"AFRICAN INTELLECTUALS IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST"

As an African in the Diaspora, are you part of “The Comprador Intelligentsia”, a “Postcolonial Critic”, or a “Progressive Exile”? Or neither of these, or a bit of each?These are probably the questions you will be left with upon reading this article (or perhaps you’ve already read it and made up your mind…) by Francis N. Njubi, Ph.D, a Kenyan Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.

Professor Njubi presents an in-depth historical analysis of the African Diaspora’s experience through the last century, emphasising such key issues as “The Meaning of Africa” and “The Fact of Blackness”. As an all-encompassing approach to the most pressing challenges facing the African Diaspora, it does not shy away from some of the most controversial issues affecting its communities, including the always controversial debates on race, racism and identity, or the occasional conflicts opposing African-Americans to African Migrants, or non-Southafrican Africans to nationals in South Africa. It also touches on issues raised in some of my previous posts, namely “Africa: What Price A Brain?” and “In a Statelessness State of Mind”.

In spite of not subscribing to all of its arguments, I found the paper to make for compelling reading, even now five years after its publishing.

Here are a few excerpts from it:

'African Intellectuals in the Belly of the Beast:Migration, Identity and the Politics of Exile'

by: Francis N. Njubi, San Diego State University

February 2002

© Francis N. Njubi

When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of the "double consciousness"of Africans in America he was reflecting on the complex identities of the "talented tenth", the educated minority of a minority like himself who felt the alienation acutely because of their awareness that their qualifications meant little in a racist society. Thus, Du Bois argued that Black intellectuals are gifted with a "second sight", a "third eye" that allows them to gauge the white and the black while seeking to transcend this duality by creating a "better and truer self".

Though written in reference to the African-American intellectual, this duality, this sense of "twoness", is even more acute for African exiles today because they have fewer social and cultural ties to the West than Afro-Europeans and African-Americans. The exiles are much closer to the African "soul" DuBois refers to and are less prepared for the pervasive racism and second-class status that they have to overcome in the West. This duality is intensified by the sense of alienation and guilt engendered by the widespread demonization of exiles as selfish and ungrateful wretches who, as soon as they get their degrees, escape to greener pastures instead of using their education to uplift the poverty stricken societies that educated them at great expense.

This paper examines the "double consciousness" of Black African intellectual migrants in the West. It argues that the migrant is forced to come to terms with Africanity for the first time and that the resolution of this identity crisis is a political act which produces three "types" of migrant intellectuals: the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critic and the progressive exile.

(…)

To complicate matters further, the migrants must also endure alienation from their countries of origin. Academic exiles are likely to be victims of government repression even before leaving their home countries. Many are pushed out of their countries after political disturbances at university campuses. Others are exiled because their political perspectives do not correspond with the dominant ideological dispensation of the time. Yet, these same forces that kept them from achieving their full potential at home demonize them for leaving instead of contributing to national development. These tensions between intellectuals and politicians have boiled over frequently in the postcolonial world, most recently in a shouting match between Ghana's President Jerry Rawlings and eminent Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui during a conference in Davos, Switzerland in June 1999 (Mwagiru, 1999).

(…)

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has also joined the debate by urging educated Africans to relocate to South Africa and neighboring African countries instead of migrating to the West. Yet this option too, is complicated. Many educated Africans do spend some time in neighboring countries before migrating to the West. As stated earlier, Ali Mazrui was expelled from Uganda for his outspokenness. More recent cases have shown that turf battles between the migrants and local scholars make it difficult for the former to thrive in other African countries.

Professor Mamdani is a highly respected African political scientist who has taught at universities in East Africa and the United States for over twenty years. Yet, when he accepted a position as the director of the University of Cape Town's Center For African Studies in 1997, he found it impossible to overcome his image as an outsider in academic turf battles (Thornton, 1998). In spite of his high sounding position as Director of the Center for African Studies and his distinguished record in teaching and publications in the field, his syllabus for an introductory course in African Studies was rejected by an entrenched group of white "Africanists" (Mamdani, 1998, pp. 3-7). When he protested, he was suspended from teaching the course.

