Adventures in the Colored Museum: Afrocentrism, Memory, and the Construction of Race

Author(s): Gerald Early

Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 703-711
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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GERALDEARLY

Departmentof AfricanandAfro-AmericanStudies
WashingtonUniversity
St. Louis, MO 63130

Adventuresin the Colored Museum:Afrocentrism,Memory,and

the Constructionof Race
. . . thatpartof the greatwealth of the Negro experiencelay
preciselyin its double-edgedness.
JamesBaldwin,"PrincesandPowers''

Part I
In the spring of 1994 when I was a visiting professor at
Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville,
Tennessee, Itaught J. D. Salinger's TheCatcherintheRye
in a course on the post-World War II American novel to a
class of 12 black students. That novel opens with Holden
Caulfield visiting his history professor, whose course he
failed. His failure is based, in part, on the inadequate answer he gave to an essay question about the Egyptians.
Caulfield wrote:
The Egyptianswerean ancientraceof Caucasiansresidingin
one of the northernsections of Afnca. The latter as we all
know is thelargestcontinentin theEasternhemisphere.
The Egyptians are extremely interestingto us today for
variousreasons.Modemsciencewouldstill like to know what
the secretingredientswerethattheEgyptiansused when they
wrappedup dead people so thattheirfaces would not rot for
innumerablecenturies.This interestingriddle is still quite a
science in thetwentiethcentury.2
challengeto moderTI
Several in the class took great umbrage at this description
of Egyptians, notwithstanding its comic intent (Holden
footnotes his answer by saying that this is all he knows
about Egyptians and that they weren't interesting to him),
or that its symbolic significance later in the novel when
Holden visits the Natural History Museum was not related
to race. They were particularly incensed that ancient
Egyptians were described as Caucasians. "It' s just another
white novel telling lies," I was told. I reminded the students that few readers were known to have come to The
Catcherin the Rye for a lesson in ancient history and that
perhaps they were being overly sensitive, for the description of the ancient Egyptians was not, after all, very important to the meaning of the novel. What the novel is, I
suggested, with its symbol of Egyptian burial rites, is the
riddle of human memory itself, which is why Holden, on
his exam, singles out the face as incorruptible. The face is

the essence of not only whatwe rememberbuthow we remember.Why do we rememberwhat we rememberand

how does the actof memoryinformourhumanity?Is identitythe constructionandassertionof memory,thepsychological museumof the self thatis so dependenton the idea
of a collectivity, of a past derivedfrommany?At the end
of the novel, when Holdentakestwo boys downto see the
Egyptianmummiesin the NaturalHistoryMuseum,he recounts nearly word for word his exam answerabout the
Egyptiansburyingtheirdead. Then, he describesthe descentitself:
To getto wherethemummieswere,youhadto go downthis
verynarrowsortof hall withstoneson thesidethatthey'd
takenrightoutof thisPharaoh'stombandall. It waspretty
spooky,and you could tell the two hot-shotsI was with
weren'tenjoyingit toomuch.Theystuckcloseashellto me,
washoldingonto
andtheonethatdidn'ttalkatallpractically
my sleeve. "Let'sgo," he said to his brother."I seen 'em
C'mon,hey."Heturnedaroundandbeatit.
awreddy.
"He'sgotayellastreakamilewide,"theotheronesaid,"So
long!"Hebeatit,too.
I wastheonlyoneleftinthetombthen.3
In this descent to the remnantsof one of the earliestrecordedhumancivilizations, to one of the earliest sets of
collective memorieswe have, a descentthatbecomeslike
Orpheus'sdescent into hell, Holdenis left alone, suggesting thattheconstructionof memory,at leastfor this 1950s
novel thatwas so obsessed with the solitary,is largelyan
individualact. Second, when Holdendiscoversthe "Fuck
You"message scrawledon the tomb,he realizesthatthere
areno sacredspaces or thattherecan be no sacredwithout
theresimultaneouslybeing a profane.All thatis humanis
bothhorribleviolation andholy transcendence.All memory is both sacredandprofaneandin the very act of being
memoryis an act of violationandan act of conservation.I
thoughtfor my black studentsat Fisk this theme,in their
Afrocentricmood, they would find compellingbecauseit
seemed so analogous,in vital ways, to the act of African
Americanmemory.It was a way of looking into andoutside of yourself at the same time by understandingthe invasive powerof memoryas a formof humanity.

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But my students respondedby saying if the ancient

EgyptianswereCaucasiansandHoldenis Caucasian,then
what he encountersat the end is a reflection of his own
tribalhistory, his tribalself. They were furthertroubled
that readers would accept such descriptions of ancient
Egyptians because they were embedded in a highly regardednovel and,like a "plant"or subliminalsuggestion
in an ad, have all themoredeadlyeffect because,since the
novel is not aboutancientEgyptians,is focused on other
matters,it would not be noticed or rebutted.It is hardly
likely, though, that such a descriptionwould not be noticed todayas the subjectof racesin antiquityhas become
vigorously debated in certain academic circles. I had
thought these students would see Salinger's work as a
"white"novel in the sense that they would feel that the
novel was notwrittenwiththemin mindas readers.All the
stuff aboutprep school, upper-classwhite life, andwhite
rebellionagainstconformity,thisI figuredtheymightfind
suff1cientlyremoteor, at least, off-puttingto be useful to
me as a teacherin helpingthem ultimatelycome to some
new sense of themselvesthroughthe novel. The greatadvantage, I thought, for black Americans reading white
American literature,was that it was both a reflection of
themselvesand utterlynot a reflectionof themselves,and
the tension of this double-mindednesswas revelatory.I
hadnot anticipatedthatthenovel wouldbe "marked,""racialized,"in this way, becauseof ancientEgyptiansbeing
called Caucasians.
My students furtherreminded me that Afrocentrism
was meantto combatjust the sort of subtleracism as the
description of ancient Egyptians in The Catcher in the
Rye.TheyfinallydismissedSalinger's novel as irrelevant.
I told themI thoughtthe bookveryrelevantbecauseit was
about memory and so, for that matter,is Afrocentrism.
"Afrocentrism,properlyunderstood,"I said,"teachesthat
race is aboutmemory.Race is memory,andif you see the
book as white 'tribalism,'thatmakesthe point even more
telling." But if race is memory what is it we wish to rememberthroughthis constructionof ourselves and why
do we insist on rememberingat whatoften appearsto be a
tremendouscost?
Onthe campusof Fisk Universityis a statueof W. E. B.
Du Bois, the school's most famous student,a remarkable
honor as schools rarelyerect statuesand monumentsfor
formerstudents.It is commonlyknownthatin 1903, in his
most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois
wrotethis passage:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Afterthe Egyptianandthe Indian,the GreekandRoman,the

Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son,
bornwitha veil, andgiftedwith second-sightin thisAmerican
world a world which yields him no trueself-consciousness,
but only lets him see himself irough the revelationof the
otherworld.It is a peculiarsensation,ffiisdouble-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self irough the
eyes of others,of measuringone's soul by ie tapeof a world
thatlooks on in amusedcontemptor pity. One ever feels his
twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,
two unreconciledstivings; two warringideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strengthalone keeps it frombeing tom
asunder.4
One way to understand Afrocentrism is to see it as an attempt to create a true black self-consciousness or to create
for blacks a world in which they can see themselves
through their own eyes or a way to reconcile the twoness
of being both an American and a Negro, of being caught
between two abstractions. Many years later, Du Bois
about his coming to Fisk Uniwrote in his Autobiography
versity in 1885 and his Elrstsojourn in the south and among
great numbers of other black folk:
A new loyalty and allegiance replaced my Americanism:
henceforwardI was a Negro.5
In the earlier passage, he spoke of being unable to reconcile one state of consciousness with the other; in the
later passage, he speaks of the two identities as if they were
mutually exclusive, as they are in the first passage, and
neither contingent on the other. The first passage rather
suggests that, indeed, the two identities are contingent on
each other: the problem is not that they are distinct but that
they cannot be made distinct enough to be separated so
that the black person can be free to be a Negro, solely and
completely. For the Negro cannot remember himself or
herself as a Negro without remembering himself or herself
as an American or someone denied the opportunity to be
one. Indeed, in the case of the first quotation, Du Bois actually presents either being American and being Negro as
impossible for the black person, both being negative capabilities, each marking what the other isn't and in some
ways each foreclosing the other. The second quotation
does not make any such suggestion that both are impossible but rather that only one is possible. It is difficult to say
exactly what Du Bois means, as the first passage is so
richly complex, dense with meaning. But one thing is
made clear in both passages: that African Americans are
not uniquely but complexly double-edged people. And
one thing is made clear in the first passage: the Negro and
the Egyptian are two distinct races of people, two different

JamesBaldwin,"PrincesandPowers,"in NobodyKnowsMyName:MoreNotes of a NativeSon (New York:VintageInternational,1993),p. n.

J. D. Salinger,TheCatcherin theRye(New York:Little,BrownandCompany,1991),p. 11.
J. D. Salinger,TheCatcherin theRye,pp. 20>204.
W. E. B . Du Bois, TheSoulsof BlackFolk (New York:Signet, 1982),p. 45.
Publishers,1975), p. 108.
W. E. B . Du Bois, TheAutobiographyof W.E. B. Du Bois (New York:International

EARLY /

groupsin the historyof the world.ThatI foundinteresting

in re-readingmy Du Bois while at Fisk duringthe time I
was teachingTheCatcherintheRye.
It is, in this regard,perhaps,no smallironythatthe man
many consider to be the fatherof Afrocentrism,Cheikh
AntaDiop, shouldhavehadhis dissertationon the African
origins of Egypt and the Egyptian origins of European
civilizationrejectedby his committeeat the Universityof
Paris in 1951, the year when TheCatcherin theRyewas
published.
Part II
"I asked: 'Where is the black man's Government?
Where is his King and his kingdom?Whereis his President, his country,andhis ambassador,his army,his navy,
his menof big affairs?' I couldnotfindthem,andthenI declared, 'I will help to make them.' s6 This famous quotation fromMarcusGarvey,greatblacknationalistleaderof
the post-WorldWarI era,founderof the UniversalNegro
ImprovementAssociation,andcreatorof a failedbusiness
enterprisecalled the Black StarLine (the name,of course,
racializing Sir Samuel Cunard'sworld-renownedWhite
StarLine) suggests,first,thepreoccupationwithraceconstructionamongblacks is not new, and,second, all millenarianreformationsarereallyregressivemovements.It is
strikinghow much Garvey's "greatman"vision of race
reformationsoundslike the Edwardianvision of Arabreformationandsocial changeof T. E. Lawrencein the introductorychapterof SevenPillars of Wisdom:
All mendream:butnotequally.Thosewhodreambynightin
thedustyrecessesof theirmindswakeinthedayto findthatit
wasvanity:butthedreamers
of thedayaredangerous
men,for
theymayacttheirdreamswithopeneyes,tomakeit possible.
ThisI did.I meanttomakeanewnation,torestorea lostinfluence,to give twentymillionsof Semitesthefoundations
on
which to build an inspireddream-palace
of ffieirnational
thoughts.7
Garvey lived in Englandbetween 1913 and 1914 and
was familiarwith Anglo ways even before,as he grew up
in Jamaica.Thus,he was enamoredof Britishimperialism
andhopedone daythatAfricamighthavethe sametypeof
empire. The similarity in vision between himself as restorerof African greatness and Lawrenceas restorerof
Arabgreatnessis hardlysurprising.Garveywas, of course
a great man, or at least, one of the most signif1cantblack
men of the twentiethcentury.He has been the only Western black leader to have createda truly internationalorganizationand the only one to have made a mass move-

ADVENTURES
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ment built on the idea of black irredentism.Neither the

