The Post-Colonial State & The Search for Economic Self-Sufficiency: Annotated Bibliography

Martin, Robert. “The Use of State Power to Overcome Underdevelopment.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 18, 2 (1982): 315-325, http://www.jstor.org/.

Martin begins by bemoaning the state of African studies: mired in Marxist theory. Martin wants to see Africanists – or at least Africanist Marxists – develop praxis: a merging of theory and practice in which each informs and furthers the other. The bulk of Martin's article is a review, defense, and critique of Robert Seidman's eccentric “handbook on how to use state power to overcome underdevelopment” The State, Law and Development (New York: St. Martin's, 1978) (Martin, 316). Seidman offers a technical, even mechanical, approach to problems of law, and argues that it is precisely practical problems of law (such as how to create laws to combat corruption) that should occupy African political theorists and politicians. Martin defends Seidman against a series of anticipated theoretical criticisms from Marxism, such as that revolution is necessary (the defense is that while this is a nice thought, basically no class capable of and motivated to lead a revolution exists [as of 1982]).

Metz, Steven. “In Lieu of Orthodoxy: The Socialist Theories of Nkrumah and Nyerere.” The Journal of Nodern African Studies, 20, 3 (1982): 377-392, http://www.jstor.org/.

Metz explores the socialist theories of Nkrumah and Nyerere, using their degree of Marxist “orthodoxy” as a litmus test. Metz recognizes that for both men, socialist theory and practice were inextricable. Nonetheless Metz proposes to abstract their theory for examination. Both men's theories share a conception of the problems of the post-colonial state, an analysis of the causes and approach to the transition to socialism, and a definition of socialist society. He finds that a substantial distinction between them is that Nkrumah is more orthodox, and generally easier to classify as in the Marxist camp; Nyerere is a bit of a cypher to Metz. Nyerere proposed socialism because he wished to evolve a particular moral situation which he believed socialism would engender. Nkrumah, on the other, believed that socialism was a step towards a communistic state, and that it would follow inevitably once the influence of colonialism had been eliminated through pan-African unity. Thus, Nkrumah was like Lenin and Mao in that he adapted a fairly “orthodox” Marxist material-dialectical perspective to the specific “national” conditions in which he found himself. Nkrumah believed that colonialism had so impacted and expanded any African community's understanding of its place in the world that it was necessary to confront and transform colonialism as a continent, not even as a region within that continent. Nkrumah's relatively radical position certainly must have been a factor in his ouster from Ghanaian government after only a few years. Nyerere, by contrast, led Tanzania for a quarter-century. Metz suggests that Nyerere might be viewed by some Marxists as a sell-out because he was willing to compromise with capitalism.

Nursey-Bray, P.F. “Tanzania: The Development Debate.” African Affairs, 79, 314 (1980): 55-78, http://www.jstor.org/.

Nursey-Bray states that while Tanzania is not earthly perfection, yet the seemingly “Arcadian” vision of Nyerere has in some substantial degree been actualized in Tanzania. Nursey-Bray recognizes that the African situation generally must be understood as neo-colonial, so one must not think of a diametrical opposition of neo-colonialism and socialism, but rather of a spectrum in which neo-colonial governments tend toward either capitalism or socialism. His chief criticism of Tanzanian success has to do with the self-proclaimed goals of self-reliance, nationalization of key industries and commerce, and Ujamaa vijijini; Nursey-Bray proposes that Tanzania has made progress towards these goals, but has certainly not achieved them, being for example (in 1980) dependent upon foreign aid, and moving increasingly into the sphere of international capitalism.

Nyerere, Julius K. Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism. London: Oxford UP, 1968.

Nyerere speaks for himself in this collection of seminal writings which Nyerere calls “essays” although the collection includes the Arusha Declaration, which is a basic mission statement for the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Throughout the documents collected in this volume, Nyerere proposes that a traditional African community, at least in an idealized or generalized form, exemplified an exalted moral state in which unselfishness and community spirit directed individual decisions. Nyerere considers this to be a kind of innate socialism, which colonialism has pushed to the side but not destroyed. By progressively reducing the influence of colonialism through reforms of government and the economic order, this innate socialism will blossom in the hearts and minds of the people of Tanzania, and a new era of true prosperity and fellowship will be inaugurated. This may make Nyerere sound like a new-age guru, a bit too precious for the brutal realities of post-colonial Africa. The similarity of his general tone to the Satyagraha writings of Mohandis Gandhi is notable.