In the highly publicized debate that followed it became clear that the problem was one of perspective: Eurocentric versus Africa-centric.

(…)

The Meaning of Africa

Africanity is foisted upon the migrants the moment they arrive in the West. On the continent, most people in the rural areas live under ethnic categories like Kikuyu, Ibo, Hausa and Acholi. Some educated, middle-class and/or urban dwellers may see themselves as members of a nation like South Africa, Kenya or Tanzania. In some countries like South Africa, which has recently emerged from the crucible of apartheid, national consciousness is still strong. For most, however, "national" consciousness emerges only occasionally during Independence Day celebrations, international soccer matches or at election time.

"African" consciousness, however, is a rarity. It is in exile that the Nigerian-Ibo, South African-Zulu, Kenyan-Kikuyu person suddenly and unequivocally becomes an "African".

(…)

Yet, the condition of Africanity both marginalizes and expands Isegawa's horizons at the same time. He is no longer an Acholi or an Ugandan but an African. A member of that mythical race created by the White imagination as a foil and a justification for the holocaust of slavery and colonial exploitation. He is not only responsible for Somalia, Congo and Sierra Leone, but also tied inexplicably to the inner city gang-banger, street hustler and drug addict. In the likely encounter with the police profiler, skin color will trump national origin every time. Color also trumps education, erudition and accomplishment. None of these mean anything in a late night encounter with the police. In the New World, he is no longer an Acholi or even an Ugandan. He is an African, or more accurately, a Black man, thus automatically a suspect and a target for any White racist policeman, waitress, teacher or taxi-driver.

The Fact of Blackness

It would be a mistake, however, to leave the impression that "the fact of Blackness," creates a collective race consciousness, a natural unity among the African migrants and the native Black populations of Europe and America. This race consciousness is a rarity often limited to the politicized Pan-Africanist community. Most African descended peoples continue to see each other, and themselves, "through the eyes of others" as Du Bois put it.

(…)

Thus the migrant African intellectuals, who probably left neighboring African countries because they were unable to overcome their images as outsiders, find that they face the same problem in the United States. In this case the tension is between Diasporic- Blacks and Africans who are forced to compete for the few jobs set aside for Black scholars (African, African-American and West Indian) in the American academy. The problem, therefore, is the segregation of most Black scholars in historically Black universities and African and African-American studies departments. The fact that 49 percent of African immigrants have college degrees while only 14 percent of African Americans graduate from college adds a class dimension to the problem. The Bureau of Census reports, for instance, that the median household income of African immigrants is $30,907 compared to $19,533 for Black Americans (Bureau of Census, 1997).

(…)

Thus migrant African scholars must negotiate new identities that can no longer depend on the security of nationality and ethnicity but are not exactly Afro-European or African-American either. This dilemma of being --not exactly African but not Afro-European or African-American-- is the peculiar challenge of migrant African scholars. The resolution of this identity crisis is a political act that manifests itself in the lives and work of academics, producing three "types" of migrant intellectuals --the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critics and the progressive exiles. This paper examines each of these categories and argues that we can best understand the crisis by drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois's theory of "double consciousness."

The Comprador Intelligentsia

One result of the civil rights movement was to open up employment opportunities to Black people in major universities, corporations and international organizations. African migrant scholars today are well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities by virtue of their education and contacts on the continent. This has produced a new class of migrant intellectual: The comprador intelligentsia. Members of the comprador class use their national origins, color and education to serve as spokesmen and intellectual henchmen for organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

(…)

This strategy depends upon a cadre of Black government functionaries "who, though they are Black, pursue the interests of the Federal government at the table of the Black community"(p. 168). The new "pro-business black coalition ... has been to lead from the weak position of handing over the essential elements of the African agenda to major financial interests and thus, while Africa burns, playing second fiddle to those interests" (p. 169). This unabashedly corporatist institution has attracted high-profile African and African-American scholars and intellectuals. It has transformed Pan-Africanist solidarity into a quest for profit and recruited Black intellectuals and politicians as scouts and interpreters for rapacious corporations.

