THE BLACK ATLANTIC: CHALLENGING STIGMAS OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (JAN, 2022)
In this essay, I will focus on the works of leading figures who all share a commonality in their reproach against perceptions and stigmas of the black diaspora. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, the consequential Black Lives Matter Protests and the Windrush scandal, the sociological, political, and structural disparities between white and black people have become further afield and the need for reformation is urgently needed more than ever. An in-depth exploration could not be complete just by drawing on the field of academia alone. So, just as cinema has been deployed as a vehicle of propaganda (take the case of D.W. Griffiths controversial silent film ‘The Birth of a Nation’ which aided in the revival of the Klu Klux Klan[1]), I will also bring my attention on non-literary figures whose work has served as both an advancement of the black diaspora and a remedy against such propaganda. It may be worth noting that these works possess a dual character: to educate the bigot and the racist whilst simultaneously uplifting, educating, and unshackling the chains from the black diaspora who, for centuries, have been wilfully led into the wilderness.
The world of ‘white people and ‘black people’ are two divergent worlds existing within the same sphere. How is it that, on this one planet, there can be two worlds, experiencing life with different eyes? For it is in this passing millennia that we have seen seismic events take place where black people have stood up and shouted, ‘enough is enough’. Using their words and talents to form remedies to the racist ideologies that has had such a stronghold over our social conscience for centuries. Themes of liberation and education are apparent and recurrent in many of the works I’ll explore. Whilst they may not be said explicitly, the notion of ‘embracing what is your own’ is a vessel that runs along all parts. From embracing your language (Ngugi) to embracing black brotherhood, black nationalism, and black pride (Malcolm X), these figures are all counters against the slow and subtle processes that have stacked up, disadvantageously, against the black diaspora. In the words of the late Marcus Garvey, ‘a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’.
From debates on national television to athletes taking the knee, these figures, and their attacks on a society unfavourably constructed on the hegemony of whiteness, have increasingly become unescapable and omnipresent. With trepidation, they have migrated into the restricted ‘white sphere’ to speak on the black consciousness to a predominantly white audience. By doing so, these brave souls have risked their lives (Take the case of Malcolm X whose house was set on fire) in attempt to educate, or ‘decolonise’, the myths, perceptions, and stigmas of the black diaspora.
Each debate against Neo-Nazis or right-wing panellists, each gesture of solidarity, of lowering the knee at sporting events or on television (despite the impending backlash[2]), each novel and film release that doesn’t conform to Hollywood’s perception of Africa as a singular, barren wasteland of famine and disease, hasn’t been in vain but has contributed to reshaping Africa’s image to the world and to itself. Equally, these movements have helped to, as Du Bois wrote, aid a coming generation with ‘deft hands, quick eyes and ears’[3] with the tools to come against a society that has notoriously kept them crushed at their heel.
Without such voices, these spectres of racism hold the possibility of: Manifesting into workplace bias, imposing discriminatory legislations, influencing jury verdicts, and imparting selective, ‘white-saviour’ narratives into our educational curriculums[4]. These offshoots of racism are not describing the theoretical but the current consequences of what happens when individuals parrot and therefore transmit this virus of racism into the fabric of society. As quoted in an online article:
“In R v Williams, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged in 1998 that “racism against Aboriginals includes stereotypes that relate to credibility, worthiness and criminal propensity” and that “this widespread racism has translated into systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system.”[5]
Yet, this isn’t a problem native to the overseas. Great Britain, much like its cousin, are also guilty of its racism against the black diaspora. For those that like to believe the UK’s myth of meritocracy and freedom for all, then one would only have to look at our current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, referring to black people as ‘flag-waving piccaninnies... [with] watermelon smiles’[6], the Caribbean diaspora’s broken promise of citizenship in a post-war Britain or the tragic murder of Christopher Alder, a black man, who died handcuffed in a Hull Police station in April 1998; surrounded by laughing police officers making monkey sounds[7]. What this demonstrates is how our justice system and those who are meant to ‘protect and serve’ are failing on even this first criterion.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was a key proponent in the fight for civil rights. His eloquent, yet ferocious, attacks against a racially torn ‘White America’ would see him forever tainted as the ‘angry black man’ and forever at odds against the meek and gentle Martin Luther King Jr. At the age of six, Malcolm’s father, a minister, was murdered by a band of white supremacists and in his professional life, X would advocate for black nationalism and black independence, urging African Americans to defend and declare themselves against white aggression ‘by any means necessary’. This phrase would soon enter popular culture and become synonymous with the civil rights movement of the sixties and the countless protests that have followed. He believed that integration ‘weakened the black man’s movement’[8] and it was only complete black brotherhood that could emancipate, who he described as, ‘the negro people’. In his autobiography, X recalls the moment he got a ‘conk’ hairstyle. A conk, a popular hairstyle amongst many African American men in the nineteenth century, required a man’s natural hair to be chemically straightened. Notable African American singers that sported this hairstyle include James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and Nat King Cole. X writes, “How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking ‘white’... I vowed that I’d never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years. This was my first really big step towards self-degradation: When I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh with lye, in order to cook my natural hair until it was limp, to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are ‘inferior’ - and white people ‘superior’ - that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look pretty by white standards.”[9]
The reason why I mention these facts isn’t arbitrary but to highlight the significance of figures such as Malcolm X and Ngugi by giving an overview of the climate in which they wrote in and to highlight the cause, of years of black people’s plight and subjugation, which inevitably lead to its marriage of effect.
