RE: Slavery, Genocide and the Politics of Outrage: Understanding the New “Racial Olympics”

Back on February 26, 2006 I was "forced" to write a response to an web article dated from 1997 entitled Islam and the African People where the author in an attempt to smear Afrocentric Scholars such as Molefe Assante as Orientalists (as a corollary to racist) because they dare to point out the complex history of Islam and Arabs in Africa which included slave trading, Jihads as well as great centers of learning such as Timbuktu. That response turned into a two part series entitled:

Afrocentricity and Islam
Afrocentricity and Islam II

What bothered me most about that 1997 article was that a great deal of persons who are Muslim would be prone to believe that the author was "correct" much like many Christians believe their positions to be "correct" simply because many of these individuals are not only emotionally invested in believing the material but they also have not and most likely will not go and do the research and fact check for themselves. Fast forward to this article from Spring 2005 issue of Middle East Report in which the article Slavery, Genocide and the Politics of Outrage: Understanding the New “Racial Olympics” can be found. It is a strang piece that, unfortunately, is partly a near complete rehash of the 1997 article with a longer bibliography and yet contradicts itself later by supporting some of the claims made against so called "Afrocentrics". What is perhaps most disturbing about this piece, aside from it's date of publication, would be that the author apparently feels no need to check in with his collegues at Columbia (Manning Marable comes to mind) or other African Scholars to make sure he gets certain claims "right". had he done so I presume that the article would have had a different tone altogether or wouldn't have been written. That's not to say that I don't agree with everything the author says. I do agree with some points but lets get on with the analysis.

Aidi begins with:
In October 1999, PBS aired TheWonders of the African World, a six-part documentary produced by the renowned African-American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates, wherein the Harvard educator travels from Egypt to Sudan and down the Swahili coast of East Africa and up though parts of West Africa examining the encounter between Africa and Arab civilization and the role of Africans and Arabs in the enslavement of Africans. In Egypt, Gates reflects on the “facial features” of monuments in Aswan, noting the “blackness” of the pharaohs and pondering whether construction of the Aswan Dam that inundated ancient Nubia was an act of Arab racism.

I saw that show as well and it's repeats. I didn't like Gates' attitude throughout much of the show but it should bear in mind that though Gates is, in his words, HNIC, at Harvard, he is a writer and not a Egyptologist as say Diop was. But that's not really the point. What is clear from the beginning is that Aidi wants to sow doubt on the "blackness" of the ancient Egyptians by putting in quotes the "facial features" and the "Blackness" of the Pharaohs. See no "africentric" scholar has the blackness of the Egyptians in dispute so would not put such things in quotes. In fact anyone familiar with Diop's work would also refrain from quoting because his work put's the "Blackness" question to rest. In case we need help here I would point you to figure 17 of the chapter 2 of Diop's work Civilization or Barbarism, in which the Egyptians drew pictures of the "types" of people in and around Egypt and they clearly show themselves as black wholly haired people. I would also remind the author that the Khemet and Sudan both are references to the black land as in land of the blacks. So since the ancient people were pretty clear as to what the Egyptians looked like (in terms of its founding population) there should be no confusion or use of quotes when discussing the blackness of the Egyptians. Let us continue though:

The Wonders of the African World was guided by peculiarly American conceptions of race and blackness, the most obvious being the “one-drop rule,” by which anyone deemed possessing so much as one drop of black blood was to be considered fully black and subjected to the legal system of racial domination known as Jim Crow. Asked by one critic why he considered ancient Egyptians more authentically African than modern Egyptians, Gates responds: “I suspect that if the average ancient Egyptian had shown up in Mississippi in 1950, they would have been flung into the back of the bus. And that is black enough for me.”

