Black nationalism
Encyclopedia
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition (or redefinition) of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism
. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society. Martin Delany
is considered to be the grandfather of African nationalism.
Inspired by the apparent success of the Haitian Revolution
, the origins of African indigenous nationalism in political thought lie in the 19th century with people like Marcus Garvey
, Henry McNeal Turner
, Martin Delany
, Henry Highland Garnet
, Edward Wilmot Blyden
, Paul Cuffe
, etc. The repatriation of African American slaves to Liberia
or Sierra Leone
was a common African nationalist theme in the 19th century. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1910s and 1920s was the most powerful black nationalist movement to date, claiming 11 million members.
According to Wilson Jeremiah Moses
in his famous work Classical Black Nationalism, African nationalism as a philosophy can be examined from three different periods giving rise to various ideological perspectives for what we can today consider what African nationalism really is.
The first period was pre-Classical African nationalism beginning from the time the Africans were brought ashore in the Americas up to the Revolutionary period. The second period began after the Revolutionary War, when a sizable number of Africans in the colonies, particularly in New England and Pennsylvania, were literate and had become disgusted with the social conditions that arose out of Enlightenment ideas. We find in such historical personalities as Prince Hall, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones a need to found certain organizations as the Free African Society, African Masonic lodges and Church Institutions. These institutions would serve as early foundations to developing independent and separate organizations. The third period of African nationalism arose during the Post-Reconstruction Era, especially among various African-American clergy circles. Separate circles had already been established and were accepted by African-Americans because of the overt oppression that had existed since the inception of the United States. This latter phenomenon led to the birth of modern African nationalism which stresses the need to separate and build separate communities that promote strong racial pride and which collectivize resources. This ideology has become the philosophy of groups like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam
. Although, the Sixties brought on a heightened period of religious, cultural and political nationalism, African nationalism would later influence afrocentricity.
encouraged African people the world around to be proud of their race and to see beauty in their own kind. A central idea to Garveyism was that African people in every part of the world were one people and they would never advance if they did not put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and contrast. He was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Booker T. Washington
, Martin Delany
, and Henry McNeal Turner
.
Although Garvey was a supporter of racial separatism, he made it clear that he held no hostility towards whites and believed in the equality of all human beings. Garvey set the precedent for subsequent African nationalist and pan-Africanist thought including that of Kwame Nkrumah
(and several other African leaders) the Nation of Islam
, Malcolm X
and most notably, Carlos Cooks (who is considered the ideological son of Marcus Garvey) and his African Nationalist Pioneer Movement as manzi maringo prove it.
Marcus Garvey's beliefs are articulated in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey as well as Message To The People: The Course of African Philosophy.
to integrate African people into mainstream American life, Malcolm X
was an avid advocate of black independence and the reclaiming of black pride and masculinity. He maintained that there was hypocrisy in the purported values of Western culture--from it's Judeo-Christian
religious traditions to American political and economic institutions--and it's inherently racist actions. He maintained that separatism and control of politics, and economics within it's own community would serve blacks better than the tactics of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and mainstream civil rights groups such as the SCLC
, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE
. Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool," and that to achieve anything, African Americans would have to reclaim their national identity, embrace the rights covered by the Second Amendment, and defend themselves from white hegemony and extrajudicial violence. In response to Rev. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream
" speech, Malcolm X quipped, "While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare."
Malcolm X believed that African Americans must develop their own society and ethical values, including the self-help, community-based enterprises, such as the Alcoholics Anonymous
, that the black Muslim
s supported. He also thought that African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with Caucasians until they could achieve internal cooperation and unity. He prophetically believed there "would be bloodshed" if the racism problem in America remained ignored, and he renounced "compromise" with whites. After participation in a Hajj
(pilgrimage to Mecca
), Malcolm found himself restructuring his views and recanted several extremist opinions in favor the doctrine of mainstream Islam
. Before he could begin taking his campaign in a new direction, he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 during a speech held at The Audubon Ballroom, NYC.