Willetts, Peter. “The Politics of Uganda as a One-Party State.” African Affairs, 74, 296 (1975): 278-299, http://www.jstor.org/.

Willetts details the career of Ugandan President Obote, noting that accusations made against him of being of limited intelligence were wrong but at the same time emphasizing political mistakes made by Obote. Willetts concludes that while Obote had socialist leanings, whether his government could truly be said to have been socialist rather than nationalist may be a matter of opinion. Willetts particularly emphasizes the novelty of Obote's suggestions for electoral structures in a one-party nation like Uganda and the difficulty Obote had in controlling the Ugandan military, which ultimately was his own undoing.

Decolonization / Liberation through Violence

Colonial peoples of Africa often resorted to violent measures in overcoming colonial rule. This is unsurprising on several counts. First there is a simple human equation, legitimized to some degree as philosophy in the writings of Franz Fanon, that violence begets violence. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”: Fanon presumes that violence done to the violent will provide a catharsis from which a non-violent situation may finally emerge. Second, violence is to some degree a matter of perception: tens of thousands of indigenous “insurgents” sent to internment camps or killed by colonial government forces versus mere tens of white settlers killed albeit brutally: which is the greater violence? The extremity of the killings committed to by the Mau Mau in Kenya accelerated the process of decolonization in fact.

The equation that violence begets violence has a correlate: that violence tends to escalate. The violence of colonialism did not taper off through time, but was transmuted into other forms. The agencies committing violence might not be de jure colonialists, but corporations and banks controlling production and finances may also commit and engender violence. Race prejudice and ethnic unrest existing from before, or created during the colonial period, also foster physical and affective violence. When those experiencing physical or moral violence, inequities of law, and so on, have little investment in the state or in commerce, have the notion that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by committing violence, “terrorism” may become a fact of daily life.

But although some kinds of violence can have silver linings for capital, “terrorism” tends to disrupt production and close markets. So, the agents of those with investment in the state and commerce, whether they be police or revenuers or soldiers, take as their mission the suppression of insurgency. Soon, even if they begin intending not to take violent measures, they are infected by the dialectic of violence begetting violence. Presumably, this ends in a synthesis wherein violence is either eliminated or contained, but this synthesis may require sacrifice of violent impulse, which is a major demand to place on those who having been robbed see the opportunity to win back what had been theirs.

Nationalism and Nationalist Movements

One great problem of nationalism in Africa is that virtually all national boundaries in Africa were imposed by European colonizers. Therefore, any decolonizing national movement must confront these boundaries and determine whether to retain them or to follow some other guideline in determining national limits. Often, the boundaries imposed by Europeans were determined or strongly influenced by geographical factors. Particularly in West Africa a quick glance at a map shows that national boundaries relate to watersheds.

But the word “nation” implies a community of birth, a common ancestry, which often is not present. Ethnic rivalries and divisions were small concerns in the European division of Africa, but in the business of decolonization these rivalries and divisions could become forefront issues, bringing about in some cases the redrawing of national boundaries. Common experience of colonial oppression might not be sufficient to form a unified national identity.

Franz Fanon, based largely on his experience of the decolonization of Algiers, argued in his 1963 The Wretched of the Earth that decolonization is a naturally violent act, and that the violence of decolonization is not even a regrettable necessity, but a psychologically positive effort which fundamentally heals the oppressed, and which makes, in Fanon's frequent phrase “the last first”. Fanon's argument won broad support in African nationalist movements.

Fanon also argued that individuality was a notion imposed by colonizers which decolonizers could not afford to adopt. Since all with rise or be killed as one, egoism or individuality must be abandoned in the quest for national liberation. This resonates strongly with the East African emphasis on Umoja.