I want to agree with Aidi here. I agree that the conception of Race in America is the silliest holdover from early White Supremacy. It is absolutely ridiculous to claim that a person with a black ancestor some 5 or so generations back is as black as someone who never had a non-black ancestor is biologically impossible and is the mark of a continued wish for white purity. that said though, even though Gates was hedging his bets with the "back of the bus" statement it is clear from our previous discussion that he needn't use such a stretch. Of course then there is this issue of "modern Egyptians". I would point out to Aidi that 'modern Americans" do not in any way resemble the ancient Americans. Furthermore, genetic studies have shown that the many of the current North African inhabitants have gene pools that point outside of Africa for their origins, something that would not be the case with the ancient Egyptians. Ahhhh that degree in biology sure does come in handy sometimes.

Of course the issue that Aidi wants to bring up is what constitutes an Arab vs. an African. Whereas in America the question is whether a person is really white (one drop rule) Aidi (and I suspect others) asks, is whether a person is really black or decides that a person is "black when they are doing something negative and not black when they are doing something he agrees with.

Aidi continues:

By emphasizing the role of the Arabs and Africans in the slave trade, Gates was engaging in the common American practice of allocating “racial guilt,” in this case underlining Arab and African “blame” for slavery. As one African reviewer wrote, “Some of us fear that in [his] efforts to repair relations between White America and Black America, [Gates] may be sowing the seeds of discord between African-Americans and the peoples of the African continent.”[2]

Gates is probably trying to repair relations with white America and I, among others agree that Gates is sloppy with history and has displayed various condescending attitudes towards Africans. But even though he has theses issues it does not negate from the particular facts that Africans had been involved in the slave trade as sellers to both Europeans and Arabs and that Arabs on the East coast of Africa had also engaged in slave trading and plantation systems (see Afrocentricity and Islam posts). Denial gets us nowhere. But denial is one of the smallest of Aidi's issues. But what is perhaps more troubling is that Aidi then contradicts his apparent condemnation of the Afrocentric position by writing later:

The conflict between Arab and African nationalism is also an ideological “war of visions.” While many sub-Saharan African regimes sought to celebrate their indigenous languages and cultures after independence, many North African regimes that joined the Arab League would embrace their own “migration myth,” retroactively tracing their populations’ national origin to Arabia (a claim that would provide ammunition for black nationalists and others seeking to portray North Africans as settlers). Most North African states made Arabness (‘uruba) the official identity, Arabic the official language and suppressed—or even criminalized—the expression of indigenous, non-Arab languages and identities. The homogenizing historiography of the state builders is now coming under attack by self-described “indigenous” nationalist movements in the Sudan and the Maghrib. In Morocco, the Berberophone movement has successfully pressured the government to change history textbooks that claimed that the country’s entire population, Arabic- and Berber-speakers alike, originated in the Middle East.

And
Abdellatif Aboul-Ela, director of the cultural office of the Egyptian embassy in Washington, responded with an op-ed in the Washington Post which captured many Egyptians’ attitudes toward race and Africa: “They should not…involve us in this racial problem that I thought was solved and buried a long time ago. We are not in any way related to the original black Africans of the Deep South. Egypt, of course, is a country in Africa, but this doesn’t mean it belongs to Africa at large. This is an Egyptian heritage, not an African heritage…. We cannot say by any means we are black or white.”[40]


And
Many African and African-American observers note that Arab heads of state will spout a pan-African rhetoric while being deeply contemptuous of Africa. Nasser supported the civil rights movement and spoke passionately of continental solidarity, but also said: “We are in Africa… We will never in any circumstances relinquish our responsibility to support, with all our might, the spread of enlightenment and civilization to the remotest depths of the jungle.”[38] Likewise, Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, another champion of Africa known for his grandiloquent appeals to black America, is the author of TheGreen Book, which holds that blacks have more children than other races because they “are sluggish in a climate that is always hot.” Qaddafi has attempted to annex northern Chad, arming groups along the Chadian and Sudanese borders in an effort to build an “Arab belt” across the Sahara. These supremacist attitudes permeate Arab intellectual circles. Egyptian historian Hilmi Shaarawi, arguably the Arab world’s most renowned Africanist, has tartly observed that most Arabic-language scholarship on Africa treats the continent as a “cultural vacuum,” a “continent without any culture and civilization” waiting to be fecundated by Islam and Arab culture.[39] {note: if this is the conclusion come up by an Arab Africanist, one can only imagine the attitude present in the 11 and 12th centuries!}

And

With the rise of independent media, the forbidden subjects of race and racism in the Arab world are being raised. Al-Jazeera’s critical coverage of the Darfur crisis led to the arrest and conviction of its Khartoum bureau chief, Islam Salih, for “disseminating false news.”..Recently, Egyptian pro-democracy activist Saadeddin Ibrahim denounced the “racist tendencies of the Arabs” noting that Arab silence in face of killings of non-Arabs by Arabs was “a cowardly and hidden racism.”[88] Similarly, Gamal Nkrumah has written forcefully against color prejudice (“shadism”) in the Arab world, as symbolized by the penchant for hair dying and skin bleaching creams.[89] Arab scholars are also increasingly challenging the age-old claptrap about “Muslim colorblindness” and the “benignity of Oriental slavery,” and questioning national myths of origin.


How can Aidi on one hand condemn Afrocentrics for highlighting Arab and Muslim involvement in slave trading and cultural "genocide" and on the other show Arabs bringing up the same issues. How can Aidi write that Afrocentrics have it wrong, when he quotes a source that completely removes Egypt from Africa a typical move done by Europeans being done by those that Aidi would want we Nationalists would have us partner up with. I can only presume that Aidi fees that African-Americans and other designated "black" peoples don't have the right to make such charges or bring up such contradictions.

Next he writes:

Black nationalists are not the only group in the United States to claim certain cultures, spaces and eras of the Arab world as theirs for their own purposes.

Wow. So after questioning the "blackness" of the ancient Egyptians he pulls the "Arab world" card. This is the classic annexation of land in Africa that has been recorded as being overrun by various people and then acting as if it never belonged to the people who were first there. It's right up there with the claims that black Indians are Caucasians as purported by European "scholars". It never really occurs to Aidi that had the Roman empire not fallen that the area he calls the 'Arab word" would be the European world. What constitutes the Arab world inside the continent of Africa is but an accident of history. Let us continue.

Malcolm X, one of the first to try to reconcile Arab and black nationalisms, tells of a transforming encounter he had with an Algerian diplomat in Ghana: “I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador, who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word…. When I told him that my political, social and economic philosophy was black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well, where did that leave him? Because he was white…he was Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of black nationalism, where does that leave him?”[3]

I cannot speak for Egun Malcolm X but I would suppose that what made him respect the Algerian diplomat was his militancy and revolutionary attitude that was in line with what Malcolm X was about. of course Black Nationalists have never had a problem with white people (Arab or otherwise) who embraced the goals of Black Nationalism. If the Algerian diplomat felt that he needed to have allegiances with other whites then I would suppose that it would put him at odds with Malcolm X. But as noted before I cannot speak for egun Malcolm X. The author then writes:

The presence of Arabs on the African continent—“white” ones like the Algerian ambassador, but especially those who appear phenotypically “black” but reject the label “African”—has elicited numerous ideological reactions, from Malcolm’s pro-Arab pan-Africanism to militantly anti-Islamic, anti-Arab strands of Afrocentrism. In the early 1970s, a school of black nationalism emerged that is strongly distrustful of the Arab world.Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, that school has become stridently political, making common cause with movements, such as those of Christian evangelicals, Zionists and neo-conservatives, with which it has historically been at odds.


It is of interest that that author does not actually name these "militantly anti-Islamic, Anti-Arab strands of afrocentrism. Of course he can't because as with the 1997 article there is no proof. There is no doubt that there are persons, most of whom are not scholars by any stretch of the imagination who hold very hostile views of Islam, Arabs AND "native" Africans but those people cannot be called Afrocentrists. If they are to be considered so, then in the name of equal treatment I would propose that we say that the Osama Bin Ladin types represent proper Islam. Not prepared to do that, then.....

The second specious claim in this article is that black nationalists have joined forces with Christian Evangelicals, Zionists and neo-conservatives. Say what? This article should be trashed based on that statement alone. The last Pan-Africanist/Nationalist to make the mistake of backing Zionism was Marcus Garvey, who said "and Palestine for the Jew." (note: neo-garveyism totally rejects Zionism and stands that Marcus Garvey was in err to back Zionism). Most Christian Black Nationalists are also very opposed to the rabid Christian Evangelical right and have no taste for neo-conservatives. So exactly who are these Black Nationalist organizations that are in league with the US Right? I want to know. Really. Let us move on.

The resurgence of this strand of black nationalism, which sees Arabs as “not our people” and “guilty” of inflicting the same devastation on Africa as the white West, is the result of centuries-old tensions between African-American Muslims and Christians, strained relations between African-Americans and Arab-Americans in urban areas, and a reaction to the clash between African and Arab nationalism in the Afro-Arab borderlands, particularly in the Sudan.

Again, in the Afrocentricity and Islam posts, I cover the grounds for the "guilty" of inflicting devastation on Africa so I wont rehash it here. However; this claim of "tensions" between African-American Muslims and Christians is overblown. While there is definitely a religious leaning of African-Americans towards Christianity for historical reasons, the largest Muslim group in America are African-Americans. We have lived with black muslims for decades without issue. In many cases African-American Muslims are afforded extra respect for being Muslim. What the author does not overstate is the conflict between Arab-Americans and African-Americans. And I'll point out that not a few African-American Muslims have issues with the attitudes of Arab Muslims which I think the author should spend his time researching and writing about. Lastly it amuses me that Mr. Aidi does not see the apparently conflict that the ideas of Arab Nationalism being waged in Africa. Can you imagine for a minute A military contingent from say Cameroon went to Saudi Arabia and waged African Nationalism? Not a single Arab would find that acceptable, In fact Mr Aidi points this out himself when he writes:

One Iraqi insurgent profiled by The Guardian said that some rebels deliberately target black soldiers: “To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation… Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.”[72]

Yes, "Negroes" are particularly offensive when not in supine positions.

Yes, but somehow Black Nationalists who object Arabs or Arab minded individuals waging Arab nationalism in Africa are being "strident". OK. Let us move on.

This anti-Arab black nationalism has found expression in the new initiative demanding reparations from the Arab League for “Afro-Arab slavery” and the campaign to penalize Sudan for the Darfur tragedy. Both efforts are inspired by the view that Arabic-speaking North Africans (of all hues) are an “alien race” on African soil.

I honestly was not aware that some group has petitioned the Arab League for reparations. Interesting. As for Sudan I need to agree with the author on the point that the Northern Sudan people are Arabic speaking Africans. From what I can tell, the adjective "Arab" is being used in a way similar to that of Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda. What is important though is how the people see themselves. Does the government in Khartoum think of themselves as part of the Arab world (and culture) or as a part of the African world. I'm still waiting to see images of "actual arabs" as in Saudi Arabs as in Lebanese and Palestinian Arab (typifying here) in the Darfur conflict. I haven't seen that yet.

Generally I get the feeling that the author really wants to get at the intricacies of the Darfur situation. The parts where he actually focuses in on that are successfull but the parts where he feels the need to castigate so called "Nationalists" it is clear that he is outside his area of expertise. The constant conflation of black conservatives, progressives and nationalists is a sign that he is looking to make a case by linking any and everything that appear to support his thesis. That may fly in a journal called Middle East Report that somehow includes Morocco, but in the wider audience it cannot hold water. Before concluding this post I want to respond to a set of questions posed by Mr. Aidi:

How did Arabs transmute, almost overnight, from being seen by African-Americans as allies in the struggle against Western racism to a slave-trading “intruder race” occupying Africa? How did the pro-Arab pan-Africanism of Malcolm X lose out to the anti-Arab black nationalism of Asante, Williams and Soyinka? Some, like Sherman Jackson, have attributed this change to the “exploitative” relations between Arabs and African-Americans in urban America—and the anti-black bigotry of some Muslim immigrants. Malcolm X defended Middle Eastern immigrants from the bigotry charge thusly: “Now a lot of Arabs might like for you to think that they are white, but whenever you see them involved in the international picture, they are lined up with the dark world. They can come around here and pose as white. But when they get back, they’re not white.” But even this defense began to ring hollow, as many African-Americans began to feel not unjustifiably that Arab nationalism was turning its back on pan-Africanism and the “dark world.” Equally important in inflaming black nationalist rage are the supremacist strains of Arab nationalism and Islamism espoused by various North African states that openly speak of subjugating or civilizing non-Muslim and non-Arabic speaking groups. The militant Arab-Islamist nationalism of the Khartoum regime, in particular, figures prominently in Afrocentrist and black nationalist thought, with many, like Chancellor Williams, arguing that the Sudanese civil war is merely a continuation of a centuries-old race war between invading Arabs and indigenous Africans. But how did the Sudanese civil war and its most recent permutation, the Darfur conflict, come to be so widely seen as pitting “Arabs” versus “indigenous” Africans?

One has to understand that as certain black people matured in their outlook, they came to realize that though they were immediately against European domination and exploitation, it was clear that other people can, would and have dominated African people. realizing this, we moved from the idea that we are simply anti-West to being anti-domination by anyone. This is the actual state of the Nationalist/Pan-Africanist. Thus the so-called "Pro-Arab" Pan-Africanism of Malcolm X was still a part of the "immature" Pan-Africanism as Malcolm had only just begun to step out on the world stage as an independent thinker and doer. And let us not fool ourselves, many other countries that "supported" African-American struggles were aware that bringing up the subject of discrimination and violence against the black population was a nice tool to use against the US on the international scene.

Of course the quote above precedes Aidi's self contradictions on the matter of so called "Anti-Arabism". But Speaking of Assante. What is his specific position on Arabs and Islam? I asked him that earlier this year and he said:

I have never written
against any religion, just in support of African as a
religion. When you ask a Jew, what religion are you? They
say, I am Jewish. When you ask me, I say, I am African. I do
not have any hatred for the Arabs, but Mecca is their holy
city, and Arabic is their holy language. Why should I want
what is theirs? No, I am an African, full stop.

So unless Aidi knows something that Assante does not. Aidi has no means of supporting his statement that Molefe Assante is "Anti-Arab".
Moving on to Malcolm X's quote we find something very instructive. I have always contended in my arguments against the One Drop Rule that it is biologically impossible for a black person to "pass" as a white person. The very definitions negate such foolishness. That Malcolm can say that Arabs can at once be "white" as in identify as non-colored and then situationally identify as "colored" when it is opportune, speaks volumes as to the distrust that a reasonable African person would have of Arabs who act thus. As a black man, I am black here, there and anywhere. Therefore I remain for the Black man (woman and child) here, there and anywhere I find myself. There is no option to "Opt out" and to "re-identify" as Assante says: I am African. Full stop. I cannot fully trust a so called ally who will change allegiances when it suites him. makes no sense. I don't think Malcolm fully understood the implications of his statement then.

Lastly, I'll agree with Aidi that the current situation in Darfur, as I have seen it thus far, is not a biological "Arab" vs. "African" conflict but it may well be a conflict of Arab Nationalist allegiance on one side against a more plural African identified side which still is a bad thing.

Technorati Tags: Africa, critique, Culture, Hishaam D Aidi, Islam, Leadership, Middle East, Pan-Africanism, politics, Religion , Sudan