Decolonisation (in the educational context) is the process of investigating and ‘putting on trial’ ideals and structures stemming from the colonial era with the aim of decentring these colonial narratives. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan writer and scholar, is one of the foremost figures on this who witnessed the impact the foreign process of imperialism had on his motherland. In his book, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Thiong’o describes the psychological effect colonisation had in his country. As he expresses in an early chapter:
“The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against [the] collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance with other people’s languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle. Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency, and a collective death-wish. Amidst this wasteland which it has created, imperialism presents itself as the cure and demands that the dependant sing hymns of praise with the constant refrain: ‘Theft is holy’.”[10]
Africa’s literature, culture and philosophy were carried by African languages preceding the colonial invasion and it was in this rejection of African languages and the adoption of the esteemed English language within the colonial schools that forced the colonised to think, communicate and identify with that which is foreign. The language of education was no longer the language of Thiong’o’s culture. “Harmony was broken”, Thiong’o later expresses. “In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference”. The consequence of airbrushing Africa’s linguistic diversity, of over two-thousand languages and dialects, from its own nations raised a generation that would view their own language, therefore history and culture, as inferior, of ‘nothingness’, and see Portuguese, English, Italian and French as these esteemed, holy languages.
The aim of colonialism was to control a people’s way of life: Their rights, their wealth, and their politics. Forcing the demise of state independence and ushering in the reliance of an outside force. In this context, colonialism placed Europe at the centre of Africa’s universe. Whilst English became the common language in the colonised nations, anyone caught speaking the Kikuyu language were punished. ‘Children were turned into witch-hunters’, Thiong’o writes, ‘and in the process were being taught the lucrative value of being a traitor to one’s immediate community’. Soon, Africa would find itself stripped of its identity and be forced to identify with bourgeoise European ideals. In protest to this, Thiong’o eventually moved away from writing in English. A move that many said was a poor decision - including the Nigerian novelist and critic, Chinua Achebe, whose first novel, Things Fall Apart, often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature. For Achebe, writing in this borrowed tongue would simultaneously serve in ‘carrying the weight of [the] African experience’[11] and as a vehicle for Thiong’o’s mission to ‘decolonise the mind’. Yet, Thiong’o’s mission was always for ‘the people’. And how was he achieving this if his own mother, through language barriers, couldn’t read her son’s books?
Regardless of if one leans more towards Achebe or Thiong’o’s reasoning, they both influenced a body of African novelists who would go on to tell African-centric narratives that painted Africa and its people, not as savage or barbaric but, with strong morals (as is the case of Okonkwo, the feared tribal chief in Things Fall Apart). These stories would exile the western, colonial arrogance that had permeated colonial Africa and colonial African literature. This collective defiance eventually brought about the ‘Heinemann African Writer Series’, a collection of books written by African novelists, poets, and politicians that helped to reshape Africa’s image to the world.
In her lecture, best-selling Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, describes the ‘dangers of the single story’. For Adichie, the single story represents a person (or people) or place as being one-dimensional and incapable of possessing the breadth and depth of complex human characteristics. A single story tells a one-sided narrative as a way to confine and reduce a person to a singular understanding. Notably, single stories are told externally, as opposed to internally. Adichie recalls the influence British and American stories had in in the characters she would write about. She states: “[they] were white, blue-eyed [and they] played in the snow. They ate apples, spoke about the weather, and talked about how lovely it was that it came out. All this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria; we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes and never spoke about the weather because we didn’t need to”. Despite the dissimilarities with Adichie’s experience and her writing, she had begun to follow this trend of mirroring her input into her output which demonstrates how suggestible and vulnerable we are in the midst of a story, notably as children. “Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign”, Adichie later expresses, “... I was convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them and had to talk about things in which I could not personally identify with.” [12]
Adichie credits the discovery of African books, that spoke of a ‘three-dimensional’ African experience, and novelists like Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta in creating, as she describes, a ‘mental-shift’ in her own perceptions of Africa. This need for diversity isn’t just so children can see a reflection of themselves within film and literature, but so they can strive towards an ideal. Ideals that are plentiful and not characterised by racial stereotypes.