But what constitutes a “nation”, and to what degree is it possible to forge a “national identity” out of the colonial experience? Such an identity would seem to be more negative than positive. Why should the pre-colonial experience be forgotten, and yet at the same time, how can it be reclaimed without reviving rivalries that will set back the people of a “nation” unduly?

Pan-African movements modelled on Pan-Arab movements might be an answer, but they also create complications of sovereignty and constitution. I must admit that I do not have any clear notions of ways to solve the problem of nationalism that seem realistic. Perhaps regional confederations leading ultimately to the dissolution of national boundaries, something like the experience of Europe, is worth exploration.

Changing Identities

During colonial rule in East and Central Africa, the colonial rulers and their associates imposed identities on the indigenous populations. Notably, in this process the rulers and their associates also imposed new identities upon themselves in relationship to the identities they provided their subordinates. In reading the articles for this week, I was particularly struck by the similarities between construction of identities in Africa under the influence of European activity and such construction in North America. The consideration of the words “tribe” and “ethnicity” reminded me of the categorization exercises of Herodotus and Tacitus, and the racial divisions employed by the Hellenic-period Greeks (in, say, the numerous “Alexandrias”) or the later Romans. Divide et imperii, after all, is an old expression.

But “dividing and ruling” is only one aspect of colonial identity-making. There is also conglomeration. Both division and composition are illustrated in the work of Christian missionaries who strive to translate the Bible into local languages. Translation is a specialty of Christians, but Buddhists also have been great translators – and perhaps unsurprisingly, the work of conversion, involving translation, had led to restructuring of identities in other regions. I think particularly of the reformulation of central Asian groups under the influence of Mahayana missionaries in the 7^th century, or the effect of Chinese Buddhist missionaries in Korea in the 10^th. In these cases, as in the operations of the Jesuit Fathers in what is now Canada in the 17^th century, and as in those of missionaries in eastern and central Africa in the 19^th, decisions were made about orthography and the limits of dialect which were artificial, even strictly unnatural. Yet these decisions became binding.

Linking supposed dialectal distinctions to ethnicities or “tribes”, communities which formerly would not have self-identified were created, and in some cases gained some degree of permanency. But again, multiple dialects make uniformity and conformity more difficult to enforce. King James I knew this, and ordered a common, Authorized Version of the Bible which also created an “authorized version” of England forged from the many diverse dialects of English then existing. The process of creating the “King James Version” is strikingly like that of the creation of the Shona language in effect by legislative fiat, as recounted in Herbert Chimhundu's “Early Missionaries and the Ethnolinguistic Factor...”.

Language seems always to have a political component, as a Basque or Flemish Belgian or Quebecois might attest readily. Language is not any absolute guide to culture, but it is indicative. “German” had no “official” form until about the time of the Brothers' Grimm, which coincides fairly closely to the unification of Germany in the second half of the 19^th century, and “German” scholars and politicians had struggled since at least the 1500s to identify just what it meant to be a “German”. This problem seems not to have been resolved by the creation of a German state, so why would one expect such identifications to be any easier in another country similarly diverse? In reading Wildenthall's article on “Race, Gender, and Citizenship” I was struck by the clash between the traditional German sense of “right” (in this case the right to citizenship of every German man, and the conference of that right through marriage to his wife and through paternity to his children) and the concern for racial purity. The right is tied to ancient (or at least mediaeval) law, while the notion of racial purity seems to have been transferred from the distinction drawn between persons speaking the German language (in one of its many versions) and persons speaking other languages.

