Introduction

Relations Between Africans and African Americans: Misconceptions, Myths and Realities

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 444 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (10 January 2007)

ISBN-10: 0980253454

ISBN 9780980253450

Introduction

THIS work looks at relations between Africans and African Americans from the perspective of an African, and of shared perceptions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Incorporated into the analysis are stories of individuals who have interacted, worked and lived with members of both groups in Africa and in the United States, including myself.

Stereotypes and misunderstandings of each other constitute an integral part of this study, explained from both perspectives, African and African-American.

As a former journalist in Tanzania, I have drawn upon my experience as a news reporter to write this book, with fairness and a passion for truth even if some of the things I say may offend some people. But my interest is not please anyone.

I am interested in only one thing: to tell the truth as I know it. And having lived in the United States, mostly in the black community, for more than 30 years, I have first-hand knowledge of African Americans I have used to complement my analysis.

I also articulate my position from the vantage point of someone who has lived on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on a subject that has generated a lot of interest among Africans and African Americans through the years. And it continues to be one of great misunderstanding between the two sides, in spite of increased contacts and communication between Africa and Black America, and between individual Africans and African Americans in the United States and in Africa.

Although some people such as Professor Harold Cruse of the University of Michigan in contemporary times, and others such as Professor E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University in the past, contend that after more than 300 years of physical separation since the slave trade, virtually all cultural ties between Africa and black America have been severed, I believe that there are still some elements in African-American culture which can be traced back to Africa.

You find that in music, foods, and life styles; and may be even in linguistic patterns of African Americans as Professor Geneva Smitherman at Michigan State University – formerly Wayne State University when I was a student there - and others argue. Therefore, it was more than just hair braids that survived the middle passage across the Atlantic.

Other people have made the same arguments in the past. One of them was Kwame Nkrumah when he was a student in the United States.

He once debated Professor Frazier at Howard University on this subject, contending that there were still vestiges of African culture among African Americans, proving that slavery and centuries of physical separation had not erased all cultural ties to Africa.

Nkrumah won the debate, partly because of his oratorical skills which served him well years later when he became a leader of the African independence movement and president of Ghana, but mainly because of his factual presentation. However, Frazier maintained his position and the two agreed to disagree.

Many Africans and African Americans may also disagree with me and others who contend that some elements of African culture survived slavery. And probably just as many will agree with this position. But whatever the case, it is one of the subjects I address in this book but in a much wider context with an emphasis on the ties that have existed between Africa and black America for centuries.

I have also included in the book some information about African immigrants in the United States because, together with foreign students from Africa, they constitute the largest number of continental Africans who interact with African Americans on daily basis.

A number of other subjects are also covered in this book. The image of Africa among Americans of all races, the attitude of Africans and African Americans towards each other, misunderstandings, myths and realities which characterize their relationship, and the role African Americans played in the liberation struggle in Africa are some of those subjects.

And their role in this struggle cannot be underestimated, especially by some Africans who may be inclined to minimize the contribution of our brethren in the United States.

Because of their strategic position within the United States as American citizens, African Americans kept the struggle in the spotlight with marches, demonstrations and contributions, with the support of other Americans and remained a constant reminder to the American government and racist forces supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa and other white racist governments on the African continent that nothing was going to stop them from supporting the independence struggle in Africa until the white minority regimes were swept out of power.

Black people in the United States also pushed economic sanctions against the apartheid regime and exposed the hypocritical nature of the American leaders who supported white minority regimes in Africa while professing democracy at home and abroad.

There is no question that African Americans played a bigger role in supporting the liberation struggle in Africa than Africans did in supporting the civil rights movement. But it was also for understandable reasons. African countries were still under colonial rule or had just won independence and could not have supported the civil rights struggle in the United States through international forums as much as they would have liked to.

Other subjects I have covered in the book include the treatment of African Americans by Africans in Africa, especially those who have returned to the motherland after centuries of separation, seeing Africa for the first time.

Have they been well-received? Do they have any regrets? Do they wish they had never gone back to Africa? These are some of the questions I try to answer, citing disgruntled and satisfied African Americans who have lived in Africa as the primary source of information.

Some of them lived in my home country, Tanzania. There were those who stayed, and there were those who left. Some of those who stayed include a well-known Black Panther leader, Pete O'Neal, who has lived in Tanzania since the early seventies and whose life became the subject of a documentary film shown in the United States, Tanzania and other countries. His life in Tanzania and as a former Black Panther leader is one of the subjects I also address in this book.

He was later joined in Tanzania by Geronimo Pratt, former deputy defense minister of the Black Panther Party under Huey P. Newton. Pratt served 27 years in prison, on death row, after he was falsely accused and convicted of killing a white woman hundreds of miles away from where he actually was.

A former FBI agent later admitted Pratt was framed. He won his freedom with the help of Johnnie Cochran, the famous African American lawyer, and later went to live in Tanzania where he and his wife built a house next to Pete O'Neal's, as we will learn more about that later on in the book.

I have also addressed the treatment of African Americans by the white majority in the United States, and how Africans see the United States especially in terms of her relations with Africa and as a predominantly white nation in whose bosom are millions of people of African descent who ended up where they are by "accident."

It was this "accident" of history that has also been a subject of utmost importance in trying to understand what the United States is all about, as nation that portrayed itself to the whole world as the embodiment of the ideals of liberty and equality while at the same time upholding the institution of slavery.

Even today, the subject of slavery inflames passions across the racial divide. And the demand for reparations by African Americans, which I also discuss in the book, has only fueled intense debate on the legacy and relevance of slavery in contemporary America.

Coincidentally, it is a subject on which many Africans and African Americans agree, even if they disagree on other things, because people in Africa are also demanding reparations from the European powers who played the biggest role in the enslavement of Africans. They also also colonized us, which is another case for reparations. As Ed Vaughn, one of the leaders of the Detroit-based Pan-African Congress-USA who later served as assistant to Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and as a state representative in the Michigan state legislature, said about reparations: they have paid everybody else except us.

And as Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, also said, others have been paid reparations. So why not African Americans? He also supports the claim for reparations by African countries but has made it clear that if we are going to demand that from Europeans, we should also claim reparations from the Arabs who also enslaved us.

But that is a subject that is beyond the scope of this work in terms of comprehensive analysis. I have restricted myself to the case for reparations presented by African Americans in the American context. And even here I may not have done justice to the subject, although I have tried my best to do so.

I have concluded my study on an optimistic note in the quest for greater cooperation and understanding between our two peoples who have always been one in spite of centuries of physical separation resulting from slavery whose devastating impact is still felt across Africa and Black America today

It is also encouraging to note that in acknowledgment of our common ties, the African diaspora which includes Black America is represented in the African Union (AU) as an integral part of Africa and the African world.

Relations Between Africans and African Americans: Misconceptions, Myths and Realities

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 444 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (10 January 2007)

ISBN-10: 0980253454

ISBN 9780980253450