Upon his return from Mecca, Malcolm X abandoned his commitment to racial separatism; however, he still supported black nationalism and advocated that African Americans in the United States act proactively in their campaign for equal human rights, instead of relying on Caucasian citizens to make concessions. The tenets of Malcolm X's new philoposphy are articulated in the charter of his Organization of Afro-American Unity
(an African nationalist group patterned after the Organization of African Unity), and his inspiration of the Black Panther
movement.
wrote his first book, Black Skin, White Mask, an analysis of the impact of colonial subjugation on the African psyche. This book was a very personal account of Fanon’s experience being black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education. Although Fanon wrote the book while still in France, most of his other work was written while in North Africa (in particular Algeria
). It was during this time that he produced his greatest works, A Dying Colonialism and perhaps the most important work on decolonization yet written, The Wretched of the Earth.. In it, Fanon lucidly analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. In this seminal work Fanon expounded his views on the liberating role of violence for the colonized, as well as the general necessity of violence in the anti-colonial struggle. Both books firmly established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World
as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century. In 1959 he compiled his essays on Algeria in a book called L'An Cinq: De la Révolution Algérienne.
was a political movement expressing a new racial consciousness among African people in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The slogan, "Black Power", was popularized by Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael.
Black Power represented both a conclusion to the decade's civil rights movement
and an alternative means of combating the racism that persisted despite the efforts of African activists during the early 1960s. The meaning of Black Power was debated vigorously while the movement was in progress. To some it represented African-Americans' insistence on racial dignity and self-reliance, which was usually interpreted as economic and political independence, as well as freedom from White
authority.
These themes had been advanced most forcefully in the early 1960s by Malcolm X
. He argued that African people should focus on improving their own communities, rather than striving for complete integration, and that black people had a duty to defend themselves against violent assaults. The publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(1965) created further support for the idea of African-American self-determination and had a strong influence on the emerging leaders of the Black Power movement.
Other interpreters of Black Power emphasized the cultural heritage of black people, especially the African roots of their identity. This view encouraged study and celebration of African history and culture. In the late 1960s African American college students requested curricula in African-American studies that explored their distinctive culture and history.
Still another view of Black Power likened it to Anti-imperialism
which called for a revolutionary political struggle to reject racism, economic exploitation and colonialism globally. This interpretation encouraged the alliance of non-whites, including Hispanics and Asians, to improve the quality of their lives.
is the largest contemporary African American movement advocating African nationalism and was founded in the 1980s in St. Petersburg, Florida
. Composed mainly of the African People's Socialist Party
, the Uhuru Movement also includes other organizations based in both Africa and the United States. These organizations are in the process of establishing a broader organization called the African Socialist International
. "Uhuru
" is the Swahili
word for freedom.
Norm R. Allen, Jr., former executive director of Council for Secular Humanism
, calls African nationalism a "strange mixture of profound thought and patent nonsense".
Allen further criticizes black nationalists' strong "attraction for hardened prisoners and ex-cons", their encouragement of African American-on-African American violence when African American individuals or groups are branded as "Toms
", traitors, or "sellouts", the blatantly sexist stance and the similarities to white supremacist ideologies:
Nigerian-born professor of History and Director of the African American Studies program at the University of Montana, Tunde Adeleke, argues in his book "UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century African Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission" that 19th-century African American nationalism embodied the racist and paternalistic values of Euro-American culture and that African nationalist plans were not designed for the immediate benefit of Africans but to enhance their own fortunes. Adeleke further criticizes the imperial motives and the concept of a "civilizing mission" operating within the African nationalist thought which aided in "shaping and legitimizing European imperialism of Africa".
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society. Martin Delany
Martin Delany
Martin Robinson Delany was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. He became the first African-American field officer in the United...
is considered to be the grandfather of African nationalism.
Inspired by the apparent success of the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
, the origins of African indigenous nationalism in political thought lie in the 19th century with people like Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
, Henry McNeal Turner
Henry McNeal Turner
Henry McNeal Turner was a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.-Personal Biography:Turner was born "free" in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina . Instead of being sold into slavery, his family sent him to live with a Quaker family. The law at the time of his birth prevented a black...
, Martin Delany
Martin Delany
Martin Robinson Delany was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. He became the first African-American field officer in the United...
, Henry Highland Garnet
Henry Highland Garnet
Henry Highland Garnet was an African American abolitionist and orator. An advocate of militant abolitionism, Garnet was a prominent member of the abolition movement that led against moral suasion toward more political action. Renowned for his skills as a public speaker, he urged blacks to take...