Distinguishing oneself from others can confer benefits, but can also have a substantial cost. I was almost astonished to learn that the frequently proposed distinction between the French and British colonial models turns out (in Goerg's appraisal, anyway), first of all not to have been that great, and second not to have involved so much physical separation of Europeans from “Natives” as I would have expected. In Guinea and Sierra Leone, at any rate, assimilation seems to have been the norm in both the British and the French colonial approaches. Notably, at the turn of the 19th/20^th centuries the general practice of assimilation was altered by, in the case of the British, an “hygienic” separation of the Europeans into “Hill Stations” on an Indian model, and in that of the French, an economic separation also initiated with concerns over fire safety and hygiene. These separations of “Europeans” from “Natives” had a racial or racist aspect, yet two things are surprising: first, that the British remained mostly “assimilated” rather than segregated, and that the French segregationist laws which seem perhaps more reasonable and “humanistic” on their face yet created a greater segregation than the British policies. This is a reversal of the standard interpretation of the distinction between the British and the French in respect to colonization, and I am now inclined to re-evaluate the materials on the relationship between the British and French, respectively, and the “Native” North Americans.

The general conclusion of the authors of the assigned articles is that the notion of “tribe” and “tribalism” are conveniences of colonial prejudice which sadly have persisted because they remain politically useful. The apparent fixity of “tribal” affiliation, however, is merely apparent. Tribal associations almost inevitably will change through time. They rarely have “objective” contents. But if “tribalism” itself is a mere illusion – however real the results of “tribal”association – how are people to identify themselves so as to receive the benefits (if also the responsibilities) of human community? In my own view, the ultimate answer is an effective global union, with citizenship being membership in the human species. But what to do in the meanwhile?

Colonialism and (Under-)Development in Africa

Note: Please keep in mind the basic principle that I am responding here to a series of questions from a seminar syllabus before engaging in the assigned readings; this is therefore an "off-the-cuff" pre-test of my understandings about colonialism in Africa. My reaction after reading the assigned material would be heavily influenced by Walter Rodney's under-development thesis.

The colonial administrations of African nations introduced cash-crop economies because their private interests in profit were served by this. The subsistence agriculture which characterized much of Africa prior to colonization provided few or no marketable products, and might not even provide sufficient calories to support non-agricultural primary industries such as forestry or mining. European settlers in Africa fell into three basic types: the Boer-type, who were farmers who came to establish multiple-crop farming communities basically analogous to European settlements in North America; the Planter-type, such as those who founded tea and coffee plantations in East Africa; and the administrative type, like missionaries, government officials, and mine supervisors. But Europeans were not the only settlers in Africa.

Indians and Chinese came in large numbers especially to eastern and southern Africa to work as indentured servants on plantations or in mines. Two happy results of this, not mentioned in the readings, are Gandhi-ji's legal practice in Durban and Bunny Chow, the South African dish of curry served in a hollowed out loaf of bread. The general result of these settlements, however, has been at least as much suffering as happiness. White settlers owned disproportionately larger plots of land, and better land, than indigenous peoples, and the Asian settlers, while underclass, further exacerbated the land crisis.

Zimbabwe has experimented with reapportionment of lands taken from white settlers without real success in improvement of the general population. Nyerere recognized special problems of land apportionment in a diverse state such as Tanzania. Overharvesting is a serious liability for long-term development, but is a common problem because of market inequities between end-consumer and raw producer. Few or no post-colonial governments have responded effectively to the problems bequeathed them by the colonial administrations.

Imagining Africa: Representing the Other

The theme title for this week suggests already the epistemological ground: Africa seen from the outside, Africa envisioned by non-African. I am not an African in any usual sense of the term, although my mitochondria record a connection to that place through my foremothers, so I look at Africa inevitably as an outsider. I am a sympathetic outsider, but an outsider nonetheless.

In the 1960s I was a child fascinated by the natural world, and to me Africa meant mainly “the place of the game animals”. The notion of Africa as “jungle” was really foreign to me; I never held it. I knew that in “The Congo” (to me a region rather than a sovereign state) the forests were often tangled with undergrowth. Of the people in Africa I had somewhat conflicting knowledge. On the one hand were men known only by their last names: Nkruma, Nyerere, Fanon, Nassar, and on the other were the “aborigines”: peoples like the !Kung, BaMbuti, and Masai. The men were seen as individuals, at podiums, attended by staff, in uniforms or clean, conservative clothing. My parents and grandparents were very interested in them, and were active in encouraging Americans to learn about Africa and to contribute in some way to “improvement of life” there. As a child I did not question the underlying assumption (supported by news footage of famine and warfare in Africa) that Africans required “improvement of life”. Yet the “aborigines” presented by National Geographic and UNICEF materials seemed to have a relatively happy existence, and from my perspective they had a far more aesthetically attractive way of life than we had in suburban Pennsylvania.