The Postcolonial Critic

Much like the compradors, the postcolonial critics take advantage of their color, nationality and location in the West to become expert interpreters of the African experience for Western audiences. They also play the role of the middlemen by serving as conduits of Eurocentric thought for African consumption through the adaptation of the latest trend in Euro-American perspectives to "explain" the African experience. This adaptation of Euro-American thought to the African experience has ranged from liberalism to various types of Marxism, to modernization, developmentalism and dependency/world systems theories.

(…)

Appiah's position is not unique. It is merely a re-statement of the doublespeak of the American neoconservatives who conjured up the term "reverse racism" to attack those who fought against White supremacy. This so-called "color blind" ideology has reversed the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and is actually commonsense among White Americans. It informs policymakers from the White House to the Supreme Court and has been used to justify the retreat from egalitarianism. As Howard Winant put it: “Today the theory of race has been utterly transformed. The socially constructed status of the concept of race, which I have labeled the racial formation process, is widely recognized (Omi and Winant 1986), so much so that it is now often conservatives who argue that race is an illusion."

(…)

In Dusk of Dawn (1940), for instance, Du Bois rejected the notion that "race" had any scientific basis. "It is easy to see that scientific definition of race is impossible", Du Bois stated. Yet he went on to argue that although race does not exist biologically, racism as an ideology does and has had a terrible impact on people of African and Jewish descent during the era of capitalism: “(...) But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory. The actual ties of heritage between the individuals of this group vary but the physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is the social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; It is this unity that draws me to Africa.” (DuBois, 1940, 137-138)

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (1997) argues that Appiah "protests too much" and fails to take into account the dialectical nature of racial oppression. As Zeleza puts it: "Racial discourses and theories are socially constructed ... but repudiating race theory does not make it disappear in politics. Race matters... because it functions as a marker and an anchor to establish and repudiate identity, status and position... Races exist because racism exists" (Zeleza, 1997,503).

The Progressive Exile

In "The Allegory of the Cave" Kenyan scholar-in-exile Ngugi wa Thiong'o discusses the role of exiles in African liberation (Ngugi, 1998). (...) Ngugi's allegory of the cave captures the migrant scholars' political dilemma in stark terms, making it clear that they have a choice of either serving the neocolonial system as witting or unwitting agents or using the knowledge they have gained from their sojourn in the West to liberate their fellows. The progressive exiles resolve the crisis of double consciousness by learning from the experience of exile while maintaining their identity as Africans.

Thus we see the politics of exile determining the perspective and location of African scholars across the ideological spectrum. Kwame Anthony Appiah, a descendant of the Ashante ruling class, who was schooled at Oxford University chooses to associate himself with the conservative, accommodationist strand of Black Studies while Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a descendant of Kenyan peasants, associates himself with the progressive strand of Black Studies.

The fact that they chose to work in the same garden despite their ideological differences demonstrates the power of Africanity in determining the politics of exile, even among the most talented of the talented tenth.

It is this power of Africanity, this "fact of blackness" as Fanon put it, that compelled African exiles and members of the African Diaspora to join Black people on the continent in the successful struggle to liberate South Africa from the jaws of Apartheid.

The theories and activities of exiles and revolutionaries like Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Agostino Neto, Nelson Mandela and Eduardo Mondlane heavily influenced African-American activists (Walters, 1995; 59-65). (...) These global solidarity movements demonstrate that a united front of people of African descent as imagined by pioneering Pan-Africanists like Du Bois and Nkrumah is still possible, even critical, in the New World Order of global markets and corporate domination.

