AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 4

Reference
near to diaspora, yet which never seemed to
openly connect the phrase.
The Politics of Pan-Africanism
Despite the lengthy progress of forbears
that Shepperson cited as constituting the long
march to diaspora, the conceptual point of
origin can be found earlier in his own work,
specifically in his wrestling with the meaning
and uses of the term, “Pan-Africanism.”
In response to what he termed, “a most
inadequate section on African Nationalism,”
in the second book of the Tropical Africa series,
by George H. T. Kimble, Shepperson wrote the
concise but dense article, Pan-Africanism and
“Pan-Africanism”: Some Historical Notes. In it,
Shepperson made it clear that he took issue
with Kimble’s simplistic description of Marcus
Garvey’s political and economic philosophies
as “the alloy of pan-Africanism … smelted into
the ore of Ethiopianism.” In response, Shepperson
clarified his position on the proper
meaning and use of the term Pan-Africanism,
dividing it into two separate terms, one with a
capital “P,” and the other a lowercase “p”.
The distinction between the two confines
the overtly political “Pan-African” movement
to the wide sphere of influence of W.E.B.
Du Bois, whom he posits as the official center
of the movement. Meanwhile, the lowercase
“pan-Africanism,” consists of all of the more
culturally-focused and less centralized
movements that were also happening at the
time — such as the Black Arts Movement —
along with any political movements with no
“organic relationship” to Du Bois’ Pan-Africanism.
Shepperson placed Marcus Garvey,
whose enmity with Du Bois was well established,
somewhere between the two.
While we are free to debate the efficiency
of his approach to the problem (which also
included the addition of a third term: “All-African”),
Shepperson’s struggle to contain
so many movements under a single term
demonstrates the emerging limitations of the
Pan-African concept. As Brent Hayes Edwards
observed:
On the one hand, Shepperson
rereads the term precisely to make
room for ideological difference and disjuncture
in considering black cultural
politics in an international sphere …
In Shepperson’s view, it is crucial to be
able to account for the transformative
‘sea changes’ that Pan-African thought
undergoes in a transnational circuit.
Among the "sea changes" that Edwards
mentions were the issues associated with
communicating competing ideologies
between languages. The many differences that
separated the various forms of Pan-Africanism
together with the scope of activity taking
place on several continents, made the process
of Internationalism (a term employed here to
include both forms of Pan-Africanism) one of
continual translation. This difficulty added to
the already numerous gaps between groups —
gaps that were widening in importance at the
moment of Shepperson’s reconsideration of
the term. His solution, Edwards reflects, was
to work, “toward a revised or expanded notion
of black international work that would be able
to account for such unavoidable dynamics of
difference, rather than either assuming a universally
applicable definition of ‘Pan-African’
or presupposing an exceptionalist version of
New World ‘Pan-African’ activity.”
Reconciling the needs of the quickly
changing landscape with any of the constructions
of Pan-Africanism available at the time
quickly proved to be more than the concept
could bear. Something new was needed. The
process of becoming a conceptual diaspora
therefore was not a simple one of connecting
the story of African dispersal to that of
Jewish dispersal as told in the Bible and other
histories. Instead, the African Diaspora
concept emerged as the result of a process of
outgrowing the unilateral vision of a single,
mono-centric Pan-African movement. Yet, the
transition away from Pan-Africanism didn’t
come about because the strategies and efforts
that comprised its movements hadn’t worked,
but because they had.
The Birth of Many Nations
The catalyst which would begin to
render obsolete what the celebrated anthropologist
St. Clair Drake called “traditional
Pan-Africanism”, was the accomplishment
of the political liberation that the movement
had labored for so long to realize. As Drake
framed it, “[T]he period of uncomplicated,
united struggle to secure independence from
the white oppressor ended for each colony as it
became a nation.”
With the gradual absence of a ubiquitous
force of oppression came the crumbling of
the amalgamated front that had been erected
to resist it. Africa was no longer the centerpiece
of an internationally-aligned struggle
for independence. Divergent national identities
emerged as political priorities diversified.
New African and Caribbean nations turned to
questions of self-governance, while those on
the American continent devoted themselves to
the fight for civil rights and equality at home.
Meanwhile, in Africa, a series of armed
coups led to what Drake termed “a parade to
the seats of power of military men who had no
allegiance to the kind of sentimental Pan-Africanism
[that their predecessors espoused],
and who were without any previous experience
in dealing with West Indians and Afro-Americans.”
Yet despite this political parting of ways,
the sense of connection culturally, historically,
if not politically, remained and demanded new
modes of articulation.
New words, that would embrace the
legacy of Internationalism, support cultural
pan-Africanism, and yet loosen the bonds of
a Pan-African ideology based on a common
political destiny that stratified even as it was
being achieved. Shepperson’s nomination of
diaspora filled that gap.
It’s questionable whether Henry
Sylvester Williams envisioned Pan-Africanism
as a singular movement, or if he imagined the
number of activities, groups, and leaders that
would eventually be gathered under the term
— or all that they would accomplish. That it
was ultimately unable to contain the multitude
of ideas that grew under its umbrella was
perhaps the greatest mark of Pan-Africanism’s
success.
The vision of what Black Liberation
was, what it would mean and how it could be
achieved was never truly singular, even within
a single organization. But there was a certain
unity of direction that became difficult to
maintain as African colonies became African
nations, and the restricted yet somewhat
generalized national identity of the “African
Abroad” became specifically “Trinidadian,”
“Jamaican,” “African American” and so on.
The solidification of national identities
and the necessary separation of political goals
that attended it created a level of self-interest
that was antithetical to the “Pan” element of
“Pan-Africanism.”
Diaspora, therefore makes a timely
entrance into a conversation that was just
beginning to turn from the politics of unity to
a deeper exploration of the meanings of difference
in the global Black community.
What remains of Pan-Africanism today
is largely culturally focused. Though it would
be inaccurate to ever categorize Black cultural
activity as apolitical, to the extent that any
unified Pan-African movement could be said
to exist today, it lacks much of the ability to
influence policy that Du Bois and other leaders
had at the height of their activity. Harris and
Shepperson introduced diaspora as, undoubtedly,
the more accurate description of
the amalgam of African and Africa-descended
cultures that cross the world today.
However, there is still much that the
focus and intensity of Pan-Africanism could
teach to its far less politically-inclined
successor.
And as the strength and support behind
the Movement for Black Lives and other
groups continues to grow, inspiring protests
across the world in response to the continued
murder of Black people by police in America,
the examples of Pan-Africanism’s chief
leaders, strategists, and theorists may be
becoming more relevant by the day. AC
Marcus Garvey in Regalia, 1924. James VanDerZee. Copyright Donna Mussenden
VanDerZee. All rights reserved. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Centers for
Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.
The Ethiopian World Federation. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Centers for
Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.
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