The first film I saw as a child – on television – was Zulu, and I was profoundly influenced by it, and by what I could gather about the Zulu people from the few sources available to me, including Lord Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys, in which he expresses deep admiration for Zulu courage and endurance (while also laughing at his ability to “outdance” them). I had several sets of plastic figures of Zulu men, some drumming, others armed with spears and distinctive lens-shaped shields. Notably, many Zulus at the battle depicted in the movie Zulu were armed with rifles, and so the plastic figures might be said to be expressing a “primitivizing”, rather than a realistic, vision. I certainly perceived the Zulu as “noble savages”.

My childhood interests in natural history, primatology, paleontology, and anthropology were reinforced by studies in high school and college. In high school we studied the outlines of African history. I always found the information about the pre-colonial kingdoms the most interesting: Benin and Mali I found particularly interesting. We also read The Heart of Darkness and an interpretive work Conrad and the Congo In college, I began listening to African music, in part because so many of the European and American musicians my friends and I enjoyed were listening to and borrowing from African music. King Sunny Ade was my favorite in part because of his ensemble's use of talking drums. I have played drums since I was three, and African drumming (perhaps it does not need mention) sets a high standard.

I was especially stimulated by a course in African oral and written literature, for which I read a dozen novels by African authors, including Laarbi Laayachi's A Life Full of Holes, Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence, and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. My political views tended to the left, and I was not surprised to read many variations on colonial oppression. The instructor of the course did not assume that we students were familiar with Africa geography and history, and made us practice identification of the national boundaries and capitals until we all had them memorized.

My circumstances kept bringing me into contact with Africans, especially, curiously enough, Zulus. I worked in a summer camp one year with a woman named Ntombizanele Sithebe. I was disgusted to find that no-one else on staff would even attempt to pronounce her name correctly. Instead, she became at first “Tommy” and then, when she protested that she was certainly not going to tolerate “Tommy”, but if Ntombizanele was too difficult, we could call her “Ntodozi” meaning “Cherie”, she became instead “Dozy”. Having an interest in etymology and having just studied linguistics (and being naturally sympathetic to people with long names), I had no particular difficulty in pronouncing her name, which means “No More Boys”. Her mother, apparently, wanted a daughter after something like eight sons. That was about all I ever learned about her.

One of my anthropology-major friends spent half a year in Kenya with traditional Kikuyus. She said that she thought that I would “make a good Kikuyu” on the grounds that at any rate the pastoralists she lived with were in harmony with their surroundings. To get me started on the right track she insisted that I model a cotton kikoi kilt, which caused a bit of a sensation on campus when I wore it to class. I think it may have been the hiking boots that clashed. And in fairness, a dhoti or a Scottish kilt probably would have raised eyebrows, too. Americans just are not ready for men in skirts.

After college, I spent a year as a professional musician and then entered Lancaster Theological Seminary. There, I met a fellow musician, Ned Banda from South Africa, who was also of Zulu ancestry on his father's side. For the better part of a year we were very close. He had been permanently crippled by poor medical care in infancy, resulting from his birth “in Township”, so that he had to wear a clumsy brace on his leg. However, he was a determined and good-humored fellow, a great conversationalist and excellent musician, who was also elected class president his freshman year at F&M. I lost contact with Ned when I moved to Chicago to continue graduate studies in religion. But in Chicago, Africa was still inescapable.

In the dormitory at Chicago Theological Seminary, my room happened to be immediately next to the main entrance, and I generally kept my window open, so that people locked out of the building often called for me to come and let them in. One day, an unfamiliar man appeared at the window, his remarkably round face marked with chevron-shaped scars on the cheeks. He needed to speak with the building supervisor, but the supervisor wasn't home at the moment, so I invited the new fellow in for a meal. He looked around my small room and laughed when he saw one of the books on my shelf: D.O. Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Demons in Wole Soyinke's translation. “We had to read that in primary school!” he said. He was surprised that I knew of it.

