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In the United States, African scholars are conspicuously
underrepresented in the eld of African Studies. For years, Black

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4/11/2019 Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies – AAIHS

scholars have called attention to the racial politics that make this #AAIHSRoundtable
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situation possible. This issue took on renewed urgency during the
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS ROUNDT
#BlackLivesMatter
61st annual meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA) in #comicsandrace
November 2018. On the second day of the meeting in Atlanta, Jean
Allman—an eminent historian and president of the ASA—gave a lecture
Activism African
titled #HerskovitsMustFall? A Meditation on Whiteness, African Studies, Diaspora archives black
and the Un nished Business of 1968.1 Allman’s lecture chronicled the
historical and continuing marginalization of Black scholars in African
feminism black
Studies and revealed how the eld became dominated by white men.
intellectual
The talk was designed to open the door for the following day’s sessions,
led by Black African and African American scholars, on what can be history black
done about the persistent problem of racism in African Studies. Still, the
internationalism
enthusiastic reception of Allman’s talk highlights the fact that even the
work of calling attention to the racism within African Studies is black lives matter black

racialized. nationalism Black Panther

Allman began the lecture by highlighting how the rst leaders of the Party black
ASA intentionally established African Studies in the United States as a
white man’s dominion by undermining the work of Black scholars. For politics Black
example, Melville J. Herskovits—the rst president of the African Studies Power black
Association and after whom the ASA’s annual book prize is named—
once boasted that he was responsible for ensuring that W.E.B. Du Bois protest Black
did not receive funding from the Carnegie Foundation to support his radicalism black
work on the Encyclopedia Africana.2 Although he was unable to
radical tradition
complete the project before his death in 1963, Du Bois envisioned the
encyclopedia to be a comprehensive work on Africa and African Black women
descended people that would challenge the prevailing enlightenment
Brazil capitalism Caribbean
idea that Black people were incapable of developing civilizations. The
civil rights Civil Rights
hostile treatment of Black scholars by the ASA’s rst leaders contributed
to the rift between the elds of African Studies and African American
Movement Cuba Donald
Studies that is still palpable today. Thus, despite the fact that African Trump education Gender
Americans were amongst the rst scholars in the United States to study Haiti Jim Crow music Pan-
the peoples and cultures of the African continent, African Studies
Africanism police
became a eld controlled by white, mostly male scholars who branded
themselves as “Africanists.” brutality police
violence Politics race
Allman’s talk also highlighted how the predominance of white male
scholars in African Studies is re ected in the African Studies Racial Violence
Association’s leadership structure and the recognition of scholarship in racism religion
the eld. Since the organization’s founding in 1957, 54.1% of its
presidents have been white men. This number was at over 75% in the
Resistance 
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4/11/2019 Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies – AAIHS

decades between 1957 and 1977. Moreover, as of 2018, 50.0% of all the
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recipients of the Herskovits Prize—the annual award given for the “best
FEATURED BOOKS slavery
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS ROUNDT
slave trade

scholarly work on Africa published in English”—have been white men. South teaching W.E.B. Du

Additionally, 48.6% of the recipients of the Distinguished Africanist Bois white supremacy
Award have been white men. Meanwhile, the number of Africa-based
women scholars represented in each of these categories has been 0.0%
Trending Now
—an astonishing indicator of how the forces of racism, sexism, and
geopolitics work to marginalize the contributions of African women.
Race and the
At the conclusion of her talk, Allman received a standing ovation from Politics of
the predominantly white audience that lled the ironically named Knowledge
Imperial Ballroom where the talk was held. As a Black African, and a Production in
African
doctoral student in the eld of African history, I left the talk with a great
Studies
sense of sadness, not because any of the information was new but
By Marius
because the resounding applause made it clear to me that the majority Kothor | 2
of the people in attendance were convinced that the issues Allman had Comments
discussed were outside of that room—somewhere out there in the big
bad racist world. Yet, the people in that room represent the eld of The Black Arts
Movement
African Studies, and thus, the appropriate response should have been
and “A Nation
anger. Scholars of Africa should be outraged that racism has such a
Within a
strong foothold in a eld that claims a commitment to understanding
Nation”
the experiences of a continent composed by a majority of Black people.
By James
Later that night, as mentions of the talk on social media platforms Smethurst
celebrated Allman’s boldness and the timeliness of her lecture, I began
to think about who is able to make the experiences of Black scholars in Making ‘A
African Studies legible. Would the audience have received a Black Nation Within
A Nation’: An
African scholar with the same enthusiasm if they were to give the exact
Interview
same lecture? Or would they have been met with uncomfortable
with Komozi
silences, accused of “playing the race card” and dismissed as angry and Woodard
bitter? More plainly, I wondered if the talk was received so positively By Say Burgin
because Allman is white. The answers to these questions remain
unclear. What is certain, however, is that Allman was not the rst to Lessons in
discuss the issue of race and the politics of knowledge production in Revolutionary
African Studies. Black
Nationalism
Black scholars have long contested their marginalization in African By Michael
Studies. In fact, the “un nished business of 1968” in the title of Jean Simanga | 1
Comment
Allman’s talk was a reference to the e orts of members of the ASA to
call attention to the organization’s racist practices during the 1968
Libraries,
annual meeting in Montreal. Moreover, a couple of decades before
Allman’s talk, the Nigerian-British scholar, Amina Mama, argued in a 
Literacy, and
Community