{Read Full Article Here}

As an African in the Diaspora, are you part of “The Comprador Intelligentsia”, a “Postcolonial Critic”, or a “Progressive Exile”? Or neither of these, or a bit of each?These are probably the questions you will be left with upon reading this article (or perhaps you’ve already read it and made up your mind…) by Francis N. Njubi, Ph.D, a Kenyan Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.

Professor Njubi presents an in-depth historical analysis of the African Diaspora’s experience through the last century, emphasising such key issues as “The Meaning of Africa” and “The Fact of Blackness”. As an all-encompassing approach to the most pressing challenges facing the African Diaspora, it does not shy away from some of the most controversial issues affecting its communities, including the always controversial debates on race, racism and identity, or the occasional conflicts opposing African-Americans to African Migrants, or non-Southafrican Africans to nationals in South Africa. It also touches on issues raised in some of my previous posts, namely “Africa: What Price A Brain?” and “In a Statelessness State of Mind”.

In spite of not subscribing to all of its arguments, I found the paper to make for compelling reading, even now five years after its publishing.

Here are a few excerpts from it:

'African Intellectuals in the Belly of the Beast:Migration, Identity and the Politics of Exile'

by: Francis N. Njubi, San Diego State University

February 2002

© Francis N. Njubi

When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of the "double consciousness"of Africans in America he was reflecting on the complex identities of the "talented tenth", the educated minority of a minority like himself who felt the alienation acutely because of their awareness that their qualifications meant little in a racist society. Thus, Du Bois argued that Black intellectuals are gifted with a "second sight", a "third eye" that allows them to gauge the white and the black while seeking to transcend this duality by creating a "better and truer self".

Though written in reference to the African-American intellectual, this duality, this sense of "twoness", is even more acute for African exiles today because they have fewer social and cultural ties to the West than Afro-Europeans and African-Americans. The exiles are much closer to the African "soul" DuBois refers to and are less prepared for the pervasive racism and second-class status that they have to overcome in the West. This duality is intensified by the sense of alienation and guilt engendered by the widespread demonization of exiles as selfish and ungrateful wretches who, as soon as they get their degrees, escape to greener pastures instead of using their education to uplift the poverty stricken societies that educated them at great expense.

This paper examines the "double consciousness" of Black African intellectual migrants in the West. It argues that the migrant is forced to come to terms with Africanity for the first time and that the resolution of this identity crisis is a political act which produces three "types" of migrant intellectuals: the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critic and the progressive exile.

(…)

To complicate matters further, the migrants must also endure alienation from their countries of origin. Academic exiles are likely to be victims of government repression even before leaving their home countries. Many are pushed out of their countries after political disturbances at university campuses. Others are exiled because their political perspectives do not correspond with the dominant ideological dispensation of the time. Yet, these same forces that kept them from achieving their full potential at home demonize them for leaving instead of contributing to national development. These tensions between intellectuals and politicians have boiled over frequently in the postcolonial world, most recently in a shouting match between Ghana's President Jerry Rawlings and eminent Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui during a conference in Davos, Switzerland in June 1999 (Mwagiru, 1999).

(…)

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has also joined the debate by urging educated Africans to relocate to South Africa and neighboring African countries instead of migrating to the West. Yet this option too, is complicated. Many educated Africans do spend some time in neighboring countries before migrating to the West. As stated earlier, Ali Mazrui was expelled from Uganda for his outspokenness. More recent cases have shown that turf battles between the migrants and local scholars make it difficult for the former to thrive in other African countries.

Professor Mamdani is a highly respected African political scientist who has taught at universities in East Africa and the United States for over twenty years. Yet, when he accepted a position as the director of the University of Cape Town's Center For African Studies in 1997, he found it impossible to overcome his image as an outsider in academic turf battles (Thornton, 1998). In spite of his high sounding position as Director of the Center for African Studies and his distinguished record in teaching and publications in the field, his syllabus for an introductory course in African Studies was rejected by an entrenched group of white "Africanists" (Mamdani, 1998, pp. 3-7). When he protested, he was suspended from teaching the course.

