African Identity in the diaspora outside Africa

Learning Objective: To identify the image representations of the African in the diaspora outside Africa

• Meaning of Being Black

 

• Blackness conveys the African identity and the subjective body of stigma rooted in slavery and slave trade.

 

• To be treated as non-person

 

• In Palestine, for example, a black person’s life is not worth the same as that of an Arab (non-black).

 

• To represent a standard of low status and inferiority including low intellectual capacity

 

• To experience the condition of marginalization, suppression, and dehumanization; in essence a condition of powerlessness, as in Brazil, for example

 

• To be subjected to psychological torture by having your identity and self concept defined by others as villain and outcast; sometimes, defined in a seemingly positive way for manipulation.

 

• For example, Ethiopian Jews in Israel being given more economic opportunities than Arab Israeli.

 

• “It’s a paradox to be Black because you are always living and fighting against how other people are trying to define you and their stereotypes of who you are or what you should be.” (Carole Parker Terhune)

 

• For Black men, they would be considered in historical and social constructions as potential threat to society.

 

• Thus being Black is to be considered born criminal, and conversely committing a criminal offence by that status and life condition.

 

• Being Black embodies the belief that “one black person is all black people” in case of negative behavior. In terms of excellence or positive behavior, the Black individual is an exception to the general group.

 

• In relation, being Black means being misrepresented and victimized by being stereotyped.

 

• To cultivate the tendency to adopt a changing sense of natural identity, for example, “becoming Arab” in Palestine.

 

• Obeying a standard of rules much higher than that of society

 

• The meaning of being Black for some Black professionals, such as professors working in predominantly white settings, is to develop inherent conditions of strength, power and resilience in their activities, in response to the prevailing atmosphere of resentment and contempt.

 

 

• New Identities

 

• (i) double consciousness – W.E.B. Du Bois

 

• The condition of mental challenge influenced by the contradictory forces of possessing African heritage and simultaneously being overwhelmed by European cultural perspective and values

 

• (ii) creolization – hybridization

 

• The condition of biological evolution from African ancestry involving inter-racial union, particularly African and European

 

• Also captures the situation of African descendants abroad having no affiliation with Africa, yet operating in the context of the theoretical official existence of trans-ethnic national identity dominated by the practical distinction in society between the people of African ancestry and those of non-African heritage.

 

• For example, Mauritius
• Partly applicable to the northern Sudanese people in their relations with Arabs

 

• (iii-a) virtual whiteness

 

• A condition of whitenized Africans, arising from cross-breeding (social engineering; racial democracy; biological racism) involving progressive whitening of African descendants in a predominantly Black population, in order to “improve the inferior African blood.”

 

• Thus, Black women in Brazil, for example, were enjoined to seek “clean wombs” or lighter progeny. (Paixao; Nascimento 866)

 

• (iii-b) nacoes (nations)

 

• Ethnic identity as well as pan-ethnic kinship based on religion, and centred on retention of African cultural traditions

 

• Nacoes are articulated through candomble, being transformation and development of African religious cultures, for example, among Afro-Bahian population in Bahia and Salvador in Brazil.

 

• (iv) rap music

 

• As part of hip-hop culture, rap music developed among African-American youth in the 1980s through early 1990s.

 

• The music and associated dance, style of clothing, and language talking the poor socio-economic conditions of Blacks constitutes assertion and development of African identity in popular culture, as music is “often a source of information about one’s group (or other groups), and it can also be a (re)affirmation of one’s identity.” (Sullivan 616)

 

• (v-a) diaspora consciousness

 

• A sense of shared African identity, based essentially on common experience of racism, marginalization, and domination

 

• A sense of shared African history, culture, and heritage including ethnic identity

 

• A sense of shared African identity, based on racial extraction

 

 

• (v-b) diaspora consciousness – challenges

 

• Within some African communities abroad such as African-Asians, diasporic consciousness is weak.

 

• They lack geographic concentration for development of effective Black consciousness.

 

• Also, they lack memory of African cultural traits such as African music.

 

• Besides, there is no leadership to express the interests and values of African consciousness, as elites of black extraction have claimed local identity.

 

• Nevertheless, Bedouins of African descent in Gaza and Negev (Palestine) identify with all black people whom they consider fellow “khali” or one’s “mother’s brother.”