Folks! We are back at it yet again. As always! It’s proper at this juncture to note how postmodernism and revisionism, two fascinating analytic windows into humanized conscious and unconscious worlds, have suddenly assumed glorified positions of relative stability along the critical contours of intellectual inquiry, principally, as far as the orbs of cultural theory, sociology, history, literary theory (literary criticism), linguistics, ethnology, critical race theory, feminist studies, and critical theory, let’s just mention nine, are concerned. This is important as we embark on personal, racial, or institutional reappraisal of our place in the global matrix of cultural, intellectual, and economic socialization. In fact, the topology of black intra-racial harmony or even of black inter-ethnic homogenization is a potent ingredient for national stability and economic success. That excludes the narrow philosophical focus of Touré’s “Post-Blackness.” Ideally, our philosophical position more closely resembles Alan Dershowitz’s “Tsuris Theory of Jewish Survival.”
As well, both analytic systems, revisionism and postmodernism, are in fact either cognates of or directly feed into or on deconstructionism. Again, the concept of deconstruction, on the other hand, makes it controversially possible for anyone, a group, or institutions to redefine, remodel, or rearrange the musical chairs of otherwise entrenched ideas at will, progressively popular systems of ideas, if we may add precisely that, especially those that uncomfortably confront the moral architectonics of one’s ideological proclivities, for personal gratification (gain) as well as for institutional arrestment of the processes of oppositional intellection, personal or collective. Arguably, social conditioning and behavioral geography may contribute to suffocating distortions in humanized psychological individuation. That said, let us also acknowledge that intellectual and social particularization may not necessarily constitute a gesture of genius, but rather an effigial symptomatology of analytic vertigo, however!
Finally, both postmodernism and revisionism have resurrected the failing and dead careers of many a scholar and brought them to the verge of unmeritocratic intellectual recovery. To an extent, therefore, these tortuous observations provide the required investigative and definitional technologies by which to splash the critical paint of pointillist historicism across the canvass of intellection. This automatically leads us to Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Manning Marable, and Amiri Baraka. Further, according to eagle-eyed conspiratorialists, part of the unsubstantiated grounds for Nkrumah’s rebuff of Malcolm X, allegedly, entailed carefully-weighed political and economic considerations on the part of Nkrumah not to be in bad odor with the West, particularly America, by associating with Malcolm X, either ideologically or politically, America’s number one enemy, public and domestic. Still, others have also alleged that Nkrumah purposively, if publicly, detached himself from Malcolm X as the West got wind of the news that he was on the verge of unleashing Malcolm X on Western societies to foment anarchy there.
In fact, the prescient Nkrumah had every right to disclose to C.L.R. James, author of “The Black Jacobins,” one of the best and authoritative historical accounts of the Haitian Revolution, and George Padmore, both Afro-Trinidadian friends of Nkrumah’s, that he was persistently haunted by the dangling specter of putschism, an anarchic project to be instigated by the West, particularly America. That will be confirmed later by the unruly actions of the military in conjunction with the CIA. Moreover, contrary to these allegations, those cited above, Malcolm X’s autobiography, co-authored with Alex Haley, records the following admissions: “In Ghana, or in all of black Africa, my highest single honor was an audience at the Castle with Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah…Then as I entered Dr. Nkrumah’s long office, he came out from behind his desk at the far end. Dr. Nkrumah wore ordinary dress, his hand was extended and a smile was on his sensitive face. I pumped his hand.” Essentially, this recollection of events is verifiably authentic, both historically and autobiography, if we may add.
That is not all, however. Malcolm X even addressed the Ghanaian parliament. In 1964, he also met with Maya Angelou, author of the seven-volume series “I know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” who lived in Ghana from 1962-1965, a year shy of Nkrumah’s overthrow. Also, a year before Malcolm X and Angelou had met in 1964, Dr. David Levering Lewis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of WEB Du Bois, taught medieval history at Legon, University of Ghana. Admittedly, Prof. Lewis’ presence in Ghana coincided with the year of WEB Du Bois’ death. In 1961, Julian Mayfield, an African-American writer, activist, actor, lecturer, and director, who served as Nkrumah’s writer-in-office, also lived in Ghana, but left the country in 1966 following the CIA-instigated coup. George Padmore and others from the African Diaspora as well as from our own continent became part of the well-oiled machinery of bureaucracy.
In other words, Ghana was fundamentally run by an international consortium of noble, brave, experienced, and intelligent men and women. For instance, Julian Mayfield brought a hunchback of political activism (Civil Rights, NAACP, Freedom Riders, and Organization of Afro-American Unity) and Guyanese politics to Ghana. Clearly, we see a political and historical de-emphasis, probably conscious, of either Nkrumah or Nkrumahism in Michael Mann’s “Ali,” a biographic film featuring Will Smith as Muhammad Ali. Instead, Mobuto Sese Seko, America’s Cold War ally, not Nkrumah, makes marked theatrical presence in the movie. Understandably, this should be the case since Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fought in the then Zaire. Ironically, the bout between these two giant-like pugilists has been dubbed “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Which part of Kinshasa was a “jungle” when they fought there? In the meantime, Malcolm X’s historical and ideological association with Nkrumah is bowdlerized from the screenplay for “Ali”!