He had been born Folorunsho Ogundele (“Servant of God” was how he explained the name), and he had at one time been a candidate for kingship in Nigeria, which explained the distinctive patterns of scars on his cheeks, but his parents converted to Islam when he was a pre-teen, at which point his father and he were disqualified. He was an ardent Muslim until he was around fourteen, at which point he converted to Christianity, changed his name to Cornelius, and was cast out of his parents' home. He then lived in various missions for years before coming to the States. Notably, despite his long separation from his Ife Yoruba roots, when a man from a rival ethnic group, the Hausa, if memory serves me, came to seminary the following year, the two were very cool to each other although obviously struggling to maintain the proper “Christian fellowship”.

When I returned to Lancaster County from seminary, I became involved with environmental activism and through several organizations I met a woman from Zimbabwe whose (white) family were displaced by the Zimbabwean government during reapportionment. Although her family had been scattered, she returned to Zimbabwe for many years as a director and later an assistant at a women's shelter, from about 1995 she had been exiled from the country of her birth. She was one of four or five white Africans I have known, all but one of whom have left Africa permanently.

Over the past two or three years I have expanded my experiences of African art, especially bronze sculpture and architecture, and music. It is almost impossible to view contemporary African music videos and not experience close and heartfelt expressions of political opinion, sometimes discernible even without translation. I try to interest my children in these videos, but they tire of my deconstruction: “Look, that's a traditional dance form, but they are all wearing European costumes, riding in a BMW, and dancing in a courtyard that could be in Miami. What do you think that says about the influence of the international bourgeoisie?”

My partner's mother is a Boer South African. She has an extensive collection of “primitive” African art, mostly from the central west coast. She also has an extensive collection of strong opinions about African blacks and “colored” people in general. She is, of course, my “mother-in-law”, but I find that I am not the only person who finds her hard to stomach. Yet had I been separated from my moorings so completely as she has been, I think I also might be bitter and biased.

My experience of Africa has been limited, and is definitely “arm-chair”. I sometimes feel morally wrong for taking such pleasure in African literature, dance, sculpture, and music, as though I am “stealing” something. But then, I take similar pleasure in the arts of Asia, of Europe, of Australia, of the Americas. And, as I hope this essay illustrates, much of my experience has been acquaintance or friendship with Africans, and friendship is not quid-pro-quo. Such experiences as these make it difficult for me to imagine Africa and Africans in a simple way, but I do believe while my understanding may be more nuanced than many Americans, I still experience Africa as The Other.

Reflective Essay 1: Race and Rationality

I. Preface: The Nature of the Reflective Essays

I was taken aback by Dr Adyanga's syllabus for the graduate seminar on 20th Century Africa. I presumed that a "topics" course entitled "20th Century Africa" would have as its topic 20th-Century Africa and would be essentially chronological, perhaps by region. What I discovered was that it was a course of topics relating to 20th-Century Africa: Race, Imagining the Other, Colonialism and Underdevelopment, Changing Identities, and so on. I took some time to adjust to this structure.

Furthermore, I misunderstood a basic principle in Dr Adyanga's syllabus that the students should read a series of articles on the proposed topic before reflecting on the topic. My misunderstanding, in my own defense, was strengthened when in the first session (prior to our having read any course materials other than the syllabus) Dr Adyanga wished to engage the class in a discussion of our ideas about race in which he played a somewhat adversarial role. I therefore cultivated the sense that the reflective essays which will constitute a large part of this blog as I have conceived it were to be prepared before reading on the topic, and then through readings and class discussion our ideas were to be sharpened.

This sense of order, with reflection coming first, is a carry-over from my experiences as an undergraduate. As a philosophy major, I established a basic approach of reflection -- reading -- refinement of reflection. I proposed that rather than being influenced by others, I should first try to understand the problem at hand (say, "what is goodness?") and only after I had myself explored the topic to exhaustion would I turn to the assigned readings on the topic. This way, I was certain that I did not agree or disagree out of absolute ignorance, but out of corroboration or testing of what I had already developed. I can't really say whether this is the best approach. Some might argue that it is not a particularly efficient one in respect to completing work and manufacturing a high grade-point average. But it builds from the Socratic view that, in respect to knowledge of the truth at any rate, we all know, and have only to discover that we know.

