African Americans and Africa: A New History by Nemata Blyden

African Americans and Africa: A New History Reviews

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  JRT

  Identity is a reflection of politics. That is my biggest takeaway from author Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden’s book “African Americans & Africans.” This book highlights the long-standing dynamic pertaining to the racial identity and identification of persons of African descent in the United States. As Blyden describes, the identity of “Black Americans” is closely tied with shifting political agendas overtime, and has thus been impacted by internal and external forces. Blyden details how captive Africans brought over to the New World identified with their ethnic group, but would later embrace the term “African” as an overarching identity binding them together with all other Afro-descended people brought to the New World. However, as the descendants of these individuals became more enmeshed in America society, the term “African” fell out of favor and would be replaced by “Colored” and “Negro.” In highlighting this historical phenomenon—as well as others—Blyden’s work makes clear that a person’s self-identity and a group’s collective-identity is a product of political philosophy, worldview, and agenda, even if they aren’t conscious of it.
  
  Throughout the book Blyden reiterates the point that Black Americans in the American South were able to preserve important aspects of traditional African cultures, even if they didn’t necessarily recognize it as such at the time. The preservation of African culture among diasporic Africans in the United States was most prevalent in the American South because that is where the highest concentration of Black people existed. To the contrary, Northern Blacks—even those who were classified as “free”—were so thoroughly isolated from other Black people and discriminated against by white Northerners that they were forced to shed their open embrace of African identity. The implication here is that many Black people in the North responded to hostility toward their Blackness by trying to become more “American,” de-emphasizing their Africanity in the process. However, while Blyden makes clear that enslaved (and free) Africans in the South sought to replicate Indigenous African social organization by implementing extended kinship forms and maintaining various traditional cultural practices, she didn’t provide as many direct examples as I would have liked. Nevertheless, she adequately demonstrated how the maintaining of specific African cultural forms—such as the extended family—were necessary as a means of survival.
  
  While Blyden discusses the preservation of traditional African cultures among African Americans, she spends the majority of the book detailing the different forms of “engagements” and “interests” Black Americans had with Africa. Blyden does a really good job showing how and where Africa fit into the various political agendas of Black Americans over the years. However, throughout the book Blyden also repeatedly stressed how African Americans have internalized anti-African tropes, even when they sought to connect with and empower the continent. These tropes have led to a type of Black American religious paternalism, wherein Black folks thought it was their divine role to “civilize��� Africa. This viewpoint was a major aspect of Black American thought towards Africans in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Additionally, Blyden highlighted the experiences of some African Americans to state—often times in conclusory terms without much analysis—how Black Americans could never be “fully African,” ignoring the fact that the same colonial forces that stripped diasporic Africans of Indigenous culture have also hindered the cultural continuity of continental Africans.
  
  All-in-all, this is an extremely timely book, especially in light of the ongoing conversations concerning African immigration, Black American “nativism,” and reparations.
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  Erica (The Literary Apothecary)

  Books like this encourage me to learn more about my history. I completely recommend it and hope that the intended audience find the same inspiration in it that I found.
  
  I'll be thinking about this author's perspective for a long time to come.
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  Dora Okeyo

  I wanted to read this book because one, I'm African and two, I was born and have been living on the continent, so the angle on American history and the need to explore the relationship between the two continents: America and Africa sounded interesting.
  There was an interview clip that I came across on Facebook, where Akon was talking about the image America and Africa portray to the world and the need for Africa to invest in positive branding of their people, culture and countries to the world- and it's all these narratives that we've weaved over the years that create conflicts and misunderstanding that we never come down to resolving. I believe this book would be a great addition to anyone studying African American History or seeking to understand the influence slavery had and still has on both continents.
  Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.