Nation of Islam,nor the MoorishAmericans,nor the Republic of New Africa, nor the Congress of AfrikanPeoples, nor the RevolutionaryAction Movement, all of
which can claim some elementof irredentismin theirphilosophy, can ever makethe claim thatthey madethis idea
of blackreclamationandrestorationa mass movementor
a movementpopularwithordinarypeople. Garveycanbecause he did. I thinkthe Britishinfluenceof empireintensiEledthis sense of irredentismthatmadehis movementso
remarkable.
Moreover,in examiningthe Britishsourcesof Garvey's
influence, we recognize thatGarveywas enormouslyaffected while in Englandby Duse MohammedAli, the son
of a Sudanesemotherandan Egyptianfather,who, aftera
careerin theater,becameajournalist,eventuallyfounding
his own nationalist-oriented
paper,theAfricanTimesand
OrientReview,for which Garvey worked for a time. In
1911, Duse MohammedAli publishedIn theLandof the
Pharaohs,a highly successful,highly plagiarized,nationalist history of Egypt that had an enormous impact on
black intellectualseverywhere,intensifyingtheirsense of
Ethiopianism or the idea that the reconstructionof the
race was connected with the redemptionof Africa, and
particularlywith a connection of ancient Egypt to the
GreatNegroPast.8
But the historyof this goes backfurther.David Walker,
a black Boston clothes dealer,wrote in his militantmanifesto, DavidWalker's
AppealinFourArticlesto theColoredCitizensof theWorld(1830), a passionate,uncompromising answer to Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the
Stateof Virginia,andits despairing,racistview of blacks,
claiming theminferiorin every way to whites except one,
as HoustonBakerpointedout in a brilliantlecture.They
were equal to whites in memoiy. And it was Jefferson's
great fear that this would cause race war as the blacks
would rememberthehorrorof theirenslavementandseek
revenge. Walker,too, thoughtaboutmemoryas a source
for revenge or at least for revolutionaryresistanceon the
partof blacks, buthe also thoughtaboutmemory in relation to the constructionof raceconsciousness, throughthe
constructionof race itself, throughthe expropriationof
ancientEgyptas theblackman's civilization:
I wouldonlymentionthattheEgyptianswereAfricansorcoloredpeople,suchasweare someof themyellowandothers
dark a mixtureof Ethiopiansandnativesof Egypt about
thesameasyouseethecoloredpeopleof theUnitedStatesat
thepresentday.... 9

6. Quoted in EdmundDavid Cronon,Black Mvses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the UniversalNegro ImprovementAssociation (Madison: Universityof
WisconsinPress, 1968), p. 16.
7. T. E. Lawrence,SevenPillars of Wisdom:A Triumph(New York:AnchorBooks, 1991), pp. 2s25.
8. For the informationon Duse MuhammadAli, I am indebtedto RobertHill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and UniversalNegro ImprovementAssociation Papers,
Volume1 (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1983),pp.519-521 .
9. David Walker,Walker'sAppealto theColoredCitizensof the Wor/d(New York:ArnoPress, 1969),p. 18.

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And, later:
When we take a retrospectiveview of the arts and sciences the wise legislators-The Pyramids,and othermagnificent buildings the turningof the channel of the river
Nile, by the sons of Africaor of Ham,amongwhom learning
originated,andwas carriedthenceintoGreece....10

LydiaMariaChild,a whiteabolitionist,homeeconomist,andchildren'swriter,in herseminalbutneglected

An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans called
Africans (1836) (theironyof thetitlealoneseemssuffi-

cientlydamningof Americanhypocrisyinracialmatters;
whyis therea classof Americanscalledsomethingother
alsowroteinthisvein:
thanAmericans?)
Some ancientwriterssupposeffiatEgypt derivedall the arts
andsciences fromEthiopia;while offiersbelieve preciselythe
reverse....
It is well known thatEgypt was the greatschool of knowledge in the ancient world. It was the birth-placeof Astronomy; and we still mark the constellationsas they were arrangedby Egyptianshepherds.... A largeportionof Grecian
mythologywas thencederived....
Herodotus,the earliestof the Greekhistorians,informsus
that the Egyptians were negroes. This fact has been much
doubted,andoften contradicted.But Herodotuscertainlyhad
the best means of knowing the tiuth on this subject;for he
traveledin Egypt....
The statuesof the Sphinxhave the usualcharacteristicsof
the negrorace.'l

later,in 1854,thegreatblackleader
Nearlyageneration
FrederickDouglassweighedin on the subjectin his famousaddress,"TheClaimsof theNegroEthnologically
Considered":
while it may not be claimed thatthe ancientEgyptianswere
Negroes- viz: answering,in all respects,to the nationsand
tribes ranged under the general appellation,Negro; still, it
may safely be affirmed,thata strongaffinityanda directrelationshipmay be claimedby ffieNegro race,to ffiatgreatestof
thebuildersof thepyramids.[emphaall nationsofantiquity,
sis in original]'2

appealing:if black
The metaphoris overwhelmingly
Americansare relatedby blood(raceas biology,comcentury)andby geogramonlybelievedin thenineteenth
commonlybelievedin
phy(raceascultureandproximity,
the nineteenthand twentiethcenturies)to those grand
whycannot
buildersof civilization,theancientEgyptians,
theybuildor rebuild,literallyconstructthemselvesas a

race? The constructionwas all about the careful appropriationof memory,of a past.This idea came into its own
afterWorldWarII.
Severalyears ago, I was in a hotel room in New York
with a colleague, interviewing a decidedly supercilious
West Indianwho seemed nearlyas intenton interviewing
us, althoughwe hadn't appliedfor ajob in AfricanAmerican literature:
"Thewhite man wants to have his cake andeat it, too,"
he said at one point, "He wants to call the ancientEgyptians 'mixed race.' He says this as if this meansthatthey
arenotblack.Yet, accordingto his own 'one-drop' rule,if
the Egyptianswere mixed race people, if they were some
kind of mulattorace, then they were black,pureand simple. Black, nothing but black. The white mancannotsay
thatthe Egyptianswere not white andthen say they were
notblackeither.The Egyptianswere black,Africanblack,
andthatsettles the matter.This may not interestyou, ProfessorEarly,butit is of vital importance."'3
Perhapsmy face betrayedthe boredomI felt. I mustadmit that,like James Baldwin when he ElrstheardthatancientEgyptwas partof the GreatNegroPast(a concept,an
idea, this GreatNegro Past,thathas hauntedme since my
boyhoodas therewere at least a few blackpeople around
who espoused it, preached it, taught it), from the most
learned and arguably greatest popularizerof the idea,
CheikhAntaDiop, at the 1956 Conferenceof Negro-African WritersandArtistsin Paris,this thesis didnot interest
me greatly.That is to say, it was not an idea thathad become an articleof faith for me or the articleof a political
creed.But this conference,coming as it did one yearafter
the Afro-AsianUnity conferencein Bandung,Indonesia,
whichexplicitly broughttogetherthe leadersof"colored"
nations,peoples who had been subjectedto or were still
underthe thumbof Europeancolonialism, was the continuationof the articulationof a certainangerandthequest
for a usablepast for the colonized, a new racialmemory.
And it was this growingsense of commoncausewithnonwhitepeoples aroundthe worldthatintensifiedthe obsessionforunity,forraceconstruction,forblacksorpeopleof
Africandescent.As W. E. B. Du Bois wrotein 1940, some
15 yearsbeforethe Bandungconference:
Butonethingis sureandthatis thefactthatsincethefifteenth
centurytheseancestorsof mineandtheirotherdescendants
havehadacommonhistory;havesufferedacommondisaster
between
andhaveone long memory. Theactualtiesof heritage