This sense was supported by the early sessions of the course on race, otherness, and so on. However, the Socratic program begins to break down when one needs factual information. This does not mean that one cannot use a Socratic method of self-inspection once one has information: from that information one can dialectially draw inferences aplenty. But it is vain to suppose that if one merely looks inside oneself one will find the contents of NSSM 200 (the "Kissinger Report") or learn the particulars of African socialist theories.

Faced with this clash of the need for facts rather than truths, my reflective essays began to change, and I saw the value, indeed the necessity, of reading a good deal before engaging in reflection. And some of my later reflections are quite brief and maybe not very bright.


As noted above, the seminar began with an examination of the problems inherent in the concept of race and the uses of the notion of race for exploitative purposes. Dr Adyanga asserted repeatedly that "race" is a fantasy: there is but one race, the human race. While this may be true, we must also confront the reality that people perceive race as meaningful, invest the concept with meaning and promote the concept of race in various persuasive ways.



II. Reflective Essay 1: Race and Rationality, 1 September 2010

Dr Adyanga proposes that scientifically there is but one race, the human race. But of course then “race” means the same as “species”. Yet neither does it mean something hard and fast that can be discerned in the same way as a species can. Winthrop Jordan, in The White Man's Burden (Oxford UP, 1974; see x-xii “Note on the Concept of Race”) presents a definition which while retaining sufficient flexibility, gives a handle for this troublesome term. Dr Adyanga, if I understand the conversation properly, identifies race with ethnicity, but if so it is a very broad ethnicity.

Race is a slippery concept. And it is far more a concept than anything which can be materially demonstrated in a hard and fast way. No set of racial characteristics ever seems to fit every member of the group of whom those characteristics might be expected. Presumably a “race” is a genetic group: this is the primary scientific – or pseudo-scientific – meaning of the term “race”.

If the concept is applied very broadly and not with any expectation that any one member of a group defined as a race would have all of the proposed characteristics of that group (the very nature of any grouping being recognized as artificial and “propositional”), but merely a preponderance of those characteristics, “race” could be a meaningful term in the sense of having a reference to really existing experiences in the world of sensation. But we could also expect that even the simplest of racial classifications must include considerable overlap in respect to the intension: the total number of individuals identified as being in some particular race. Blendings, in fact, seem to dismantle the very fabric of the concept of “race”.

“There is no race but the human race.” I have heard several variations on that proposition, which a bit smugly dismisses “race” as a meaningful term: it becomes a mere synonym of “species”. Yet people differ from each other in ways that, because they are tied to genetics, offer insight into movements of peoples – or have I used the term “people” wrongly here? Are “peoples” not synonymous in some degree of past use with “race”? Then there must be but one people, the human people, and one nation, the human nation. Would that it were in our political formulations as in our bodies in truth! Quickly I could move, and happily too, down a road beginning with this claim, but I think we should not so easily abandon the concept before examining it more fully: what it means, what is has meant, how that meaning has changed and been appropriated. The Oxford Universal Dictionary's etymology is not unimpeachable (several recent authors including Tom Shippey have noted JRR Tolkien's criticisms of the OED), but it is a rich resource for students of the uses of language.

Language, it seems to me, is the real substance of history, even when we are able to draw on material remains, say, documentary photographs. So, yes, a longstanding use of race – back to the 1500s at least – is to mean “species”. Yet it also means, in a general way, a type of something, a “breed”. Breeds, like “races”, are slippery. Breeds in non-human animals must be maintained artificially, and the same would, I imagine, be true of humans, since humans are animals except in some imaginary sense. Left to their own devices, dogs would simply be dogs: phenotypically and genotypically diverse and yet uniform, like most species. Humans, too, were it simply a matter of living and breeding, would probably be diverse and uniform – and to an enormous degree we are uniform, but it is, then, the diversity which is interesting, it is the diversity which allows individuality.