, Edward Wilmot Blyden
Edward Wilmot Blyden
Edward Wilmot Blyden was an Americo-Liberian educator, writer, diplomat, and politician primarily in Liberia. He also taught for five years in Sierra Leone, and his writings were influential in both countries....
, Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffee was a Quaker businessman, Sea Captain, patriot, and abolitionist. He was of Aquinnah Wampanoag and African Ashanti descent and helped colonize Sierra Leone...
, etc. The repatriation of African American slaves to Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
or Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
was a common African nationalist theme in the 19th century. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1910s and 1920s was the most powerful black nationalist movement to date, claiming 11 million members.
According to Wilson Jeremiah Moses
Wilson Jeremiah Moses
Wilson Jeremiah Moses is an African-American historian. He is Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University.__notoc__-Career:...
in his famous work Classical Black Nationalism, African nationalism as a philosophy can be examined from three different periods giving rise to various ideological perspectives for what we can today consider what African nationalism really is.
The first period was pre-Classical African nationalism beginning from the time the Africans were brought ashore in the Americas up to the Revolutionary period. The second period began after the Revolutionary War, when a sizable number of Africans in the colonies, particularly in New England and Pennsylvania, were literate and had become disgusted with the social conditions that arose out of Enlightenment ideas. We find in such historical personalities as Prince Hall, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones a need to found certain organizations as the Free African Society, African Masonic lodges and Church Institutions. These institutions would serve as early foundations to developing independent and separate organizations. The third period of African nationalism arose during the Post-Reconstruction Era, especially among various African-American clergy circles. Separate circles had already been established and were accepted by African-Americans because of the overt oppression that had existed since the inception of the United States. This latter phenomenon led to the birth of modern African nationalism which stresses the need to separate and build separate communities that promote strong racial pride and which collectivize resources. This ideology has become the philosophy of groups like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
. Although, the Sixties brought on a heightened period of religious, cultural and political nationalism, African nationalism would later influence afrocentricity.
Marcus Garvey
Marcus GarveyMarcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
encouraged African people the world around to be proud of their race and to see beauty in their own kind. A central idea to Garveyism was that African people in every part of the world were one people and they would never advance if they did not put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and contrast. He was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
, Martin Delany
Martin Delany
Martin Robinson Delany was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. He became the first African-American field officer in the United...
, and Henry McNeal Turner
Henry McNeal Turner
Henry McNeal Turner was a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.-Personal Biography:Turner was born "free" in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina . Instead of being sold into slavery, his family sent him to live with a Quaker family. The law at the time of his birth prevented a black...
.
Although Garvey was a supporter of racial separatism, he made it clear that he held no hostility towards whites and believed in the equality of all human beings. Garvey set the precedent for subsequent African nationalist and pan-Africanist thought including that of Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...
(and several other African leaders) the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
and most notably, Carlos Cooks (who is considered the ideological son of Marcus Garvey) and his African Nationalist Pioneer Movement as manzi maringo prove it.
Marcus Garvey's beliefs are articulated in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey as well as Message To The People: The Course of African Philosophy.
Malcolm X
Between 1953 and 1965, while most African leaders worked in the civil rights movementCivil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
to integrate African people into mainstream American life, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
was an avid advocate of black independence and the reclaiming of black pride and masculinity. He maintained that there was hypocrisy in the purported values of Western culture--from it's Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...
religious traditions to American political and economic institutions--and it's inherently racist actions. He maintained that separatism and control of politics, and economics within it's own community would serve blacks better than the tactics of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and mainstream civil rights groups such as the SCLC
SCLC
SCLC may refer to:* The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an American civil rights organization* Small cell carcinoma of the lung* San Cristóbal de las Casas, a city in Chiapas, Mexico* Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration...
, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE
CORE
CORE may refer to:* Congress of Racial Equality * CORE , Coordenadoria de Recursos Especiais, a SWAT unit* Central Organization for Railway Electrification, a subsidiary of Indian Railways* Lutheran CORE...
. Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool," and that to achieve anything, African Americans would have to reclaim their national identity, embrace the rights covered by the Second Amendment, and defend themselves from white hegemony and extrajudicial violence. In response to Rev. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream
I Have a Dream
"I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination...
" speech, Malcolm X quipped, "While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare."