10. David Walker,Walker'sAppeal,pp.29-30

I 1. LydiaMariaChild,AnAppealin Favorof thatClass ofAmericansCalledAfricans(New York:ArnoPress, 1968),pp. 149-150.
12. FrederickDouglass, "TheClaimsof the Negro EffinologicallyConsidered,"addressdeliveredat Westem ReserveCollege, July 12, 1854, in PhillipFoner,ed.,
TheLifeand Writingsof FrederickDouglass,Volume2 (New York:InternationalPublishers,1975), p. 301.
13. The applicantprobablygot his versionof the idea thatancientEgyptiansare blackfrom ChancellorWilliams:"Fromtheirall-powerful'positionof strength'
[whites]continueto arrangeandrearrangethe worldas it pleasethem,namingandclassifying people,places andthingsas they will. In the UnitedStates,whitesknown
to have any amountof 'Negro blood,' no matterhow small, areclassified as Negroes;in Africa,NorthAfrica in particular,they do the very opposite.Blacks with any
amountof 'Caucasianblood' areclassifiedas 'white.' This schemewas rigorouslyappliedin thehistoryof Egypt...." ChancellorWilliams,TheDestructionof Black
Civilization:Greatlssues of a Racefrom4500B.C. to 2000A.D. (Chicago:ThirdWorldPress, 1987),p. 37.

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the individualsof thisgroup,varywith the ancestorsthatthey

have in commonand many others.... But the physicalbond
is leastandthe badgeof colorrelativelyunimportantsave as a
badge;thereal essence of this kinshipis its social heritageof
slavery;the discriminationandinsult;andthisheritagebinds
togethernotsimplythe childrenof Africabutextendsthrough
yellow Asia andinto the SouthSeas. It is this unitythatdraws
me to Africa.[emphasisadded]'4
In his famous lengthy essay on the Negro-African writers' conference in Paris, "Princes and Powers," published
in Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin describes
briefly the lecture he heard by Diop:
The evenlng session began with a film, which I missed, and
was followed by a speechfromCheik [sic]AntaDiop, which,
in sum,claimedthe ancientEgyptianempireas partof theNegropast.I can only say thatthisquestionhas nevergreatlyexercised my mind, nor did M. Diop succeed in doing so-at
least not in the directionhe intended.He quite refusedto remainwithinthe twenty-minutelimit and, while his claims of
the deliberatedishonesty of all Egyptian scholars may be
quite well-foundedfor all I know, I cannot say thathe convinced me. He was, however, a greatsuccess in the hall, secondonly, in fact,to Aime Cesaire.'5
The fact that Baldwin was not impressed by Diop's claims
is not surprising, considering Baldwin' s temperament and
inclination at the time the essay was written. It was Baldwin who wrote a year earlier in the autobiographical preface to his essay collection, Notes of a NativeSon:
when I followed the line of my past I did not filndmyself in
Europebutin Africa.And this meantthatin some subtleway,
in a really profoundway, I broughtto Shakespeare,Bach,
Rembrandt,to the stones of Paris,to the cathedralatChartres,
and to the Empire State Building, a special attitude.These
werenot reallymy creations,they did not containmy history;
I mightsearchthemin vain for ever for any reflectionof myself. I was aninterloper;this was not my heritage.At the same
time I had no otherheritagewhich I could possibly hope to
use I hadcertainlybeen unfittedfor thejungle or the tribe.I
wouldhaveto appropriatethese white centuries,I wouldhave
to makethem mine I would have to acceptmy specialattitude, my special place in this schemetherwise I would
haveno placein anyscheme. [emphasisin original]16
For a man who thinks in this way, the rediscovery of ancient Egypt as a black civilization, the reconstruction of an
African past, the memory of a Great Negro Past, is of little
consequence. Baldwin was committed to the conceits of

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his own ambiguitiesand,to him, the near-absurdambivalence inherent in being an American black. Moreover,
Baldwin was a bit charybecauseof RichardWright's involvement with this conference.(Wrightdelivered a paper that can be found in his book, WhiteMan, Listen.)l7
Wrighthad been involved with the creationof Presence
Africaine, the publicationthathelped put the conference
together, since its inception in 1947 and had written a
book, Black Power, on Ghana and Nkrumah in 1954.
Wrightwas, on the whole, a greatdeal more interestedin
AfricanaffairsthanBaldwinwas oreverwould be. Generally, Baldwindidnottrustpoliticsorevidence muchinterest in political affairs.He foundpeople who were deeply
passionateaboutpolitics to be boring.Wright,being a former Marxist,was fascinatedby politics because he was
fascinated by the various facets of power as human expression. Although Wright's view of Africa was decidedly ambivalent,the fact thatBaldwinwantedvery much
to be a distinct entity from him may have influenced his
view of this conference.Wrightalso was responsiblefor
the much-maligned and suspected, official American
delegation thatincludedHoraceMannBond, James Ivy,
and MercerCook, being presentat the conference at all.
Therewas, throughoutthe conference,considerablehostility towardthe blackAmericansfromtheirAfricanhosts
andlecturers,not the leastof whomso disposedwas Diop.
As RobertJulywritesinAnAfricanVoice: TheRoleof the
HumanitiesinAfricanlndependence( 1987):
To theSenegalesehistorian,CheikhAntaDiop,Marxistand
staunchadherentof Negritude,theUnitedStatesdelegates
of thesocietythathadproduced
werefaithfulrepresentatives
theso-calledAmericanwayand
them.Theyfullysupported
Whilethey werewholetheywerefirmlyanti-Communist.
behindtheaspirations
of Africansforfreedomfrom
heartedly
throughhigh
colonialism. . . they regardedmodernization
technologyasthemosteffectivemeansforAfricansocialand
Isheirsupportof Amencansociety
economicadvancement.
fortheywerefirmlycommittedto
wasa formof self-support,
'8
achievingequalstatusforblacksinAmerica.
But Baldwin,in partbecausehe was a writerandnot an
AmericanNegro leader, did not considerhimself one of
these. He was an Americanof a differentsort, different
from Wright, different from the other black Americans
present.He was the blackAmericanwho was muchaware
of the double-edgednatureof his perspective,of his own
keen individuality.Doubtless, Baldwin thought Diop's

