Few institutions hold as much symbolic power in the post-emancipation United States than Tuskegee. Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee institute represented one major center of African American thought and response to the disintegration of black rights and imposition of Jim Crow. The story of Tuskegee is often an American story.
Frank Andre Guridy, however, situates Tuskegee within a broader diasporic context. The institute was far more than a fixture in the Jim Crow South or the national consciousness of the United States but was an important and contested symbol in within the African diaspora. Guridy uses Cuban students at Tuskegee to examine both the school and its founder as diasporic subjects. This move brings Tuskegee out of the scholarly morass of historical debates over accomodationism vs integrationism (vs perhaps radicalism). Tuskegee was criticized by many African Americans and people of the African diaspora, including students of the institution, but the school was more than the sum of the debates. Despite criticism, students continued to come to Tuskegee to seek their own purposes, outcomes were more than the structure of the school might indicate.
Guridy's move is useful for broadening the scope of inquiry into black agency and transnational diasporic identities. Tuskegee meant many things to many people. The school's model appealed to both Afro-Cuban intellectuals, Pan-Africanists, and British colonizers, and American segregationists. By decentering Jim Crow and the United States from the discussion of Tuskegee to examine its transnational and diasporic meaning the institution's meaning becomes more contingent and contested. The process of diasporic imagining is a useful lens for broadening and deepening the history of institutions, people, and events that we thought we knew and had slotted into our national narratives.
Monday, October 29, 2018
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Culture, Politics, and Emancipation in Brazil
Two salient factors are apparent in any consideration of the results of the African diaspora: the cultural importance of African diasporic communities in the Americas, and the historical quest for meaningful political power by African American communities. In Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won, Kim Butler explorers the importance of the cultural and the political in two Brazilian cities, Sao Paulo and Salvador.
Butler's discussion highlights important ways of discussing the intersection of culture and politics. In Sao Paulo, Butler finds a racial politics united Afro-Brazilians into pursuing political objectives. In Salvador, however, political actions were less viable, but Afro-Brazilians pursued a culture confrontation to marginalization. Butler argues that "underlying objectives" of Brazilians in both cities were the same despite differed methods (133).
Butler's work destabilizes any sharp dichotomy between the cultural and political. This is an important point with a wider application than simply post-emancipation urban Brazil. Butler shows how differing political, demographic, and economic realities shaped how emancipated people chose to challenge hegemonic control. This moves the analysis of culture well beyond the simple quest for Africanisms. Culture comes to be analyzed as a site for self-determination and challenge to existing systems of power. This is not a wholly new or unique approach to culture, but Butler provides a nuanced reading of how cultural challenges operated. It is not simply that Africans and African descended people reached for cultural solutions for self-expression but that they used culture to mount a thinly veiled challenge to predominate social, political, and economic relations. Through cultural expressions like carnival, Afro-Brazilians contested public space and openly displayed "Africanisms" in a political context that rejected blackness and Africanness in the pursuit of "order and progress."
Butler's discussion highlights important ways of discussing the intersection of culture and politics. In Sao Paulo, Butler finds a racial politics united Afro-Brazilians into pursuing political objectives. In Salvador, however, political actions were less viable, but Afro-Brazilians pursued a culture confrontation to marginalization. Butler argues that "underlying objectives" of Brazilians in both cities were the same despite differed methods (133).
Butler's work destabilizes any sharp dichotomy between the cultural and political. This is an important point with a wider application than simply post-emancipation urban Brazil. Butler shows how differing political, demographic, and economic realities shaped how emancipated people chose to challenge hegemonic control. This moves the analysis of culture well beyond the simple quest for Africanisms. Culture comes to be analyzed as a site for self-determination and challenge to existing systems of power. This is not a wholly new or unique approach to culture, but Butler provides a nuanced reading of how cultural challenges operated. It is not simply that Africans and African descended people reached for cultural solutions for self-expression but that they used culture to mount a thinly veiled challenge to predominate social, political, and economic relations. Through cultural expressions like carnival, Afro-Brazilians contested public space and openly displayed "Africanisms" in a political context that rejected blackness and Africanness in the pursuit of "order and progress."
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Talking about Slavery
Jane G. Landers' Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions is a wide ranging work that uncovers the life histories of numerous extraordinary individuals throughout the Atlantic World. The emphasis on the exceptional, however is thorny and highlights the importance of how we talk about slavery and especially enslaved and formerly-enslaved people who stray beyond the bounds of a "typical" slave experience.