Even Spike Lee’s biopic “Malcolm X,” a very good movie featuring Denzel Washington as Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, is equally guilty of the “crime” of intellectual hypocrisy or historical revisionism! Then again, even the spectral shadow of Idi Amin has two Hollywood-made biopics to his sepulchered legacy: “The Last King of Scotland” featuring Forest Whitaker, an Academy Award winner, and “Rise and Fall of Idi Amin” featuring the Kenyan actor Joseph Olita. Patrice Lumumba gets one by name “Lumumba.” This biopic features Eriq Ebouaney. There is also one for Nelson Mandela: “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.” This also features Idris Elba. Taken together, these are all relatively good and positive because they tend to globalize the collective agony, steeled will, continuing struggles, and triumphs of African peoples, though Hollywood is neither hospitable nor friendly to Africa. But Nkrumah needs to be in the pictorial mix somehow.
Technically, our African movie directors and producers have a noble responsibility to play in the graphic resuscitation of Nkrumah by converting disposable resources earmarked for asocial pictures into a creative biopic for Nkrumah, for it’s neither Hollywood’s duty to essentialize our struggles nor martyrize our great men and women. Those reservations aside, let’s continue from where Malcolm X exactly left off, writing of his fond encounter with Nkrumah: “We sat on a couch and talked. I knew that he was particularly well-informed on the Afro-American plight, as for years he had lived and studied in America. We discussed the unity of Africans and peoples of African descent. We agreed that Pan-Africanism was the key also to the problems of those of African heritage. I could feel the warmth, likeable and very down-to-earth qualities of Dr. Nkrumah.” The questions are: Why did Marable say Nkrumah ignored Malcolm X when Malcolm X said he had met with Nkrumah? On the other hand, granted that Malcolm X possibly visited Ghana more than once in his life time, on which of these occasions did Nkrumah ignore him? Marable, however, does not explicitly say! Let’s put that aside.
Having said all that, let’s advance another speculation, if that’s permissible under the circumstances, that Nkrumah may have exerted some measure of influence, by way of the presence of his magnetic personality, perhaps, on President John F. Kennedy, as well, because President Kennedy threw caution to the wind and went ahead to wield an umbrella over Nkrumah during a drizzle, in fact, this, against the objections of the Secret Service. There may be grounds for President Kennedy’s expressed hospitality toward Nkrumah. It appeared Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Bolden, the first African American Secret Service agent attached to the Protective Division of the American presidency, may have sufficiently educated President Kennedy about the plight of African Americans. Publicly, though, America’s racial Armageddon boiled in the televised cauldron of social inequality, of state-sponsored terrorism, and of white vigilantism. In effect President Kennedy was part of the viewership.
Moreover, the Irish from which President Kennedy and his family descended were branded “White Niggers” in America. Initially, Irish and Italian immigrants struggled at the lowest bottom of American society, until, at least, the political economy of white privilege catapulted the Irish and Italians into the limelight of racial superiority. It would not be long before the Irish and Italians joined hands with their Aryanized German and English American brothers and sisters in the economic, political, and social subjugation of African Americans, otherwise Busia “Negro African.” The Kennedy family knew this story very well. However, shifting our focus to another salient topic, let’s ask these questions: Why has Malcolm’s autobiography come under radical revisionist assault? Also, why has “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” a popular book by Alex Haley, co-author of Malcolm X’s autobiography, come under radical revisionist attack? Why has the rich legacy of Kwame Nkrumah come under radical revisionist onslaught?
These are questions we may later want to explore in some appreciable detail. In the meantime, we want to stress that Kwame Nkrumah’s and Amiri Baraka’s greatest gift to world politics is Afrocentric humanism. What is Afrocentric humanism? Definitionally, Afrocentric humanism is simply part of the progressive framework of social philosophy, which, among other goals, seeks to promote racial and ethnic equalization, rather than inferiorization, against the backdrop of differences, be it cultural, economic, social, historical, intellectual, biological, and what have you. In this context, Afrocentric humanism rejects any philosophy which attempts to elevate one race, nationality, or ethnic group over another. In other words, the Akan is not superior to the non-Akan. The African is not superior to the Asian or the Caucasian (Westerner). The Asante or Akyem is not superior to the Zulu, Wolof, Ewe, Dagomba, Gonja, or Ga. Continental Africa is not superior to the African Diaspora. Ghanaians or Ethiopians are not superior to Nigerians or Algerians. The African Diaspora or continental Africans are not superior to millions of their African brothers and sisters who have lived for more than 800 years in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, India, etc. The Asantehene is not superior to the Togbe, the Yaa Naa, or the Igwe.