14. W. E. B . Du Bois, "TheConceptof Race,"in EricSundquist,ed., TheOxford W.E. B. Du Bois Reader(New York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1996), p. 87. Du Bois
was to develop this idea of "ThirdWorldism"or a "colored"world when he made explicit connectionsbetween colonialism and slums in Color and Democracy:
ColoniesandPeace (New York:Harcourt,BraceandCompany,1945),see specificallychapters2, 3, and4.
I5. JamesBaldwin,"PrincesandPowers,"in NobodyKnowsMyName,p. 43.
16. JamesBaldwin,Notes of a Native Son(Boston:BeaconPress, 1984),pp. S7.
in WhiteMan,Listen(New York:AnchorBooks, 1964), pp. 44 68. Wrightfelt thatwhathe had to say was
17. RichardWright,"Traditionand Industrialization,"
very muchout of synch with much of what was being said at the conferenceor at least what was most popularlyreceived at the conference,such as Aime Cesaire's
militant,nationalisticlecture.See RobertJuly, An African Voice: TheRole of the Humanitiesin AfricanIndependence(Durham:Duke UniversityPress, 1987), pp.
2g28.
18. RobertJuly,AnAfricanVoice: TheRole of theHumanitiesinAfricanIndependence,p. 38.

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presentationoverly long andprobablyfairlypedantic,pedestrian,and schoolmarm-ishon the one hand,anxious

andirrelevanton theother.ThefactthatDiop was enthusiasticallyreceivedby theotherAfricanandAfricanAmerican intellectualsand writerspresentat the conferenceindicateshow compellinga holdthisthesis hadon theminds
of most blackthinkers,on the mindsof the blackinternationalelite, at least a generationor more beforeAfrocentrismbecamepopular.
Most Afrocentricscholarsat universitiestoday genuflect at the intellectual altar of Cheikh Anta Diop, a
Senegalese intellectual (both humanist and scientist),
bornin anIslamicSenegalesevillage in l 923, andwho began his researchinto Africanhistoryin l 946, as the battle
against Europeancolonialism in Africa was beginning.
This was one year after the Fifth Pan-AfricanCongress
was held in Manchester,England, attendedby Kwame
Nkrumah,to be the first presidentof Ghana,and Jomo
Kenyatta,to be a revolutionaryMau-Mauin Kenya and
eventually that country's first black presidentas well.
ChancellorWilliamsattendedthisconferenceandit obviously hada big effect on his thinking.He said,"wearrived
with the idea thatAfricaneeds westernization,we left believing nothing could be worse than complete westernization...."19Diop, not to be confusedwithAliouneDiop,
the editorof Presence AJiicaine, the leadingpost- World
War magazine of African affairs or David Diop, Negritudepoet, or BiragoDiop, Senegalesepoet andfolklorist,
all contemporariesbut unrelated,saw his mission as underminingEuropeancolonialismby destroyingthe Europeans' claim to a superiorhistory,to, in fact, a "real"historythatwas themarkof Europeansbeingtheproductof a
civilizationandnot of thejungle. To makea claim of historywas, in fact,a sign of beinganequalplayerin thefamily of man, for it was to make a claim to a powerful,esoteric, but essential set of particularbut transcendent
memories.For Diop, the constructionof memorywas the
constructionof race. Further,forDiop, it was notonly necessaryto reconstructAfricanhistory,it was alsonecessary
to demonstratea unified Africa, especially important
ideologicallyfora PanAfricanmovementthatAfricanintellectualsfelt was a necessity, whethermyth or fact, to
overthrowEuropeanimperialism.Like every other oppressedgroup,Africanscould only face the futureif they
couldhearkenbackto some versionof theirpastandif that
future,in some ways, guaranteedthe reinventionof a past
thatmostdeElnedthetraditionthatmadethemgreat.Europeaninterventiondeniedthe Afiicans the abilityto deter-