Landers work is problematic in two regards. First, her language when discussing those who attained some degree of meaningful freedom casts a troubling shadow on those who did not. Second, Landers assumes a quite easy and seamless process of acculturation and cultural fluency.
When discussing one "atypical experience," that of Juan Bautista Whitten, Landers notes that Whitten "did not let slavery define him." (16) Later in the conclusion of the work, Landers sums up the lives of those who "by their wits and their courage... read shifting political landscapes" and made "daring choices" to strike for freedom. (235). There is no reason to doubt that the people Landers studies were courageous and possessed great wit. However, while reading her work one is left with the troubling impression that those who remained chained in slavery were someone lacking in some regard. Why didn't more enslave people make the choices Whitten made? Was it lack of Wit? Daring? A resignation to "let" slavery define one's life. Landers' emphasis on black agency has perhaps created a false image of opportunity. The political landscape was shifting, and these seismic shifts opened up new spaces for the meaningful realization of freedom or a few. But for the many, such opportunities remain at best a dream.
My second point of contention with Landers is the shocking ease and inevitability with which she surmises cultural exchange occurred. When discussing the free black militia corporal Benjamin Wiggins, Landers suggests that his English father and Senegalese wife alongside his upbringing among the Seminoles and occasional journeys through Spanish America made him "at home in the English, Senegalese, Spanish, and Seminole cultures." (112) While Atlantic Creoles did show a remarkable degree of cultural knowledge, I am skeptical that there mere fact of a British planter father or occasional boat trips through Spanish America could make one "at home" in four separate cultures. Likewise Landers claims that the Black Seminole Abraham "would have been familiar with Spanish law and society" because he was once owned by a Spanish physician in Pensacola. (175) For Landers, contact implies acculturation and a depth of cultural interchange that could make one "at home" in that culture. This seems like quite a lot to infer from the mere fact of contact.
Landers work is problematic in two regards. First, her language when discussing those who attained some degree of meaningful freedom casts a troubling shadow on those who did not. Second, Landers assumes a quite easy and seamless process of acculturation and cultural fluency.
When discussing one "atypical experience," that of Juan Bautista Whitten, Landers notes that Whitten "did not let slavery define him." (16) Later in the conclusion of the work, Landers sums up the lives of those who "by their wits and their courage... read shifting political landscapes" and made "daring choices" to strike for freedom. (235). There is no reason to doubt that the people Landers studies were courageous and possessed great wit. However, while reading her work one is left with the troubling impression that those who remained chained in slavery were someone lacking in some regard. Why didn't more enslave people make the choices Whitten made? Was it lack of Wit? Daring? A resignation to "let" slavery define one's life. Landers' emphasis on black agency has perhaps created a false image of opportunity. The political landscape was shifting, and these seismic shifts opened up new spaces for the meaningful realization of freedom or a few. But for the many, such opportunities remain at best a dream.
My second point of contention with Landers is the shocking ease and inevitability with which she surmises cultural exchange occurred. When discussing the free black militia corporal Benjamin Wiggins, Landers suggests that his English father and Senegalese wife alongside his upbringing among the Seminoles and occasional journeys through Spanish America made him "at home in the English, Senegalese, Spanish, and Seminole cultures." (112) While Atlantic Creoles did show a remarkable degree of cultural knowledge, I am skeptical that there mere fact of a British planter father or occasional boat trips through Spanish America could make one "at home" in four separate cultures. Likewise Landers claims that the Black Seminole Abraham "would have been familiar with Spanish law and society" because he was once owned by a Spanish physician in Pensacola. (175) For Landers, contact implies acculturation and a depth of cultural interchange that could make one "at home" in that culture. This seems like quite a lot to infer from the mere fact of contact.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
On Being Akan in the Americas
Recent studies of the African diaspora have revealed the ability of historians and anthropologists to trace the diasporic experiences of specific African groups and ethnicities in the Americas (Rucker, 2015; Heywood and Thornton 2007). By employing new methods and sources, scholars have been able to move beyond a quest for "Africanisms" to track cultural transmission from specific points in African among specific enslaved populations in the Americas.
