is little need for more recommendations, for we all know what must be done. The more important question for many of us is "Why is African studies not doing what must be done?"

More African Americans in African studies are shifting more resolutely toward a redefinition of Africa that is in line with the definition of elder Pan-Africanist African Americans and continental Africans such as Du Bois, Nkrumah, and Azikiwe. Here, Africa is defined as the continent and its diaspora. Pan-African frameworks are being used more frequently to look at the problems, prospects, and possibilities of global Africa. Perhaps it is as Claude Ake suggested, that our mar- ginalization would force us to look inside, back at our own indigenous knowledge systems.10 Additionally, African American scholars not specifically trained in African studies are using Pan-African frameworks to discover the similarities of Black life on the continent and in the diaspora.11 To carry out this work, they return to Africa intellectually to dig up Africa's vast oral and written intellectual traditions. African




Americans in the African Studies Association may be following the leads of organizations such as the African Heritage Studies Association and political science's National Confer- ence of Black Political Scientists in this regard.

Some African Americans and continental Africans are revisiting proposals for merging African studies with African American/Black studies, a difficult endeavor, as African American studies programs generally are plagued with problems. Many of the problems are rooted in historical and institutional racism, a lack of autonomy, inadequate leadership, and struggle over ethnic, paradigmatic, or ideological control of the program and curriculum. The long-term viability of merging African studies with African American studies programs is plausible and inviting; yet the politics of race, ethnicity, and control in the halls of academia prevent movement to this end.

African Americans in African studies, especially those of us who teach courses related to globalization and underdevelopment,12 must more forcefully demand that African studies confront the issue of race in African studies. African Ameri- can students, who are understandably puzzled about why the academy neglects to raise race when it is so prominent in their lives, prompt much of this demand. I am a graduate of a historically Black college or university (HBCU) and a former lecturer at two such institutions; and at these HBCUs, race is prioritized as a variable for teaching about Africa and underdevelopment. It is the norm, alongside the classic work of Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and the less popular but important Manning Marable work, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.

African Americans in African studies are studying, con- ducting research, and writing about Africa, and some are moving back to the continent. Ghana's recently passed Right to Abode Law makes it legal for Africans from the diaspora to settle in Ghana and, in time, apply for citizenship. African Americans from academia and other walks of life have moved or are contemplating doing so. They in- clude families, individuals, entrepreneurs, members of churches, nongovernmental organization (NGO) activists, employees of multinational corporations, private consul- tants, spouses of Ghanaians, "repatriated Africans" such as Rastafarians and Garveyites, artists, those who sufferer from midlife crises, the economically privileged, the disillu- sioned, and retirees.13

A greater number of African American NGOs are also setting up projects and programs in Africa, particularly for education and women's income-generating activities. The National Council of Negro Women, founded in 1935, has a history of projects with continental women's NGOs. Now, younger and more diverse African American NGOs have shifted to Africa. I was recently asked for advice about which women's organizations on the continent African American NGOs ought to focus on, given their limited resources, so that

these African American groups might also learn more about the continent's history, cultures, philosophies, and ways of life.

African American students, particularly graduate students, often inquire about research possibilities, internships, and funding opportunities in Africa. In 1996-1997, I organized 22 internships in Africa;14 more than half the interns were African American. Initially, I began organizing the internships for eight African American students who were Ford Foundation fellows on a special program targeted to increase the number of African Americans in African studies.15 Near the application deadline, only two African American students had applied for admission into the African studies program and only one of the two for the Ford Foundation fellowship. Unconvinced that adequate recruitment of African American students had been done, I assumed the responsibility of re- cruiting African American students, particularly from HBCUs; from my home institution, Ohio University; and from the neighboring institution, my alma mater, Ohio State University. In less than one month, the African studies program had received more applications from qualified African Americans than the Ford Foundation grant could support. As I organized internships in Africa for these eight students, other African American students and their parents requested that I assist them with getting to Africa, too. The students I placed in internships were from Ohio and Ohio State, plus one from Howard University. The internships that I created were in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Senegal, and several were with organizations whose Pan-African leader- ships expressed interest in interns who were African American. Six of the eight African American Ford Foundation fellows completed their African studies degrees, and one will soon. Some are in doctoral programs; others are working with non- profit organizations, media, and financial institutions.

African Americans are also Black Americanizing (perhaps even re-Africanizing, some might argue) Africa in the sphere of popular culture with strong influences in dress, mu- sic, and language.16 Much of this growth of popular culture is a product of U.S. global dominance of media industries that export African American culture, even in forms that resist the mainstream. Many of the transnational changes that involve continental Africa and African Americans are taking place in the grass roots among youth, with whom many in the academy are not in tune.

