Oppression And Resistance In Africa And The Diaspora

Africa’s modern history is replete with different forms of encounters and conflicts. From the fifteenth century when millions of Africans were forcefully taken away as slaves during the infamous Atlantic slave trade; to the colonial conquests of the nineteenth century where European countries conquered and subsequently balkanized Africa and shared the continent to European powers; and to the postcolonial era where many African leaders have maintained several instruments of exploitation, the continent has seen different forms of encounters, exploitations and oppressions. These encounters and exploitations have equally been met with resistance in different forms and at different times. The mode of Africa’s encounters with the rest of the world have in several ways, shaped and continue to shape the continent’s social, political and economic development trajectories. Essays in this volume have addressed different aspects of these phases of encounters and resistance by Africa and the African Diaspora. While the volume document different phases of oppression and conflict, it also contains some accounts of Africa’s resistance to external and internal oppressions and exploitations. From the physical guerilla resistance of the Mau Mau group against British colonial exploitation in Kenya and its aftermath, to efforts of the Kayble group to preserve their language and culture in modern Algeria; and from the innovative ways in which the Tuareg are using guitar and music as forms of expression and resistance, to the modern ways in which contemporary African immigrants in North America are coping with oppressive structures and racism, the chapters in this volume have examined different phases of oppressions and suppressions of Africa and its people, as well as acts of resistance put up by Africans.

Africa and the African Diaspora is the outcome of a symposium held atPortland State University in Portland, Oregon (February 2002), entitled “Symposium on Freedom in Black History,” designed to celebrate Black History Month. The major themes of the conference were how Africans both at home on the continent and dispersed abroad, often by forces beyond their control, reacted to oppression and subjugation in seeking freedom from slavery, colonialism, and discrimination. The volume documents the many forms that oppression has taken, the many forms that resistance has taken, and the cultural developments that have allowed Africans to adapt to the new and changing economic, social and environmental conditions to win back their freedom. Oppressive strategies as divide-and-rule could be based on any one of a number of features, such as skin color, place of origin, culture, or social or economic status. People drawn into the vortex of the Atlantic trade and funneled into the sugar fields, the swampy rice lands or the cotton, coffee or tobacco plantations of the new world and elsewhere, had no alternative but to risk their lives for freedom. The plantation provided the context for the dehumanization of disadvantaged groups subjected to exhausting work, frequent punishment and personal injustice of every kind, This book demonstrates that the history and interpretation of these struggles of the oppressed peoples to free themselves have not received proportionate attention and analysis, as have other aspects of that history.

Africans and their descendants have long been faced with abuse of their human rights, most frequently due to racism or racialized issues. Consequently, understanding shifting conceptualizations of race and identity is essential to understanding how people of color confronted these encounters. This book addresses these issues and their connections to social justice, discrimination, and equality movements. From colonial abuses or their legacies, black people around the world have historically encountered discrimination, and yet they do not experience injustice opaquely. The chapters in this book explore and clarify how Africans, and their descendants, struggled to achieve agency despite long histories of discrimination. Contributors draw upon a range of case studies related to resistance, and examine these in conjunction with human rights and the concept of race to provide a thorough exploration of the diasporic experience. Human Rights, Race, and Resistance in Africa and the African Diaspora will appeal to students and scholars of Ethnic and Racial Studies, African History, and Diaspora Studies.

Author Don Ohadike chronicles the struggle for peoples of African descent to overcome slavery, colonialism and neo-colonial hegemony. Tracing resistance movements from the colonial period into the 20th century through music and religion, the pursuit of freedom and the practice of resistance extend beyond the borders of Africa into popular culture in the US, the Caribbean and South Africa. Ohadike crosses a multitude of eras and locations but the theme of resistance to oppression through religion and music echoes drums of liberation into the present.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of illustrations -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Introduction: gendering knowledge in Africa and the African Diaspora -- PART I (Re- )writing gender in African and African Diaspora history -- 1 The Bantu Matrilineal Belt: reframing African women's history -- 2 REMAPping the African Diaspora: place, gender and negotiation in Arabian slavery -- 3 Communicating feminist ethics in the age of New Media in Africa -- PART II Gender, migration and identity -- 4 Transnational feminist solidarity, