Black Atlantic and a post-racial society

In the discourse about modernity and the role of the people of colour, a new idea was tabled in a 1993 publication by Harvard University Press. The book by Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, has unleashed a fresh debate about the concept of the Black Atlantic.

Gilroy’s Black Atlantic focuses on the dispersal of the African peoples from the African shores to North and South America, the Caribbean, Britain and Western Europe, originally triggered by the transatlantic slave trade. The author traverses the cultural variations of the black Atlantic, paying special attention to both its uniqueness and diversity. Central to his thesis is that modernity is a phenomenon of ‘hybridism’ and this has been created in part by the black dispersal.

My own definition of the black Atlantic is more purely a political geography of race. In this sense, global Africa is divided between the black Atlantic and the black Indian Ocean. The black Atlantic combines the African continent with that part of the African diaspora that is located in Europe and in the Western hemisphere.

The African Diaspora in Europe and the Americas was initially a product of the slave trade involving Europeans. Four continents constitute the black Atlantic: Africa, Europe, North America and South America, accompanied by neighbouring islands, especially those of the Caribbean.

The black Indian Ocean, on the other hand, consists mainly of Africa and Asia, the two largest continents of planet earth. The African diaspora in Asia is mainly a product of the Arab slave trade. That trade was much older than the Atlantic traffic, but much smaller in scale.

In addition to Africa itself, there has been a significant African presence in the history of the Middle East, South Asia and further east. The black Indian Ocean encompasses what used to be known as Africa’s eastern Diaspora, but combined with Africa itself.

Since the concepts of black Atlantic and black Indian Ocean are products of the political geography of race, we pay attention also to the political periodisation of race. Are we approaching a post-racial age? Our central focus here is on the black Atlantic, overlooking for a while the Black Indian Ocean. I have addressed the political geography of Afrabia elsewhere.

Can there be a post-racial society in human history? Here we need to distinguish between a post-racial society and a post-racism era. Outgrowing racism, though difficult, can be attained sooner than the disappearance of race as a demographic category.

South Africa may outgrow racism as a form of prejudice by about the middle of this 21st century. But it may take the same South Africa at least an additional full century to outgrow race-consciousness. A post-racial society is one that has not only abandoned racism as a form of racial bigotry but has also shed race-consciousness as a residual mode of defining a group.

In post-colonial Africa it is infinitely easier to imagine a post-tribal society than a post-racial society. While many African societies were still basically ‘tribal’ at the time of independence, there has been a genuine effort to get beyond tribalism as a form of intolerance while still accepting boundaries of tribal identities.

This proposition is consistent with the teachings of Islam. As a verse in the Qur’an has put it: ‘We have created you from a male and female, and forged you into nations and tribes that you may know each other [and learn from each other]. Verily the best among you are those who are the most pious.’ The line of reasoning here is that tribalism and nationalism can create a wrong sense of who is superior to whom. But instead of tribalism, tribal and national consciousness can be a beneficial resource if it leads to learning from each other and getting to know each other better.

In the pre-feudal days, Western society was at one time pre-tribal. Then most western European countries became tribal and feudal. And from the Peace of Westphalia onwards, Western Europe became generally more national and post-tribal, except in places like Scotland where clan loyalties are still powerful and compelling.

If periods of national history can be pre-tribal, tribal or post-tribal, why cannot periods of continental history also be pre-racial, racial or post-racial?

* Ali A. Mazrui is a professor of political science and African studies at State University, New York.
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