Continental Africans from grassroots community organizations are also working with youth from Mississippi to Cali- fornia, examining issues of "miseducation," lack of access to schools, school violence, and high levels of young Black male incarceration.17 Global African youth are advancing radical agendas to express their rights and attempt to secure their futures, including reparations for past wrongs.

African American students are also revisiting the age-old yet timeless question, "How do we bridge the gap between the

22 AFRICAN ISSUES



continent and the diaspora?" Of all student programs related to Africa held at Ohio University in 2001-2002, "Bridging the

Gap" programs drew the largest number of students both from the continent and the diaspora, as well as the largest number of African faculty. African American students' interest in African studies is clearly established, but they cannot partake of what is not being offered. Are we going to respond to their calls?

African American students, from my experience as a student and as a teacher, will continue to make these calls. They will continue to exercise their right to know. They will confront themselves as Black youth vis-a-vis Africa and the world. Our answers, I hope, will not merely lead them down the same old

paths we have walked in the last few decades, only to be

stopped at the well-known impasse. Perhaps we should follow them to new directions. One clear lesson is that they will not live in intellectual exile while waiting on African studies and

larger academia to provide answers. They will create alterna- tive learning experiences. To understand more about new directions for African studies, we must listen carefully to the voices of the youth. Who knows what old hats might learn?

My deepest thanks and respect to Soyini Madison for critical conversations, insights, and careful reading and to Rita Ku- mah for skillful proofing.

Notes 1. Elliot Skinner, African Americans and U.S. Policy To-

ward Africa, 1850-1924: In Defense of Black Nationality (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1992).

2. Sylvia Jacobs, The African Nexus: Black American Per-

spectives on the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880- 1920 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).

3. Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The

Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

4. A graduate student from Mali, Beidy Sow, in my U.S. and Africa class, shared this proverb and its translation with the class in 2001.

5. A graduate student from Sudan, Asma Abdel Halim, made this statement as we shared a panel at a workshop in the 1990s.

6. Key among this group is historian and novelist Paul Ti-

yambe Zeleza.

7. See Thandika Mkandawire, "The Social Sciences in Af- rica: Breaking Local Barriers and Negotiating Interna- tional Presence," African Studies Review 40, no. 2 (Sep- tember 1997): 15-36.

8. See Pearl Robinson and Elliot Skinner, eds., Transformation

and Resiliency in Africa As Seen by Afro-American Scholars (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983).

9. See Ayi Kwei Armah, Osiris Rising: A Novel of Africa Past, Present, and Future (Popenguine, Senegal: Per Ankh, 1995).

10. Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1997).

11. Pearl Robinson, "Area Studies in Search of Africa," forthcoming.

12. Lisa Aubrey, "Moving beyond Collective Learning from the Global North and Bringing Humanity Back to Itself: Pan- Africanism, Women, and Co-Development," Vimut Shiksha Special Issue: Unfolding Learning Societies, Experiencing the Possibilities (Udaipur, India: Shikshantar, People's Insti- tute for Rethinking Education and Development, 2002) and http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/ls3_aubrey.htm; Al- fred Zack-Williams, "Development and Diaspora: Sepa- rate Concerns," Review of African Political Economy 65 (1995): 349-358.

13. All of this I discuss in greater detail in a forthcoming pub- lication titled "African Americans from the United States Living in Ghana: Who Are We? Why Are We Here? Are We in Search of Identity?" in Ebere Owudiwe, ed., The Consciousness of Africa in the Diaspora, forthcoming.

14. See http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/-ga320592/aubrey/advising.htm for more information.

15. The following is a list of the students who were Ford Foundation fellows and interns and their placements: Kenyatta Alben, Kenya, Limuru Girls School and the Daily Nation Newspaper; Merinda Aubrey, Ghana, Abibiman Academy and Seventh Day Adventist Teach- ers' Training College; Terri Cross, Kenya, African Coun- cil for Communication Education and African Centre for Technology Studies; Shane Dickinson, Senegal, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Af- rica (CODESRIA); Derek Oby, Senegal, CODESRIA; Lena Robinson, Tanzania, Regional Enterprise Devel- opment Institute, and Kenya, African Council for Com- munication Education; Rashiki Kuykendall, Ghana, Abibiman Academy and Seventh Day Adventist Teach- ers' Training College; and Chris Ntukogu, Ghana, As- antehene Palace and Sankofa Development Organization.

16. For the influence on language, see Alamin Mazrui, "Pan- Africanism in the Age of Globalization: The Linguistic Agenda," Literary Griot: International Journal of Black Expressive Culture Studies 11, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 69-87.

17. Much appreciation to Coumba Toure and Raj Sethia for late-night, in-depth discussions in Udaipur, India, in De- cember 2002 on this topic.




lisa aubrey, african americans in the united states and african studies

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