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4/11/2019 Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies – AAIHS

lecture at the 49th ASA meeting that “the marginalization of Africa Building: An
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within the world order is echoed in the global knowledge arena.” Mama
ROUNDT
Interview
with Brea
contended that scholars “based in the relatively well-endowed and -
McQueen
resourced U.S. academy have an ethical responsibility to support,
By J. T. Roane
facilitate, and participate” in an engagement with African scholars
“instead of just disseminating their own ideas, as if Africa had no
intellectuals, no knowledge to contribute.”3 More recently, in 2016, the
Comments
Liberian scholar Robtel Neajai Pailey published a critical essay in which
she argued that contemporary scholarship on Africa is dominated by
Each author’s posts re ect
“non-African scholars who have strategically positioned themselves
their own views and not
as the authoritative voices in a 21st century scramble for in uence.” necessarily those of the
Mama and Pailey’s arguments called into question the tendency of African American
“Africanists” to relegate African people to the role of informants while Intellectual History Society
refusing to recognize them as experts and theorists in the process of Inc. AAIHS welcomes
knowledge production about African societies. Yet, critiques provided by comments on and vigorous
Black scholars such as Mama and Pailey did not push the eld to a discussion about our posts.

moment of reckoning. The reception of Allman’s talk vis-à-vis the long We recognize that there will
be disagreement but ask
history of scholars like Pailey and Mama’s e orts to diversify the
that you be civil about such
perspectives represented in African Studies illustrates the fact that the
disagreements. Personal
work of highlighting racial inequalities within African Studies is
insults and mean spirited
considered more legitimate and treated as novel when it is done by a
comments will not be
white scholar. tolerated and AAIHS
reserves the right to delete
The underrepresentation of Africans in African Studies has serious
such comments from the
implications beyond the ASA. It shapes how students think about
blog.
knowledge production and the people who count as knowledge
producers. At universities across the United States, chairs of African
Studies programs are overwhelmingly white, and the scholars who are CONTRIBUTORS
invited to campuses to give talks on Africa are also majority white. Thus,
it is not uncommon to walk into a lecture or discussion on an aspect of
African history, culture, or politics and nd the room absent of Black
DONATE
scholars, African or otherwise. Consequently, many undergraduate
students go through their entire college career believing that knowledge
about Africa does not come from Africans. At the graduate level, many
African students often report being made to feel that their experiences
do not constitute valid sources of knowledge. Overall, the
marginalization of Africans within African Studies supports the notion
that Africans can be informants and subjects of study but never
theorists of their own cultures, analysts of their own politics, or
historians of their own pasts. More simply, the underrepresentation of
Africans in African Studies is a visual expression of the idea—
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4/11/2019 Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies – AAIHS

institutionalized by the ASA’s founders—that Africans cannot be


Africanists.
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Black people’s e orts to intervene in the process of knowledge

production about their communities has long been a central
component of the global struggle against white supremacy. Indeed, this
work should not be left to Black scholars alone, and Allman’s talk is a
welcome addition to the work that Black scholars have long been doing
to diversify the perspectives represented in the eld of African Studies.
Yet the question that still needs to be grappled with is this: why does it
take a white scholar to point out issues of racism within the eld of
African Studies before it is taken seriously?

1. Jean Allman, “#HerskovitsMustFall? A Meditation on Whiteness,

African Studies, and the Un nished Business of 1968” (Speech,
Atlanta, GA November 29, 2018).
2. For more on Hertskovits’ e orts to undermine Du Bois see
Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the
Birth of Modern Sociology(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2017).
3.  Amina Mama, “Is it Ethical to Study Africa? Preliminary
Thoughts on Scholarship and Freedom,” African Studies
Review 50, no.1 (2007): 1-26.

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Marius Kothor
Marius Kothor is a PhD student in the Department of
History at Yale University. She received her BA in African
and African American Studies from the University of
Rochester and an MA in History from the University of
Iowa. Her current research focuses on the role of market women in the
construction of national identity in Togo and the construction of African
identity among Africans living in the United States. Follow her on Twitter
@AfrikanaPress.

Comments on “Race and the Politics of Knowledge

Production in African Studies”

 Franklin Oliver  |   April 8, 2019 at 12:33 pm

Thank you for this powerful article.

 Reply

 Hugo Verne  |   April 10, 2019 at 1:59 am

The author has many good insights on racial representation in

American academia. Although, for a truly Afro-centric analysis, one
must ask if there is a need to retain Africa’s best scholars for African
universities, which contain abundant student populations and thriving
academic communities. American universities should be challenged to
bolster African scholars and universities through exchange programs,
publishing, and conferences like the one mentioned in the article. Why
reserve African scholars to teach only American students along with the
risk of high academic unemployment and student debt in that country?

 Reply
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