Paradoxically, Afrocentric humanism translates the hieroglyphs of human differences inscribed on the moral plinth of universal socialization exclusively in terms of ethnic, racial, and national equation. Better yet, questions related to essentialism and human genomics do not have to set races, nationalities, or ethnicities apart. In fact, they are written into the concreteness of nature as well as of the environment. Yet again, environment is both man-made and malleable and, therefore, subject to manipulation, though, nature, for the most part, is still a mystery. That is, nature is as deathly mysterious as the ghostly mind of man trying to unravel it. Man has yet to fully capture the rhythm and cadences of nature and its mercurial musicality. It is for this that Bob Marley believed a “suckling” or “baby” was more likely to have a telling acquaintance with the depths of cosmogony than the wise and prudent in society (See “Forever Loving Jah”). That aside, Afrocentric humanism imbues human agency with ontological instruments of social equality.
For instance, the legacies of Malcolm X, Mother Teresa, Gautama Buddha, Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney, Desmond Tutu, Confucius, and Nelson Mandela represent different wavelengths of Afrocentric humanism along the social spectrum of philanthropy. Further, Afrocentric humanism constitutes the foundational power of Pan-Africanism, the theory of Afrocentricity, the Harlem Renaissance, the Organization of African Unity (African Union), the Black Arts Movement, the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies, and Afrocentricity International, among others. This is why the theory of Afrocentricity does not necessarily view whites as biologically evil. Namely, the theory of Afrocentricity rejects any notion which includes “biological evil” in the framework of white essentialism. In other words, evil deeds are, by definition or nature, human. This does not mean the historical and contemporary scale of crimes committed by the white world are paralleled anywhere in human history. They are not!
However, despite our internal problems, Wole Soyinka uses his new book “Of Africa” to make a strong moral argument that Africa has a role to play in humanizing the world. Ironically, Ali Mazrui makes another interesting case that it was high time Africa possessed nuclear bombs because that was the only way her seemingly “weaker” nation-states could acquire global respect and politico-economic leverage in a world where, unfortunately, military polarities determined the biological survival or extinction of a section of humanity as well as protected the economic interests of those in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Mazrui believes Africa could use them as bargaining chips on the world stage (See “The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis”). On the other hand, how do we expect the political dynamics of oil economics in the Middle East to have been if Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini had actually possessed nuclear bombs? Do we recall the OPEC oil embargo (1973 oil crisis) and how it nearly crashed the global economy, particularly those of the West?
Then, coming back to Ali Mazrui and to his theoretical flirting with a nuclear weaponization of Africa, China, India, and Pakistan do, indeed, use them, weapons of mass destruction, as bargaining chips with the West and with each other. Apartheid South Africa built some of these weapons with the aid of Israel but were destroyed with the aid of the West as soon as political power shifted hands between Black South Africa and White South Africa. Understandably, no one in the West wanted to see a sizzling nuclear bomb in the arthritic hands of a brutalized people! However, regarding the Soyinkan thesis on Africa’s humanizing the world, Mazrui believes Africa could play that role through Christological, or, possibly, through Islamic, religionization of the West. But Africa does not need nuclear bombs. Interestingly, Kwame Nkrumah, a politician and thinker of high standing, a man of whom Wole Soyinka consistently describes as one of Africa’s progressive leaders, did not use nuclear bombs to dismantle colonialism and to put the white man in check.
Nkrumah merely needed to use his great mind and what he appropriately called “consciencism,” as “nuclear bombs,” to destroy colonialism. Amiri Baraka’s “nuclear bomb” came in the form of protest poetry and the Black Arts Movement. Leopold Senghor’s came in the form of Negritude, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “non-violence,” Molefi Kete Asante’s the theory of Afrocentricity, Nelson Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s Ubuntu, Chinweizu’s the theory of Afrocentricity and Black Orientalism, Mau Mau’s asymmetric and guerilla warfare, etc. This was why the progressive politics of Nkrumah, unlike those of his ideologically puerile enemies, transcended the trivialities, frivolities, and narrowness of ethnic politics. Indeed ethnic politics does not feed into Afrocentric humanism. In other words, intellectual identification with ethnic politics to the exclusion of progressive nationalism, of the kind advanced by Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, Asante, Mazama, Garvey, Karenga, Rodney, Biko, etc., or of unified continentalization of Africa, is a symptomology of cultural, psychological, and spiritual de-centering, given that progressive nationalism potentially renders ethnic rivalries null and void, at least in theory!
Admittedly, the present crises in South Sudan, Somalia, Mali, and Eastern Congo, among others, underscore a need for an active revitalization of progressive nationalism as it makes “ethnic Balkanization” supremely irrelevant. In fact, progressive nationalism is the primary cause of China’s, India’s, Brazil’s, and Japan’s rising economic, military, and political power in world affairs. America shot to industrial and economic fame through militant nationalism. Nazi Germany shot to scientific and economic fame through militant nationalism. A leader who genuinely thinks about his or her country in nationalistic terms, that is of his or her country first, is not likely to be corrupt! Again, Nkrumah is a good example. Watch out! We used the word “likely.” Let’s call it linguistic probability. Anyway, in principle, progressive nationalism potentially dissolves presidential and parliamentary allegiances to ethnicized constituencies in the body politic. We are not talking about “statism,” however.
Didn’t Marcus Garvey say “intelligence rules the world while ignorance carries the burden”? Is the forest of Amiri Baraka clear enough to see the Iroko tree of the great Kwame Nkrumah and the great Marcus Garvey?
We shall return…
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