Page 40 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

The Development of African American Nationalism
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outpourings of creative intellectuals and artists, reflect varying degrees of a conscious
and unconscious response to this [dehumanizing] problem [in order] to rehumanize
one’s existence and to transcend the dehabilitating and destructive capabilities of cul-
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tural hegemony.” Racial slavery, an ultimate denial of human freedom, and cultural
hegemony could not destroy the cultural resistance and humanity of African Ameri-
cans despite their destructive and enduring capabilities.
Although it took almost three centuries to blossom, African American protona-
tionalism emerged with slavery:“The nationalism of the slave community was essen-
tially African nationalism, consisting of values that bound slaves together and sustained
them under brutal conditions of oppression.Their very effort to bridge ethnic differ-
ences and to form themselves into a single people to meet the challenge of a com-
mon foe proceeded from an impulse that was Pan-African—that grew out of a
concern for all Africans—as what was useful was appropriated from a multiplicity of
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African groups even as an effort was made to eliminate distinctions among them.”
Explaining how the ideology of Black nationalism was initially fashioned, Stuckey
comments,“A conscious of a shared experience of oppression at the hands of white
people, an awareness and approval of the persistence of group traits and preferences in
spite of a violent anti-African larger society,a recognition of bonds and obligations be-
tween Africans everywhere, an irreducible conviction that Africans in America must
take responsibility for liberating themselves—these were among the pivotal compo-
nents of the world view of the black men [and women] who finally framed the ide-
ology.” 59 Despite the fact that White plantation owners and institutions and White
society were determined to destroy African cultural elements and bonds to maintain
tight control on enslaved and freed Africans, these Africans knew that it was essential
to maintain their cultural solidarity and resistance to liberate themselves.
African American protonationalism attempted to challenge slavery and the cultural
hegemony that had shaken the cultural foundation of enslaved Africans so that they
would resist a world defined by their oppressor. Christianity that was imposed “to sus-
tain a social order and a system of production based on the mutual cooperation of
master and slave” became the arena of the struggle since it denied African Americans
humanity by perpetuating slavery. 60 It became the religion of domination for White
society and the religion of liberation for Blacks: “African Americans, slave and free,
began to rediscover symbolic foundations for a redemptive African-centered con-
sciousness.The irony of this discovery is that it occurred as a consequence of inter-
preting the biblical messages that were intended to bring conformity and docility.
African American exegesis of biblical scriptures became the foundation for the rebirth
of African-centered thought. Instead of learning to be good slaves by forgetting about
Africa, some African Americans realized that many of the places discussed in the sa-
cred text held in so high esteem by white oppressors were in Africa and that many of
the people were quite properly African.” 61
When European and American racist scholarship distorted the social sciences and
historiography to produce and preserve the myth of White superiority and African in-
feriority, “a countervailing struggle emerged to transcend the cognitive slavery of
white supremacy.” 62 In this process, an African-centered intellectual discourse
emerged as the knowledge of liberation.African American scholarship that challenged
White racism by straightening historical records was “based initially on African Amer-
ican historical research that established an African frame of reference, began in the
early nineteenth century, reached maturity in the 1890s, and has continued with