SEPTEMBER1 998

mine for themselves the worthof theirmemory.Thatthis

reconstructioncould be done only throughrunningAfrican history and African civilization throughEgypt, the
only African civilization that impressed and that was
widely known by Europeanintellectuals,is interesting.
Ancient Egypt is the only Africancivilization, as Stanley
Crouch suggested, that has monuments,the sort of remains that indicate history as understoodin European
terms.In orderto get respectfor theirhumanityby having
a distinctset of memories,the Africanshadto couch their
settingof remembrancein termsthatEuropeanscould understand,could, in fact, be in awe of. Thus, for blackpeople in Africato be unifiedandhumanized,forblackpeople
aroundthe world to feel unified and humanized,ancient
Egypthad to be a "black"civilizationandserve as the origin of all blacknessand,even moreimportantly,all whiteness, as it were. The paradoxthatthe Africans' memory
was not free butcontingentuponwhatEuropeansthought
of it is obvious andperhapsthe biggest weaknessof Afrocentrism,which, in the end, does not challenge Eurocentrismbutsimplyabsorbsits valuesandreversesthem.
Afterthe initialrejectionof his dissertationin 1951, the
story goes thatDiop was only able to defend his dissertation successfully in 1960 when he was accompaniedinto
the examinationroom by an arrnyof historians,sociologists, and anthropologistswho supportedhis views or at
least his right as a responsiblescholarto express them.20
By 1960, with African independencein full swing, his
ideas had a political currencyin Africa itself where Pan
Africanism,a kind of ur-versionof Afrocentrism,was in
full flower. And no one supportedthe idea of unifiedAfrica more than then-Egyptianpresident Gamal Abdel
Nasser, probablythe most powerful independentleader
on the continent,who calledhimself, like Gandhi,a black
man, and fancied an Africa unitedin oppositionto Israel
and South Africa. It was a good moment for Diop to be
saying whathe was saying.2'
Diop produceda numberof volumes translatedinto
English,some basedon his dissertation,amongthem:The
African Origin of Civilization:Mythor Reality, Civilization or Barbarism:An AuthenticAnthropology,and The
CulturalUnityof BlackAfrica.ForDiop, the crucialmatter in constructinga coherentAfricanhistory was establishing that ancient Egypt was a black civilization. As
Diop wrote,"Thehistoryof BlackAfricawill remainsuspendedin airandcannotbe writtencorrectlyunti}African
historiansdare to connect it with the historyof Egypt."22
Diop brings togetherthreeimportantelements in under-

19. Quotedin AndersonThompson'sforewordin ChancellorWilliams, TheRebirthof African Civilization(Chicago:The ThirdWorldPress, 1993), p. iv. This
forewordprovidesa good accountof Williams'scareer.WilliamsstudiedunderLeoHansberryat Howard,the fatherofAfricanStudiesin theUnitedStates.
20. Fora full accountof Diop's career,see IvanVan Sertima,ed., GreatAfricanThinkers:CheikhAntaDiop (New Brunswick,NJ:TransactionBooks, 1992), pp.
7-16, a book thatprovidesa numberof articles,in excessive praise,of Diop's work. For a more objective assessmentof Diop, see RobertJuly,An AfricanVoice, pp.
137-140 andpassim.
21. FormoreaboutEgypt's strongidentiElcation
with blackAfricaat the time the 1950s andearly 1960s underNasser,see LouisLomax,TheReluctantAfrican
(New York:HarperandBrothers,1960).

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standingthe origins of Afrocentrismor in understanding

the politicization of the formationof African American
memory as the self-conscious constructionof race. First,
Diop validated the traditionof embattled,professional,
politically motivatedhistoricalresearchmeantto buttress
the claims of the untrainedbut dedicatedand obsessive
amateurhistorianwho works to create a popularhistory
with academicapparatus;only the amateurcan createinnovationsin knowledge becausehe or she is not boundto
protect the set of assumptionsthathas given the professional his or her legitimacy; this is, in effect7an attack
against the process of intellectual legitimation, Martin
Bernal's motive for his massiveBlackAthena,
a book that
was modeled after Diop's work and built on Diop's explicitly political mission.23Second, Diop establishedthe
explicit connection between correctknowledge of one's
properhistoryandone's psychologicalandspiritualwellbeing, the therapeuticuse of memoryandself-consciousness. And third,Diop reinforcedthe connectionbetween
properknowledgeof one's historyandthe realizationof a
political mission and purpose,the sacredand politicized
use of memory. Diop's researchsupportsthe idea of a
white conspiracyof history to discreditor ignore black
civilization, advocatesthe need for properknowledge of
an Africanpast in orderto unifyblacksbeyondsimply the
idea that they sharea common oppression,and suggests
thatblacksare,withoutproperknowledgeof theirancient
past or properinterestin it, bothpolitically impotentand
mentallyill. (Theemergenceof this idea of raceconstruction has led to the ever-growingsignificanceof Afrocentric psychologists like Na'im Akbar, Frances Cress
Welsing [a psychiatrist],WadeNobles, Asa Hilliard,and
others and to the ideals of a perfectedblack psychology
from the destructionof whiteness.)These ideas have become the dogmafor theconstructionof a blackrace.When
Diop died in 1986, he had been virtuallycanonizedby an
importantset of black Americanscholarswho identified
themselvesas Afrocentrists.
Part III
I recently taught several chaptersof MartinBernal's

BlackAthenato an introductoryAfricanAmericanStud-

709

ies class. I was not very surprisedthatthe studentswere

impressedwith the book, not merely because it said that
ancientEgypt was a black civilization, which to many of
themwas probablya matterof indifference,butmorewith
the idea thatthe historiographyof the ancientworld had
been a kind of white conspiracy,with classicists, archaeologists, and historianshaving fabricatedGreece as the
seat of Western civilization. Greece was, according to
Bernal,nothingmore,really, thana Egyptiancolony, but
whites, in orderto constructtheirown memoryof ancestral whiteness, erased ancient Egypt, first by erasing its
blackness,thenby erasingits influenceon Greece.WhenI
asked the studentsif they were disturbedby Bernal'slast
sentence in his introduction-"The political purposeof
BlackAthenais, of course,to lessen Europeanculturalarrogance"24-they saidthey werenot.WhenI askedif they
were disturbedby the fact that Bernal was attackingthe
field of classical studiesas being implicitlyandexplicitly
racistand,thus,implicitlyandexplicitly political(which,
I supposed,justifies his own explicit politics), buthe himself had not been trainedas either a historian,an archaeologist, or a classical linguist,they expressedno concern.
Finally,I asked,afterthey hadreadsome critiquesof Bernal's work,if theycould,on theirown, see flaws in his reasoning, and they said no. Indeed, they did not generally
find thecritiquesof Bernal's workto be convincing.
I thenenteredclass one day andtold the class thatI had
been so inspiredby Bernal's book thatI decidedto write
one of my own, based on Bernal's model. I said thatmy
book would be a defense of slavery as the propersocial
system to protectthe weak and less capable.I told them
that I would call my book TheHumaneLegree, modeled
after Bernal's Black Athena. Just as he reasoned that
Athenawas trulya blackEgyptianfigure,not a Greekone,
so I reason that Simon Legree as the prototypicalslave
ownerwas not evil as the liberalegalitarianshave slurred
anddistortedhim,butgood andbenevolent.My book,like
Bernal's, would be in threeparts:the first partwould be
called the PaganModel, in which I would arguethatthe
ancientworldhadit rightin theirsocial andpoliticalrelations when they had slavery and thatall the recordsfrom
the ancientworldthatI have found supportthe institution
of slavery,justas theall therecordsfromtheancientworld