In The Good Immigrant, a collection of essays where writers reflect on race in contemporary Britain, British-Pakistani actor, Riz Ahmed, speaks about both his experience being a Muslim actor in the wake of 9/11 and his opinion that the portrayals of ethnic minorities on screen are, like Adichie’s expression of ‘the single story’, set to dehumanise and constrain ethnic minorities into one-dimensional stereotypes. Ahmed also introduces this idea of a ‘necklace of labels’ used to, as he describes, ‘constrict and decorate’ ethnic actors. He writes: “...Portrayals of ethnic minorities worked in stages... Stage one is the two-dimensional stereotype - the minicab driver / terrorist /corner-shop owner. It tightens the necklace. Stage two is the subversive portrayal, taking place on ‘ethnic terrain’ but aiming to challenge stereotypes. It loosens the necklace... And stage three is the Promised Land, where you play a character whose story is not intrinsically linked to his race. In the Promised Land, I’m not a terror suspect, nor a victim of forced marriage. In the Promised Land, my name might even be Dave. In the Promised Land, there is no Necklace.”[13]
For both Adichie and Ahmed, these ‘single stories’ both inhibit feelings more complex than pity and offer no possibility for the marginalised to become equals. In October 2020, the anti-poverty charity, Red Nose Day, made headline news following their decision to stop sending Caucasian celebrities to Africa to make promotional films as a way to prevent the outdated stereotype of the ‘white-saviour’.[14] A year prior, Labour MP, David Lammy, criticised the charity for this continuing trope in which he urged the charity to ‘refresh its image and think harder about the effects its output has on... perceptions of Africa’. When the charity responded to Lammy’s comments asking if he would rather make a documentary as to not contribute to the ‘white-saviour narrative’, Lammy responded, “The people of Africa do not need a British politician to make a film. I want African people to speak for themselves, not UK celebs acting as tour guides.”[15]
However, these anti-racist polemics aren’t always direct, overt, and native to figures notable for challenging such stigmas but reside across all spheres of existence... No matter how invisible and covert they may be. One such avenue is the music of the black diaspora. From the emergence of the negro spirituals, songs of both lamentation and worship, music has become a carrier of these people’s struggles, their sorrow and equally, their story.
The birth of hip-hop and its eventual evolution into rap were equal successors in carrying the voice of the black diaspora, a community whose voice is often supressed, into the modern world. These two genres, born in the underground scenes of black communities, would soon become the favoured deliverances of both political and fierce polemics for the African American community tackling the bigotry of a white America. Music has provoked thought, carried, articulated, and raised the ‘black voice’ to a degree that was previously not possible. These songs, with themes of anti-establishment, encapsulated in the guise of the speaker’s cadence and bouncy rhythm, have no constraints, and possess a certain type of power, a certain type of outreach, that the ivory towers of academia seldom can reach.
Many of these songs have outlived the period in which they were born and go through resurgences. N.W. A’s ‘Fuck tha Police’ is one example of this. A song that has become a quintessential anthem of social justice and anti- police brutality and found itself, thirty years after its release, with on demand streams rising by ‘almost 300 percent’ during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.[16] Demonstrating that genres such as rap, hip-hop and grime have served as messengers and councillors for the oppressed.
As I draw to the end of this essay, I would like to articulate that, even though I have focused on black figures, it would be dangerous territory to claim that only black people have the authority to challenge and bring about change for the black diaspora. Doing so, would contribute to an unhelpful trepidation and complacency for white people to ally with the marginalised nor recognise their own advantages and entitlements.
The image of the Vesica Pisces, for me, symbolises the meeting point between these two worlds where education, understanding and respect for all resides and racism is absent. This meeting point is what many have been striving for. Yet, for this to happen, this system that privileges one people over the other must first recognise and accept their own privilege and release that power... Whether by choice or by force. Protests are, after all, the cries of the unheard, and are one such method in bringing this about.
From NAACP’s Walter Francis White (1893-1955) to Jane Elliot (1933 -), the American diversity educator who conducted the fascinating ‘blue eyes/ brown eyes’ experiment in America during the sixties[17] and the countless White Americans who marched from Selma to Montgomery as allies, emphasises that racism against the black diaspora isn’t one self-inflicted, nor is it a problem exclusive for black people to solve. Racism is not innate but a construct - And it requires the collective effort of all races to help bring about its demise.
Word Count (exc. Bibliography, footnotes, short quotations etc): 2750.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Achebe, Chinua. “English and the African Writer.” Transition, no. 75/76 (1997): 342–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935429.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of the Single Story”. TED video, 18:33, July 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
Ahmed, Riz. ‘Airports and Auditions’. In The Good Immigrant, 2nd Ed, edited by Nikesh Shukla, 159-168. London: Unbound, 2017.