Malcolm X believed that African Americans must develop their own society and ethical values, including the self-help, community-based enterprises, such as the Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
, that the black Muslim
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
s supported. He also thought that African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with Caucasians until they could achieve internal cooperation and unity. He prophetically believed there "would be bloodshed" if the racism problem in America remained ignored, and he renounced "compromise" with whites. After participation in a Hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
(pilgrimage to Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
), Malcolm found himself restructuring his views and recanted several extremist opinions in favor the doctrine of mainstream Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. Before he could begin taking his campaign in a new direction, he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 during a speech held at The Audubon Ballroom, NYC.
Upon his return from Mecca, Malcolm X abandoned his commitment to racial separatism; however, he still supported black nationalism and advocated that African Americans in the United States act proactively in their campaign for equal human rights, instead of relying on Caucasian citizens to make concessions. The tenets of Malcolm X's new philoposphy are articulated in the charter of his Organization of Afro-American Unity
Organization of Afro-American Unity
The Organization of Afro-American Unity was a Pan-Africanist organization founded by Malcolm X in 1964. The OAAU was modeled on the Organisation of African Unity, which had impressed Malcolm X during his visit to Africa in April and May 1964...
(an African nationalist group patterned after the Organization of African Unity), and his inspiration of the Black Panther
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
movement.
Frantz Fanon
While in France Frantz FanonFrantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
wrote his first book, Black Skin, White Mask, an analysis of the impact of colonial subjugation on the African psyche. This book was a very personal account of Fanon’s experience being black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education. Although Fanon wrote the book while still in France, most of his other work was written while in North Africa (in particular Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
). It was during this time that he produced his greatest works, A Dying Colonialism and perhaps the most important work on decolonization yet written, The Wretched of the Earth.. In it, Fanon lucidly analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. In this seminal work Fanon expounded his views on the liberating role of violence for the colonized, as well as the general necessity of violence in the anti-colonial struggle. Both books firmly established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
as the leading anti-colonial thinker of the 20th century. In 1959 he compiled his essays on Algeria in a book called L'An Cinq: De la Révolution Algérienne.
Black Power
Black PowerBlack Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
was a political movement expressing a new racial consciousness among African people in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The slogan, "Black Power", was popularized by Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael.
Black Power represented both a conclusion to the decade's civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
and an alternative means of combating the racism that persisted despite the efforts of African activists during the early 1960s. The meaning of Black Power was debated vigorously while the movement was in progress. To some it represented African-Americans' insistence on racial dignity and self-reliance, which was usually interpreted as economic and political independence, as well as freedom from White
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
authority.
These themes had been advanced most forcefully in the early 1960s by Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
. He argued that African people should focus on improving their own communities, rather than striving for complete integration, and that black people had a duty to defend themselves against violent assaults. The publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination...
(1965) created further support for the idea of African-American self-determination and had a strong influence on the emerging leaders of the Black Power movement.
Other interpreters of Black Power emphasized the cultural heritage of black people, especially the African roots of their identity. This view encouraged study and celebration of African history and culture. In the late 1960s African American college students requested curricula in African-American studies that explored their distinctive culture and history.
Still another view of Black Power likened it to Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism, strictly speaking, is a term that may be applied to a movement opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism. Anti-imperialism includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture; it also includes...
which called for a revolutionary political struggle to reject racism, economic exploitation and colonialism globally. This interpretation encouraged the alliance of non-whites, including Hispanics and Asians, to improve the quality of their lives.
Uhuru Movement
The Uhuru MovementUhuru Movement
The Uhuru Movement is a political organizations centered around the principles of "African Internationalism," which adheres to liberation of Africans in both the continent of Africa and in the African diaspora, as well building economic and sustainable development in these communities. 'Uhuru' is...
is the largest contemporary African American movement advocating African nationalism and was founded in the 1980s in St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is known as a vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. As of 2008, the population estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau is 245,314, making St...
. Composed mainly of the African People's Socialist Party
African People's Socialist Party
The African Peoples Socialist Party is a revolutionary organisation whose goal is to improve the living conditions of Black people in the United States and around the world. The Party was formed in May 1972 by the merger of three Black power organisations based in the US states of Florida and...