22. CheikhAnta Diop, TheAfricanOriginof Civilization:Afythor Reality (editedand translatedby MercerCook). (Chicago:LawrenceHill Books, 1974), p. xiv.
Diop furtherwritesin thispreface:"Ina word,we mustrestorethehistoricalconsciousnessof theAfricanpeoplesandre-conquera Prometheanconsciousness"p. xv.
23. It is interestingto note how much, in this regard,Bernal politicizes the writing of black history:"A very small numberof black academics,notably,Frank
Snowden, the leading professorin the field at the chief black university,Howard,have been successful with Classics.They have concentratedon gleaningwhat little
credit the Aryanmodel allows to Blacks while acceptingboth its prohibitions:the non-acceptanceof a Black componentof Egyptianculture,and the denial of the
Afroasiaticformativeelementsin Greekcivilization.OtherScholars,morekeenly awareof the degreeto whichracismhas pervadedevery nookandcrannyof 19th-and
20th-centuryEuropeanandNorthAmericanculture,havebeenmoresensitive."Bernalgoes on to describeblackscholarJacobCarruthers'
s highlypoliticizeddivisions
of blackhistoricalscholarshipintothreecamps:"theold scrappers,"untrainedblackhistorianslike GeorgeG. M. James,and,I suppose,someonelike J. A. Rodgers.The
middlegroupincludesthe most famoustrainedblackhistorianslike JohnHopeFranklin,W. E. B. Du Bois, andAli Mazrui,andthe lastgroup,the mostrevered,is Diop,
Ben Jochannan,and ChancellorWilliams.Bernalmakes no mentionof CarterG. Woodson, nor does he indicateif Carruthersdoes, a seriousomission. In any case,
Bernalsees his workas "anattemptto reconcile"certainhostile camps, althoughit seems clearfromhis accountthathe is very partialto "theold scrappers"andto the
school of Afrocentristthoughtof someonelike Diop, andmuchless impressedby Snowden.See Bernal,BlackAthena:TheAfroasiaticRootsof Classical Civilization,
VolumeI (New Brunswick,NJ:RutgersUniversityPress, 1991), pp. 434-437.
24. MartinBernal,BlackAthena:TheAfroasiaticRootsof Classical Civilization,VolumeI, p. 73.

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that Bernalfound supportedthe theoryof Greece having

been culturallyspawned by Egypt. I would then discuss
therise of the Liberal-Egalitarian
Model, which rose with
theEnlightenmentandspreadits warpedideas all overthe
world that slavery was wrong, morally and politically. I
would argue that all intellectualsand scholars today are
partof the Liberal-Egalitarian
conspiracyto slur slavery,
to hide its good points, to distortits benevolence, to keep
the truthfrom us aboutwhat it was, just as Bernalargued
about the modernclassical studies fabricatingGreece in
the creationof the AryanModel. I would arguethatLiberal-Egalitarianismfabricatedfreedom and democracy.
Finally,I would arguefor a Revised PaganModel,just as
Bernal arguedfor a Revised Ancient Model, in which I
would advocate a returnto the Pagan Model of slavery,
understanding,of course, that we would no longer have
anysortof race-basedslaveryor slaverybasedon violence
but a slavery based on ability and merit. Some people
neededto have theirlives controlledcompletelyby others
because they lacked ability or emotional stability. The
Liberal-Egalitarian
Model needed to be overthrown,just
as Bernalbelievedthatthe AryanModelof the fabrication
of Greece needed to be overthrown.This parodyof Bernal's argumentthatI created,in part,to reveal to themthe
structuralproblemin Bernal'sposition,thata good many
bad things could be arguedand arguedvery persuasively
from his overly simplisticsyllogism, had a curiouseffect
on the class. Many,at first, triedto argueagainstslavery,
butfoundthatthey actuallycouldnot. Slaveryhadexisted
for far longer in the world than freedom and I had the
weightof thison my side,just as Bernalhadon his side that
the ancients said certainthings aboutGreece and Egypt
thathe felt hadgreatervaliditythanwhatpeople saidlater.
Once theyfoundthattheycouldn'targueagainsttheargument that slavery was humane,they were forced to confrontBernal's thesisthroughmy parodyof it. It madethem
feel a bit uncomfortableand on the whole I don't think
they liked it. "We trustedBernal because you assigned
him to us,"one studentsaid. I thinkmany felt whatI had
donewas cleverbutsomehownotright,thatI hadbetrayed
them by exposing Bernalin this way. It was a lesson, as
was Bernal's book, in the politics of memory and a cautionarytale thathow we might decide to use memorypolitically mightbe turnedandused againstus in the validationof anotherkindof politics throughthe sameevocation
of memory.
"Manyofthe peoples,"wroteW. E. B. Du Bois inBlack
Folk ThenandNow,';andmuchof the cultureof ancient

