OCTOBER 1999 
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      BLACK HISTORY MONTH 
      FEATURE   
      The beauty of being black - celebrating 50 years of achievement
      Some 50 years ago, few non-blacks would accept that black people could be competitive in any field. Today, black achievements are so visible that we take them for granted. As Black History Month is celebrated this month in Britain, Dr Patrick Adibe looks beyond the parapet and urges the black race to put its thinking cap on.
      Today it is not uncommon to see, for instance, non-black hip-hop musicians trying to rap like blacks or many European countries believing that a black American trainer is necessary to polish the boxing talents of their local heroes to world standards.

      From music to sport, black presence has become so well entrenched that most people tend to forget that our "acceptance" into these fields was only a recent phenomenon. In fact, so visible have we become in some fields that a major international magazine reported recently that for most people under 30, their role model is likely to be a black person. Yet, it is debatable if these achievements have made being "black" less pejorative than it was at the onset of slavery and colonialism. 

      If our achievements are everywhere for the world to see, why then do we have to celebrate the Black History Month? Isn't it a contradiction in terms? Does a tiger need to proclaim its trigritude as the Nigerian Nobel laureate in literature, Professor Wole Soyinka, once asked leaders of the Negritude Movement? In fact isn't celebrating the Month itself an admission that black achievements are so sparse that they need to be combed out and celebrated?

      On the other hand, given that the current environment in which racism employs psychological instruments to wear down black self confidence, this type of celebration may be needed to help build confidence. It can even expose us to an array of possible black role models, and instil in us the "I too can do it" mentality. Which is good.

      However, we must be careful not to allow celebrating the achievements of the past to sedate us into forgetting the challenges that lay ahead. We must also be careful that such celebrations do not hamper current efforts to break into the crucial areas of science and technology, entrepreneurship and administration.

      Native wisdom, in fact, cautions against behaving like the proverbial lamb who, overwhelmed by unexpected early successes in learning some new dance steps, carelessly danced himself lame before the real dancing tournament started.

      Central to the challenge of the Black History Month should be a proper definition of what we want from the world, and a re-assessment of the strategies we have been using to pursue those objectives. It will be defeatist if the Month is turned into a kind of samba in which black pigmentation is wishfully elevated to the top of the racial hierarchy. 

      Showing that Africa and its children have a proud history is important. But it should be the responsibility of the Month to underline that in the current world conjuncture, economic power is a more fundamental pedestal for gaining international prestige and respect. 

      As the Reverend Jesse Jackson aptly put it during the recent 5th African-African American Summit in Ghana, when whites meet, they talk about the strategies for achieving given objectives rather than how white they are. Put simply, we must decide if we want to be blacks in a white world in which we parochially regard the whites as the group keeping us down, or blacks in a global world in which we look at the totality of the obstacles weighing us down.

      The Month also needs to address the question of black identity. Even though we are not the only race colonised by the whites, we bear more than any other race the badge of this bondage. 

      Among the races in the world, we seem to live true to the boast that we are the creations of the white man. We answer to their names. We speak and write their languages. We have discarded our traditional modes of worship for theirs. Yes, we should not become isolationists. It will be suicidal to do so in this current age of globalisation. But the Asians do not need to give themselves and their offspring names such as John or Jupiter and carry a Bible to a board meeting to gain respect from the world - the white world you might hasten to add. 

      The Black History Month should also endeavour to underline that even though we share the identity of being black, we have since differentiated into various cultural and social categories. This means that it should be accepted that we must not all necessarily share the same views all the time.

      In other words, we should not give up the struggle to allow ourselves to be used by those who do not wish us well simply because of divergence of opinions within the black community. Related to this is that activists should resist the temptation of feeling that people who work in the "system" or are friendly with top "establishment" figures have necessarily sold out. As the black boxer, Frank Bruno, said recently: "Unfortunately in the [black] community, people tend to think if you don't run around with your head all locks and the gold teeth in your mouth and cursing and all that, and going high fives, people don't think you are keeping to the brotherhood." This should not be the case.

      The struggle needs both the activists for their courage in speaking undiluted words of truth and "model blacks" for the hopes they give. Both Martin Luther King and Malcom X were crucial in the civil rights struggle in America, and it is doubtful if one should have existed today as we know him without the other. The Month should equally look into the intractable question of bonding with Diasporean Africans in the way the Jews do. The African-African American Summit is a good step in trying to create a common ground between Africans and African-Americans. However, the Month should strive to find answers that will take the Summit a step further. At present, it seems to be no more than a jamboree, an occasion for African-Americans to adorn African attire and for African leaders to give emotive and fiery speeches. 

      Economic and political interests should be the soul of any viable strategy of getting the Africans in the diaspora to take more than hypocritical interest in the Motherland. Getting them committed, will, bluntly put, mean putting structures in place in which they will clearly see the political, social and economic gains of being attached to the African continent. 

      Related to this is the need for re-invigorating and re-articulating the demand for reparation for slavery, a subject New African has decided to take by the horns in coming issues (see NA Sept, for example). 

      The black race will want to know why our demands for atonement for the grotesque wrongs of the past have been ignored. Is it because of our economic powerlessness, the poor articulation of our arguments, the usual disrespect, or a combination of all these? Our race demands an answer. 

      We will also like to know why there has not been any reaction from African leaders and Africanists to President Clinton's claim in Ghana in March 1998, that he was advised not to apologise for slavery by some leaders of the African-American community?

      We should not join issue with the right wing press in the West that questions whether Africa ever had a "naissance". We should be more inclined to the ancient African wisdom that zigzag is the true way to progress, and the common sense notion that the progress of any person or nation rarely moves in a straight curve.

      This should make us intrepret differently the current developments in Africa and among black people today from people who judge us in strictly comparative terms with other racial groups. For us, the burden of pain in Africa - often exaggerated by those trying to psychologically keep us down, is masking the real progress that is being made. We should reject any notion of a lost decade for Africa. For sure, everything is not rosy for Africa and its children in the diaspora, nor will it ever be. But considering where we were only 50 years ago, we are doing fine. African renaissance means taking the struggle to the next level - being able to see the obstacles on our way as mere nails that need to be driven into some walls. Vive le progres!



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