Akala. ‘The Ku Klux Klan Stopped Crime by Killing Black People’, in Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire. Great Britain: Two Roads, 2018.
BBC News, ‘Britain’s Got Talent: Complaints rise to 15,000 for Diversity performance’, BBC News, last modified September 11, 2020. Accessed 6 December 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54124816
BBC News, “PM’s past comments about black people ‘deeply offensive’”, BBC News, last modified June 12, 2020. Accessed 4 December 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-53019690
Clark, Alexis. “How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ revived the Klu Klux Klan”, last modified 29 July 2019, https://www.history.com/news/kkk-birth-of-a-nation-film
David M Tanovich, ‘How racial bias likely impacted the Stanley verdict’, The Conversation, 5 April 2018. Accessed 6th December 2021. https://theconversation.com/how-racial-bias-likely-impacted-the-stanley-verdict-94211
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk, Brent Hayes Edwards, ed., United States: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Grow, Kory. “How N.W.A’s ‘Fuck tha Police’ Became the ‘Perfect Protest Song”, Rolling Stone, last modified June 9, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/nwa-fuck-tha-police-protest-song-1010355/
Jim Waterson, ‘Comic Relief stops sending celebrities to African countries’, The Guardian, 27 October 2020. Accessed 10 December 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/27/comic-relief-stops-sending-celebrities-to-african-countries
Lammy, David. Twitter post. February 28, 2019, 12:45pm., https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1101101070678454274?s=20
Shukla, Nikesh, ed. The Good Immigrant. Great Britain: Unbound, 2016.
The Oprah Winfrey Network, ‘Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes / Brown Eyes” Anti-Racism Exercise’. YouTube. 32:53. Posted by The Oprah Winfrey Network. June 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebPoSMULI5U
Vikram Dodd. “Monkey chants as black man died ‘not racist’”, The Guardian, 23 July 2002. Accessed 29 November 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jul/23/race.world
Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. East Africa: East African Educational Publishers, 1986.
X, Malcolm. ed. Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2007.
FOOTNOTES
[1]Alexis Clark, “How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ revived the Klu Klux Klan”, last modified July 29, 2019, https://www.history.com/news/kkk-birth-of-a-nation-film
[2] BBC News, ‘Britain’s Got Talent: Complaints rise to 15,000 for Diversity performance’, last modified September 11, 2020, Accessed 6th September 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54124816
[3] W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (United States: Oxford University Press, 2007), 13.
[4] Akala, ‘The Ku Klux Klan Stopped Crime by Killing Black People’, in Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire, Akala (Great Britain: Two Roads, 2019), 231.
[5] David M Tanovich, ‘How racial bias likely impacted the Stanley verdict’, The Conversation, 5th April 2018. Accessed 6th December 2021. https://theconversation.com/how-racial-bias-likely-impacted-the-stanley-verdict-94211
[6]BBC News, “PM’s past comments about black people ‘deeply offensive’”, last modified June 12, 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-53019690
[7] Vikram Dodd, “Monkey chants as black man died ‘not racist’”, last modified July 23, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jul/23/race.world
[8] Malcolm X, ‘Icarus’ in ‘The autobiography of Malcolm X’, 4th Ed, ed. Alex Haley (Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2007), 386.
[9] Malcolm X, ‘Homeboy’ in ‘The autobiography of Malcolm X’, 4th Ed, ed. Alex Haley (Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2007), 138.
[10] Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (East Africa: East African Educational Publishers, 1986), 3.
[11] Chinua Achebe, ‘English and the African writer’, Transition, no 75/76 (1997): 342-49.
[12] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of the Single Story”, TED Video, 18:33, July 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
[13] Riz Ahmed, ‘Airports and Auditions’, in The Good Immigrant, 2nd Ed, ed. Nikesh Shukla (London: Unbound, 2017), 160.
[14] Jim Waterson, ‘Comic Relief stops sending celebrities to African countries’, The Guardian, 27 October 2020, accessed 10 December 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/27/comic-relief-stops-sending-celebrities-to-african-countries
[15] David Lammy, Twitter post. February 28, 2019, 12:45pm., https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1101101070678454274?s=20
[16] Kory Grow, “How N.W.A’s ‘Fuck tha Police’ Became the ‘Perfect Protest Song”, Rolling Stone, last modified June 9, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/nwa-fuck-tha-police-protest-song-1010355/
[17] The Oprah Winfrey Network, ‘Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes / Brown Eyes” Anti-Racism Exercise’. YouTube. 32:53. Posted by The Oprah Winfrey Network. June 5, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebPoSMULI5U