In the highly publicized debate that followed it became clear that the problem was one of perspective: Eurocentric versus Africa-centric.

(…)

The Meaning of Africa

Africanity is foisted upon the migrants the moment they arrive in the West. On the continent, most people in the rural areas live under ethnic categories like Kikuyu, Ibo, Hausa and Acholi. Some educated, middle-class and/or urban dwellers may see themselves as members of a nation like South Africa, Kenya or Tanzania. In some countries like South Africa, which has recently emerged from the crucible of apartheid, national consciousness is still strong. For most, however, "national" consciousness emerges only occasionally during Independence Day celebrations, international soccer matches or at election time.

"African" consciousness, however, is a rarity. It is in exile that the Nigerian-Ibo, South African-Zulu, Kenyan-Kikuyu person suddenly and unequivocally becomes an "African".

(…)

Yet, the condition of Africanity both marginalizes and expands Isegawa's horizons at the same time. He is no longer an Acholi or an Ugandan but an African. A member of that mythical race created by the White imagination as a foil and a justification for the holocaust of slavery and colonial exploitation. He is not only responsible for Somalia, Congo and Sierra Leone, but also tied inexplicably to the inner city gang-banger, street hustler and drug addict. In the likely encounter with the police profiler, skin color will trump national origin every time. Color also trumps education, erudition and accomplishment. None of these mean anything in a late night encounter with the police. In the New World, he is no longer an Acholi or even an Ugandan. He is an African, or more accurately, a Black man, thus automatically a suspect and a target for any White racist policeman, waitress, teacher or taxi-driver.

The Fact of Blackness

It would be a mistake, however, to leave the impression that "the fact of Blackness," creates a collective race consciousness, a natural unity among the African migrants and the native Black populations of Europe and America. This race consciousness is a rarity often limited to the politicized Pan-Africanist community. Most African descended peoples continue to see each other, and themselves, "through the eyes of others" as Du Bois put it.

(…)

Thus the migrant African intellectuals, who probably left neighboring African countries because they were unable to overcome their images as outsiders, find that they face the same problem in the United States. In this case the tension is between Diasporic- Blacks and Africans who are forced to compete for the few jobs set aside for Black scholars (African, African-American and West Indian) in the American academy. The problem, therefore, is the segregation of most Black scholars in historically Black universities and African and African-American studies departments. The fact that 49 percent of African immigrants have college degrees while only 14 percent of African Americans graduate from college adds a class dimension to the problem. The Bureau of Census reports, for instance, that the median household income of African immigrants is $30,907 compared to $19,533 for Black Americans (Bureau of Census, 1997).

(…)

Thus migrant African scholars must negotiate new identities that can no longer depend on the security of nationality and ethnicity but are not exactly Afro-European or African-American either. This dilemma of being --not exactly African but not Afro-European or African-American-- is the peculiar challenge of migrant African scholars. The resolution of this identity crisis is a political act that manifests itself in the lives and work of academics, producing three "types" of migrant intellectuals --the comprador intelligentsia, the postcolonial critics and the progressive exiles. This paper examines each of these categories and argues that we can best understand the crisis by drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois's theory of "double consciousness."

The Comprador Intelligentsia

One result of the civil rights movement was to open up employment opportunities to Black people in major universities, corporations and international organizations. African migrant scholars today are well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities by virtue of their education and contacts on the continent. This has produced a new class of migrant intellectual: The comprador intelligentsia. Members of the comprador class use their national origins, color and education to serve as spokesmen and intellectual henchmen for organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

(…)

This strategy depends upon a cadre of Black government functionaries "who, though they are Black, pursue the interests of the Federal government at the table of the Black community"(p. 168). The new "pro-business black coalition ... has been to lead from the weak position of handing over the essential elements of the African agenda to major financial interests and thus, while Africa burns, playing second fiddle to those interests" (p. 169). This unabashedly corporatist institution has attracted high-profile African and African-American scholars and intellectuals. It has transformed Pan-Africanist solidarity into a quest for profit and recruited Black intellectuals and politicians as scouts and interpreters for rapacious corporations.