, the Uhuru Movement also includes other organizations based in both Africa and the United States. These organizations are in the process of establishing a broader organization called the African Socialist International
African Socialist International
The League of African Democratic Socialist Parties, initially known as the Socialist Inter-African, is a union of social democratic political parties in the continent of Africa.It was set up to provide an international forum for moderate socialists in Africa, and proclaimed that "democratic...
. "Uhuru
Uhuru
Uhuru may refer to:, a Lake Victoria ferry in East Africa*Uhuru , campaigns for and achievement of national independence in Africa especially in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania*Uhuru Kenyatta , Kenyan politician...
" is the Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
word for freedom.
Criticism
Critics charge that African nationalism is simply black supremacism in disguise, and some argue that the implication of inherent cultures or unity based on race (a central idea of African nationalism) is itself racist.Norm R. Allen, Jr., former executive director of Council for Secular Humanism
Council for Secular Humanism
The Council for Secular Humanism is a secular humanist organization headquartered in Amherst, New York. In 1980 CODESH issued A Secular Humanist Declaration, an argument for and statement of belief in Democratic Secular Humanism...
, calls African nationalism a "strange mixture of profound thought and patent nonsense".
On the one hand, Reactionary African Nationalists (RBNs) advocate self-love, self-respect, self-acceptance, self-help, pride, unity, and so forth - much like the right-wingers who promote "traditional family values." But - also like the holier-than-thou right-wingers - RBNs promote bigotry, intolerance, hatred, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, pseudo-science, irrationality, dogmatic historical revisionism, violence, and so forth.
Allen further criticizes black nationalists' strong "attraction for hardened prisoners and ex-cons", their encouragement of African American-on-African American violence when African American individuals or groups are branded as "Toms
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
", traitors, or "sellouts", the blatantly sexist stance and the similarities to white supremacist ideologies:
Many RBNs routinely preach hate. Just as white supremacists have referred to African Americans as "devils," so have many RBNs referred to whites. White supremacists have verbally attacked gays, as have RBNs. White supremacists embrace paranoid conspiracy theories, as do their African counterparts. Many white supremacists and RBNs consistently deny that they are preaching
hate and blame the mainstream media for misrepresenting them. (A striking exception is the NOI's Khallid Muhammad, who, according to Gates, admitted in a taped speech titled "No Love for the Other Side," "Never will I say I am not anti-Semitic. I pray that God will kill my enemy and take him off the face of the planet.") Rather, they claim they are teaching "truth" and advocating the love of their own people, as though love of self and hatred of others are mutually exclusive positions. On the contrary, RBNs preach love of self and hatred of their enemies. (Indeed, it often seems that these groups are motivated more by hatred of their enemies than love of their people.)
Nigerian-born professor of History and Director of the African American Studies program at the University of Montana, Tunde Adeleke, argues in his book "UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century African Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission" that 19th-century African American nationalism embodied the racist and paternalistic values of Euro-American culture and that African nationalist plans were not designed for the immediate benefit of Africans but to enhance their own fortunes. Adeleke further criticizes the imperial motives and the concept of a "civilizing mission" operating within the African nationalist thought which aided in "shaping and legitimizing European imperialism of Africa".
See also
- African anarchism
- AfrocentrismAfrocentrismAfrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...
- Back-to-Africa movementBack-to-Africa movementThe Back-to-Africa movement, was also known as the Colonization movement, originated in the United States in the 19th century, and encouraged those of African descent to return to the African homelands of their ancestors. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the...
- Black separatismBlack separatismBlack separatism is a movement to create separate institutions for people of African descent in societies historically dominated by whites, particularly in the United States. Black separatists also often seek a separate homeland...
- Black supremacyBlack supremacyThe term black supremacy is a blanket term for various ideologies which hold that black people are superior to people of other races.-Overview:...
- Ethnic nationalismEthnic nationalismEthnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
- Harry HaywoodHarry HaywoodHarry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States...
- Pacific Movement of the Eastern WorldPacific Movement of the Eastern WorldThe Pacific Movement of the Eastern World was a 1930s North American based pro-Japanese movement of African Americans which promoted the idea that Japan was the champion of all non-white peoples....
- Pan Africanism
Further reading
- Moses, Wilson. Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (1996) excerpt and text search
- Price, Melanye T. Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion (2009) excerpt and a text search
- Taylor, James Lance. Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (Lynne Rienner Publishers; 2011) 414 pages
- Van Deburg, William. Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (1996)