The African Redefined: The Problems of Collective Black Identity

Abstract

In 1960, Wellesley College invited eminent scholars (Africanists!) and diplomats to discuss the question: “Does Africa Exist?” The symposium was organized to resolve “Whether or not Africa really exists as any sort of political, economic, cultural, or other concept.“ The challenge facing the experts was to determine whether Africa constitutes an entity, whether it has a real ethnic, geographical, economic, cultural, or political identity. Fortunately, most of the speakers agreed with the late Ralph Bunche that “There is an Africa seen as a continent, as a physical entity which takes concrete political and economic shape.“ That Africa, Bunche argued, is exploding onto the international political scene with an increasingly militant and demonstrable renaissance in terms of heightened and unified aspirations for true selfdetermination, human rights, rapid economic transformation, and the assertion of a collective dignity and unity for all peoples of African descent.

The African diasporic community in contemporary Ireland: Intersections of ascriptive and circumstantial identities

“…Joseph Conrad illustrates this representation with his contextualization of his novella, Heart of Darkness (1902/1995), in the Congo, which he employs to personify Africa as the epicentre of universal darkness. Since Conrad, the image of sub-Saharan Africa has been reproduced in Western thought as Black Africa, and if deconstructed in modern terminology, ‘Africa belongs to the Black race’ (Anise, 1974: 28).…”

“…Undeniably, such depictions have been shaped by the scientific taxonomy of the globe that reflects the logic of development, geography and human physiology. This also produced the myth of the Great Sahara Divide, whereby North Africa was disconnected from the African continent and then inserted in a mid-eastern, pan-Arabist, Muslim civilization and culture (Anise, 1974). Thenceforth, Africa became the same as sub-Saharan Africa, a reductionism that essentialized African identity around assumptions of blackness and ethnocultural uniformity.…”

“…European imperialism wielded the power of distortion that forced ‘Africans into distorting’ identities (Ranger, 1996: 273), insularizing the continent as an ethnic and racial monolith. According to Anise (1974: 27), the Western world has habitually decided standards for what represents African identity, whereby black people are portrayed as a naturally inferior race and as Africa’s natural inhabitants. Undeniably, such depictions have been shaped by the scientific taxonomy of the globe that reflects the logic of development, geography and human physiology.…”

African Ideology and Belief: A Survey

“…2/3, June/September 1981. (Anise, 1973). Nevertheless, they depend upon scholars to represent their views and their experiences as matter for debate in the different branches of African studies.…”

A Black Republic: Citizenship and naturalisation requirements in Liberia

“…This conclusion is, as scholars such asAnise (1974) have pointed out, in light of Africa's ethnoracial diversity, problematic. There are, after all, a significant number of non-Black communities in the African continent, including but not limited to, Arabs, Berber, Tuaregs, and Sahrawis in Northern Africa, Indians in Eastern and Southern Africa, and Lebanese in West Africa.…”