Kwasi Konadu's, Akan Diaspora in the Americas offers a unique approach to discussing a specific diaspora within the African diaspora. Much of the promise of work's like Konadu's lies with the nuance that can be provided by isolation one African ethnicity within Africa, the Atlantic, and American frames of reference. Konadu, however, takes a particular view of culture that divorces his book from other works operating in the same intellectual space. For Konadu, Akan-ness is an enduring cultural marker largely unbounded by historical time. Culture in Akan Diaspora is largely ahistorical and extends fundamentally unchanged across five centuries. This makes Konadu's work feel like something of a missed opportunity. Konadu largely reduces individuals to culture, indeed he argues "people, ultimately, are nothing but their culture" and the "pragmatics of day-to-day living, collective ideas, or spiritual strivings are cultural history." (16)
This perspective limits Konadu's ability to do what Walter Rucker does in Gold Coast Diasporas by tracing the cultural adaptations of enslaved Africans to their new environments and social conditions. Culture for Konadu is static and fixed and his project is not to examine the Akan experience of diaspora, or how Akan people interpreted diaspora through their unique culture lens. Rather, Konadu seeks to locate "the Akan variable in the African diasporic equation." The study of the Akan then tells us something about the African diaspora, rather than revealing a particular experience of the diaspora.
Kwasi Konadu's, Akan Diaspora in the Americas offers a unique approach to discussing a specific diaspora within the African diaspora. Much of the promise of work's like Konadu's lies with the nuance that can be provided by isolation one African ethnicity within Africa, the Atlantic, and American frames of reference. Konadu, however, takes a particular view of culture that divorces his book from other works operating in the same intellectual space. For Konadu, Akan-ness is an enduring cultural marker largely unbounded by historical time. Culture in Akan Diaspora is largely ahistorical and extends fundamentally unchanged across five centuries. This makes Konadu's work feel like something of a missed opportunity. Konadu largely reduces individuals to culture, indeed he argues "people, ultimately, are nothing but their culture" and the "pragmatics of day-to-day living, collective ideas, or spiritual strivings are cultural history." (16)
This perspective limits Konadu's ability to do what Walter Rucker does in Gold Coast Diasporas by tracing the cultural adaptations of enslaved Africans to their new environments and social conditions. Culture for Konadu is static and fixed and his project is not to examine the Akan experience of diaspora, or how Akan people interpreted diaspora through their unique culture lens. Rather, Konadu seeks to locate "the Akan variable in the African diasporic equation." The study of the Akan then tells us something about the African diaspora, rather than revealing a particular experience of the diaspora.
Monday, October 1, 2018
West African Diasporas
Like in his earlier seminal work, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, John Thornton and Linda Heywood's Central Africans rest on a simple premise, the Americas during the period of Atlantic expansion were more of an African than a European periphery. Operating from this premise, the authors spend the majority of a book about the foundation of the Americas within the geographic confines of the African continent.
In Thornton and Heywood's telling the slave trade was fueled by European demand but the contours of the trade, those who were enslaved, and their cultural traits were shaped by trends within Africa. This is not to say that the authors assign agency or responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade to Africans rather than Europeans, but they emphasize the ways in which Europeans were forced to reckon with the reality of African power and could not engage in slaving precisely as they wished.
Creolization, in this account was not the product of European enslavement but likewise had its roots in Africa. The rise of Atlantic creoles was not an indication of European hegemony but was at times freely chosen by Africans for their own political, economic, and nationalistic interests. Especially within Kongo the adoption of Christianity, European language, and writing were no way imposed. The author's major contribution is to conceive of the birth of African American culture not simply with Africans, or Africanisms, but within Africa.
In Thornton and Heywood's telling the slave trade was fueled by European demand but the contours of the trade, those who were enslaved, and their cultural traits were shaped by trends within Africa. This is not to say that the authors assign agency or responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade to Africans rather than Europeans, but they emphasize the ways in which Europeans were forced to reckon with the reality of African power and could not engage in slaving precisely as they wished.
Creolization, in this account was not the product of European enslavement but likewise had its roots in Africa. The rise of Atlantic creoles was not an indication of European hegemony but was at times freely chosen by Africans for their own political, economic, and nationalistic interests. Especially within Kongo the adoption of Christianity, European language, and writing were no way imposed. The author's major contribution is to conceive of the birth of African American culture not simply with Africans, or Africanisms, but within Africa.
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