US-Africa relations over the last century: an African perspective

Social Research, Winter, 2005 by Sulayman S. Nyang

In concluding this section of the paper, one must state categorically that the slave trade and the Middle Passage are two symbolic and concrete realities that have defined the perceptions of black intellectuals and activists over the last 300 to 400 years. Evidence for this claim lies in the body of literature ranging from slave narratives, to the writings of David Walker, Frederick Douglas, Martin Delaney, Bishop Henry M. Turner, and many others. African perceptions of the United States did not only come from the pens of these writers but also from the personal experiences and writings of blacks living on the African continent who have read about America or have traveled to America and afterward immortalized their views of this country in their writings. It is to this and other related materials that we now turn in this essay.

AMERICA THROUGH AFRICAN EYES: THE COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL PERIOD:

In examining the nature of the relationship between Africa and the United States, one must also ask questions pertaining to African opinions on and attitudes toward the United States during the colonial era. First, it should be noted that the colonial powers to a great extent shaped and conditioned African perceptions. Jealous about their "possessions" and determined to fence off real or potential rivals, these European powers in Africa made sure that whatever information their subjects knew about the outside world was filtered through their colonial lenses. Evidence for this is amply provided in the curriculum of the schools created to induct young Africans into the colonial world. Much has been written about this phenomenon, and the works of Fanon, Memmi, Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Achebe, Ngu Wa Thiongo and countless others have shed considerable light on the colonial education system. In looking for a key to understanding how and why Africans reacted to the United States in a certain way during the colonial period, one must look at the writings of African and diaspora blacks living on the continent.

Foremost among these writers and thinkers was Edward Wilmot Blyden. A black returnee who chose to settle in what was recently named Liberia, Blyden tells us a great deal about his opinions on and attitudes toward America and the black situation in his book, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Through his writings and lectures in West Africa, this black intellectual influenced African opinions about the United States. Because of his unfavorable personal experiences in America he wrote negatively about the country and the future of blacks in America. Unlike Frederick Douglas, who sees light at the end of the American tunnel, Blyden sees darkness and hopelessness. And he strongly urged African Americans to immigrate to Africa and not waste their time and energies nurturing hopes and dreaming dreams in an America where what Rayford Logan would later called The Betrayal of the Negro, in a book by that name, was beginning to take place.

But if Blyden can be seen as a major force of anti-Americanism in what was emerging as British West Africa and beyond, the French assimilation policy in Africa was also not very helpful in the cultivation of Americanophilian tendencies among Africans. Although French men and women identified very strongly with Americans, and although between the scramble for Africa and the end of the Second World War Franco-American relations were increasingly favorable because of America's growing great power status, the fact still remains that the French kept Americans out of their domain. The American political leaders, who until the advent of the First World War held on to their isolationist policy, unwittingly provided the excuse and the opportunity for the French and other colonial masters to keep Africans ignorant of American realities. Although presidents before Woodrow Wilson had made what is now increasingly seen by many historians as imperialist ventures in South America and the Philippines, this was not known to Africans. In fact, this portrayal of America as an imperial power would enter the African consciousness through the communist movement and the Pan-African movement, respectively. These two movements would influence the African educated classes directly and indirectly. Directly, it came by way of the leftist groups that were active in France and Great Britain. Through the activism of some of the Africans in France, many African intellectuals and activists made acquaintances with black Americans fleeing from the ravages of racism in America. Much has been said about the interaction between the blacks identified with the Harlem renaissance and the founders of the Negritude Movement. Although most of the leaders of this black-consciousness movement were not Marxists, their French supporters and sympathizers were from the left, and their opinions on and attitudes toward the United States were negative. African opinions and attitudes toward the United States of America in the Franco-African world were defined particularly by the race issue. France's claim of higher civilization was propagated through the assimilation policy. Although there is now ample evidence to demonstrate that this policy was more fiction than fact, and that many Africans living under French colonial rule could not rise to the level of acceptance by virtue of mastery of French language and culture, the fact still remains that many an African American living in France during the interwar era and before Brown decision of the American Supreme Court rated France higher than their own country because of the greater sting of racism in America.