Now is the time to put our money where our mouths are

New African, Oct 2001 by Goffe, Leslie

In contrast, Continental Africans call Molefi Kete Asante an exception. Molefi, professor of African-American Studies at the Temple University in Philadelphia, has had more than the token African meal. Some of his closest friends are Africans from north, south, east and west of the Motherland.

Molefi, who changed his name from Arthur L. Smith Jr after his first visit to Ghana in 1972, has been to Africa more than 50 times, and each year organises African-American tours to Egypt and Ghana.

He says: "Although it is true that the masses of African-Americans really do not know much about the Continental Africans amongst us, it is also true that many thousands more do care to know. And these thousands do travel by the planeload to all points of Africa each year, in part, to prove that they care.

"There are a growing number of African-Americans who do have African acquaintances and friends, and know the details of African cultures", says Molefi, who coined the term "Afrocentricity", which is the study of Africa and its history from the standpoint of African people as subjects and agents of history.

The African-Americans who go to Africa, says Molefi, are not just the enlightened elite. "It is not just academics, businesspeople and activists or those with money and time that are going," he says. "It's working class people - regular, everyday folk - who have simply saved their money and want to make a connection with the Motherland."

But Andrew W. Cooper, former publisher of the now defunct New York-based black newspaper, The City Sun, is not sure such pilgrimages to Africa mean as much as some think they do. "African-Americans are not proud of Africa and are not proud to be called Africans," says Cooper, the first AfricanAmerican invited to join the United African Congress, the first established organisation set up by Continental Africans to represent their political and economic interests. They say those interests are not adequately addressed by existing AfricanAmerican organisations.

Cooper adds: "Our whole feeling, for the most part, is that we are Americans by fiat, and Africans by an accident of history. So when you are looking for unity and a coming-together of people, our people, that has not come about yet."

This elusive unity is unlikely to emerge in New York anytime soon. Nowhere is the rift that keeps African-Americans and Continental Africans apart more apparent than in New York city.

Chika Onyeani, owner and publisher of the biggest selling African weekly in the US, The African Sun Times, says: "The Continental African in this country, unfortunately, continues to be treated as a brainless and stupid ignoramus incapable of discerning what is good or bad for him or herself Even though we, as Africans, are treated as infants in this country, we know and believe we are still the older brother."

But not too many AfricanAmericans would be happy being the younger brother. Most hold the mistaken view of the typical African immigrant as the ubiquitous peddler, camped out on street corners from Washington DC to Houston, hawking an endless supply of fake Cartier watches, Gucci bags, and Ray-Ban sunglasses.