Egypt originated in EquatorialAfrica."25Black Folk

Thenand Now was publishedin June 1939, an expanded
versionof muchearlierbookby Du Bois called TheNegro
thatappearedin 1915. It is not likely thatDu Bois's statementaboutthe originsof ancientEgyptianculturecaused
much of a stir in 1939 amongthe relativelysmall number
of persons who read the book. (Advance sales were 650
copies, not bad for an academicbook, especially one as
challengingto readas this, and therewas always interest
amonga certaingroupof peopleforthiskindof book,particularlythose in the blackcommunitycalled "race"men
and "race"women who want to get the historical truth
aboutAfricanexperienceandwho havea fairlynationalist
bent.I ranacrossa copy of BlackFolk ThenandNow in a
black barbershopwhen I was a boy andpromptlydeposited it in a pile that includedAwake, The Watch Tower,
MuhammadSpeaks}100 Years of Negro Lynching, 100
AmazingFacts abouttheNegro, 50 CardTrickstoAmaze
Your Friends, Ebony, Sepia, Jet, Tan, and other such
esoteria. One could always f1nda fair numberof "race"
men in the average black barbershopof the 1950s and
1960s. But Du Bois'.sbook, like CarterG.Woodson's The
Mis-Educationof theNegroandOutlineofNegroHistory,
could be foundin the homes andbusinessesof morecommonblackfolk thanone mightimagine.)Interestalongthe
lines of self-conscious race constructionconnectedto the
Africanpastwas not at all unusualfor Du Bois. He organized fourPanAfricanconferences:1919, 1921, 1923, and
1927. He attendedthe first Pan-Africanconference, organized by Henry Sylvester Williams, in 1900. He convened an April 1945 conferenceat New York's PublicLibrary's SchomburgCollection that included Nkrumah,
BholaD. Panthof India,andMsungSawTunof Burma,as
well as RayfordLogan, LawrenceReddick,and others.26
George Padmore,good friend of RichardWright, convened the Pan African Conferenceheld in Manchester,
Englandthatsameyear.Accordingto Padmorein his PanAfricanismor Communism:
Inourstrugglefornationalfreedom,humandignityandsocial
redemption
Pan-Afncanism
offersanideologicalalternative
to Communism
on onesideandTribalism
on theother.It rejectsbothwhiteracialismandblackchauvinism.
Itstandsfor
racialco-existenceon thebasisof absoluteequalityandrespectforhumanpersonality.27
But it would seem here that Padmoremay have confusedPanAfricanism's aimswithits tactics,its goals with
its obsessions.Understandably,PanAfricanismcould not

25. W. E. B. Du Bois, BlackFolk ThenandNow (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thompson

OrganizationLimited,1987), p. 14. Du Bois continuesby arguingforthe unity
of KushandancientEgypt,"[Semitic]writersmergedKushandEgyptas formingessentiallyone people"(p. 169to furthertheclaimof theblacknessof Egyptas Kush
was unquestionablya blackAfricancivilization.BlackFolk ThenandNow is a bookthatBernalparticularlyadmires.
26. See W. E. B. Du Bois, TheAutobiographyofW.E. B. DuBois foraccountsof Du Bois's involvementin variousPanAflican conferences.
27. Quoted in W. E. B. Du Bois, The Aatobiographyof W. E. B. Du Bois, p. 399. In Henry Sylvester Williamsand the Origins of the Pan-AfricanMovement,
1869-191 1 (Westport,CT:GreenwoodPress, 1976),Owen CharlesMathurintakesissues with some claimsDu Bois madeabouthow centralhe was in the development
of the Pan-Africanmovement.

EARLY / ADVENTURESINTHE
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really shake off a virulentkind of black chauvinism,but

moreimportantlyit couldnot shakeoff the ideology of racialism itself as whites hadconstructedit. Du Bois's book
appearedtwo years before white anthropologistMelville
Herskovits's The Myth of the Negro Past, which argued
thatblacksin the New Worldstill retainedsignificantculturalfeaturesof an Africanpast thatwas far from barbarous or inferiorto a Europeanpast.The connectionis importantbecause Du Bois said he was inspired to write
aboutthe glories of the Negro past afterhaving heardat
Atlanta University in 1906 white anthropologistFranz
Boas, the fatherof Americananthropology,as he is called,
mentorof Zora Neale Hurston,debunkerof racism, and
defenderof the richesof theAfricanpast.Hurstonherself,
the first trainedblack anthropologistto writeextensively
on the subjectof raceusingheracademictraining(she also
wrote novels), was, too, interestedin the constructionof
race throughmemory,particularlyaroundthe speech-act
as a communalsignifieranda culturalpreservative.What
indeedinterestedHurstonas muchwas theideaof raceas a
kind of commodity or set of intricatecommodities. But
what is most importanthere is the influenceof anthropology on two importantblack thinkers,Du Bois and Hurston, in their thinking about the constructionof race
throughmemory.
So, we returnto Salinger's TheCatcherin theRyeand
the Museumof NaturalHistory,the workof anthropologists and archaeologists. In the middle of the novel,
HoldenCaulfieldwrites:
Thebestthing,though,inthatmuseumwasthateverything
alwaysstayedrightwhereit was.Nobody'dmove.Youcould
go therea hundredthousandtimes,andthatEskimowould
stillbejustfinishedcatchingthosetwofish,thebirdswould
stillbeontheirwaysouth,thedeers[sic]wouldstillbe drinking outof thatwaterhole,withtheirprettyantlersandtheir
pretty,skinnylegs, and the squawwith the nakedbosom

28. J.D.Salinger, TheCatcherintheRyeypp. 121-122.

711

would still be weavingthatsameblanket.Nobody'd be different. The only thingthatwould be differentwould be you. Not
thatyou'd be so mucholder or anyffiing.It wouldn't be that,
exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an
overcoaton this time. Orthekid thatwas your partnerin line
the last time had got scarletfever andyou'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitutetaking the class, instead of
Miss Aigletinger.Oryou'd heardyourmotherandfatherhaving a terriElc
fightin thebathroom.Oryou 'djustpassedby one
of thosepuddlesin thestreetwithgasolinerainbowsin them.I
mean you'd be diJ5erent
in some way.... [emphasisin original]28

Does the past stand before us as exhibits in a museum

and we, as children in a class, holding hands, hoping not to
get lost or to lose our belongings, go through with one sort
of guide or another, burdened by whatever accidental
mood has come upon us? Is the past itself an accident or is
our reconstruction of it as whimsical as childhood? Can
we look at the past with something more than indifference
and less than a regressive instinct? Perhaps the past stands
before us as a kind of dumb show, never changing, the
same cast with the same gestures, the same entries and exits.
Perhaps it is we who change, change our perspective, our
interpretation of the evidence of the show, in the neverending need to reconstruct ourselves out of the remains of
our ancestors, ourselves in another guise, so that they are
both like us and unlike us. Perhaps the story of black folk,
ancient Egypt, and the construction of blackness has its
universal application in just this way: it's everybody's
story of being in the museum, trying to figure out how to
make it all work for you by looking in and looking out.
And perhaps blacks exist on such an exquisite margin of
American life there is something to be said about their
double-edgedness, of their particular looking in and looking out.