Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

A Cult?
A Fraternity?
A Way of Life?
What Is This ~T'hinc~
Called Negritude`s
For Africa in particular-and for much of the
rest of the world in general-the era of Western
discovery, exploration and occupation constituted
a long night of exploitation and domination
. And while Colonialism scourged most of
the non-white world, only the black men from
Africa were massively enslaved, corralled by the
millions and transported in chains across the seas
to alien lands. Torn from their roots, forbidden
access to their cultural sustenance, assigned roles
as eternal drones, the black men from Africa,
drawing from some uncommon racial reservoir,
nonetheless found the strength and the strategy to endure . The long night is now receding
before a new dawn, but the coming light alone cannot heal the deep affliction induced
by the prolonged darkness . Strong medicine is required to cure the disease of degradation,
and Negritude has been offered as antidote to the ancient evil of anti-black racism .
It was a group of black intellectuals in Paris who first advanced the idea of Negritude
-Cesaire Aime, a poet from the French Antilles, and Leopold Sedor Senghor, a poetstatesman
from Senegal, chief among Them . Senghor, now President of the Republic of
Senegal, remains the principal proponent of Negritude, and he sums it up in these
words : "Negritude is the whole complex of civilized values-cultural, economic, social
and political-which characterize The black peoples, or, more precisely, the Negro-
African world . . . In other words, the sense of communion, the gift of myth-making, the
gift of rhythm . . . a myth which evolves with its circumstances into a form of humanism . . ."
United Nations President Alex Ctuaison-Sackey of Ghana defines Negritude as "an
acceptance and affirmation of the quality of 'blackness' . . . a psychological gathering
together of all black peoples in the spiritual bonds of brotherhood ." And American
professor St. Clair Drake terms Negritude "a soft and resilient rather than a hard and
mechanical approach to life . . . a deep resentment over subordination to white people
during the 400 years of slave trade and the subsequent structuring of caste relations
here and in Africa :'
Negritude, then, is also a form of racialism-Yes, but in the words of French philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre, "anti racial racialism ." Therein lies the difference . And Dr . Drake
explains : "Anti-racist racialism was brought into view by its opposite, which is aggressive,
exploitative racism . And the whole concept of Negritude assumes in its dialectic that
anti-racist racialism is destined to disappear: `
Knowledge is the Key to a Better Tomorrow
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