“Race” might be identified with ethnicity, but ethnicity seems to me to be primarily a cultural rather than a biological or genetic term. Race could go either way, could be used in either a cultural or a genetic context, and the ambiguity or ambivalence of the term argues against any scientific use unless it were a clearly “precising” use as outlined in Copi & Cohen's Introduction to Logic. Still, to use “race” synonymously with ethnicity either invalidates the equivalence of race to species, or so flattens the term ethnicity as to render it really useless. In the first instance, while race would be taken away from one of its old associations (perhaps only borrowing it, as it were, for a precising definition), it would again court confusion, for again, an ethnicity may well be tied to genetics, but it may not. I hesitate to use terms which might offend, but on the one hand we have “wigger” and on the other “oreo”: of course these are neither complementary (nor particularly complimentary) nor opposite, but they illustrate a possibility that a person of one “race” might adopt the “ethnic trappings” of another. Thus, the “ethnicity” abides in a realm beyond the physiology of the individual.

If race can be useful as a term, it must be disconnected from any notion of permanency: the membership of any racial class shifts – at least potentially – with each generation. But this only means that some “races” remain more “pure” (distinct, differentiated, separated) for more time than others. Certainly, the associations of certain moral, affective, and cognitive powers with certain groups of individuals could be (perhaps necessarily would be) deeply flawed. Characterizing some race, or characterizing some individual as being a member of a race, even through self-identification may involve logical fallacies, particularly fallacies of composition (in which attributes of particular individual in a group are assumed to be the attributes of all members of the group) and of division (in which attributes of the group as a whole are assumed to be attributes of particular individuals in the group).

“Race”, then, is a linguistic construction, yes, but not that alone. The word and the concepts connected with it are aligned with (either “causing”, resulting from, or situated “parallel to”) actions and institutions. “Race” is tied to moral valuation. In my view, the concept of race itself is morally neutral. It is also scientifically ambiguous. Simply because of this it might be better to develop new language while simultaneously struggling against what is likely the truly objectionable point: racism.

No association of moral determination (e.g. association of “goodness”) should be made with any “race”, nor with the concept itself, on philosophical (sp. logical) grounds. But neither is the concept of race, in and of itself, good or bad. So, Whites should not be construed, as a class, as having any attributes other than Whiteness, and Whiteness is neither good nor bad. But neither is the concept of race in and of itself good or bad. Determinations of race may not be particularly “good” science, and scientists may well (and do) debate whether determinations of race are so difficult or inaccurate that the concept should be abandoned in scientific use. Yet if this course were taken, still some considerable effort should go to explaining why the concept remains persuasive, and why any scientist would persist in attempting to determine races.

Introduction: The Dark Heart of the World

Africa: the Dark Continent. Joseph Conrad suggested that Africa, or at any rate the Congo, was "the Heart of Darkness". My recent studies under Dr Onek Adyanga at Millersville University suggest that Africa is one of the great circulatory centers of world culture and economics. Laborers exported from Africa built the great empires of the Americas. Materials exported from Africa fueled Europe's growth, and now fuel Asia's. From Africa, paleontologists propose, we all have come, and to Africa have gone Europeans and Asians in great numbers.

Africa, perhaps more than any continent, represents the often horrendous human capacity for exploitation and destruction and the vivid hope for truth, reconciliation, and progress.

At the conclusion of last semester's graduate seminar on 20th Century Africa, I told Dr Adyanga that as my small contribution to that vivid hope, I would use the materials I prepared for the course as the basis of a blog, which you are now reading.

The situation of Africa is dire, in many ways. But Africa is not alone. As Walter Rodney argued, the development of the "developed world" required the "underdevelopment" of Africa. A similar argument might be advanced for South America and Asia. If Rodney is correct, what then can be done to undo the underdevelopment of Africa? Will the "developed" world have to be "undeveloped"?

I hope that you, my readers, will question what I have written and explore for yourself Africa, the Dark Heart of the World.