The Postcolonial Critic

Much like the compradors, the postcolonial critics take advantage of their color, nationality and location in the West to become expert interpreters of the African experience for Western audiences. They also play the role of the middlemen by serving as conduits of Eurocentric thought for African consumption through the adaptation of the latest trend in Euro-American perspectives to "explain" the African experience. This adaptation of Euro-American thought to the African experience has ranged from liberalism to various types of Marxism, to modernization, developmentalism and dependency/world systems theories.

(…)

Appiah's position is not unique. It is merely a re-statement of the doublespeak of the American neoconservatives who conjured up the term "reverse racism" to attack those who fought against White supremacy. This so-called "color blind" ideology has reversed the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and is actually commonsense among White Americans. It informs policymakers from the White House to the Supreme Court and has been used to justify the retreat from egalitarianism. As Howard Winant put it: “Today the theory of race has been utterly transformed. The socially constructed status of the concept of race, which I have labeled the racial formation process, is widely recognized (Omi and Winant 1986), so much so that it is now often conservatives who argue that race is an illusion."

(…)

In Dusk of Dawn (1940), for instance, Du Bois rejected the notion that "race" had any scientific basis. "It is easy to see that scientific definition of race is impossible", Du Bois stated. Yet he went on to argue that although race does not exist biologically, racism as an ideology does and has had a terrible impact on people of African and Jewish descent during the era of capitalism: “(...) But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory. The actual ties of heritage between the individuals of this group vary but the physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is the social heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; It is this unity that draws me to Africa.” (DuBois, 1940, 137-138)

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (1997) argues that Appiah "protests too much" and fails to take into account the dialectical nature of racial oppression. As Zeleza puts it: "Racial discourses and theories are socially constructed ... but repudiating race theory does not make it disappear in politics. Race matters... because it functions as a marker and an anchor to establish and repudiate identity, status and position... Races exist because racism exists" (Zeleza, 1997,503).

The Progressive Exile

In "The Allegory of the Cave" Kenyan scholar-in-exile Ngugi wa Thiong'o discusses the role of exiles in African liberation (Ngugi, 1998). (...) Ngugi's allegory of the cave captures the migrant scholars' political dilemma in stark terms, making it clear that they have a choice of either serving the neocolonial system as witting or unwitting agents or using the knowledge they have gained from their sojourn in the West to liberate their fellows. The progressive exiles resolve the crisis of double consciousness by learning from the experience of exile while maintaining their identity as Africans.

Thus we see the politics of exile determining the perspective and location of African scholars across the ideological spectrum. Kwame Anthony Appiah, a descendant of the Ashante ruling class, who was schooled at Oxford University chooses to associate himself with the conservative, accommodationist strand of Black Studies while Ngugi wa Thiong'o, a descendant of Kenyan peasants, associates himself with the progressive strand of Black Studies.

The fact that they chose to work in the same garden despite their ideological differences demonstrates the power of Africanity in determining the politics of exile, even among the most talented of the talented tenth.

It is this power of Africanity, this "fact of blackness" as Fanon put it, that compelled African exiles and members of the African Diaspora to join Black people on the continent in the successful struggle to liberate South Africa from the jaws of Apartheid.

The theories and activities of exiles and revolutionaries like Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Agostino Neto, Nelson Mandela and Eduardo Mondlane heavily influenced African-American activists (Walters, 1995; 59-65). (...) These global solidarity movements demonstrate that a united front of people of African descent as imagined by pioneering Pan-Africanists like Du Bois and Nkrumah is still possible, even critical, in the New World Order of global markets and corporate domination.

{Read Full Article Here}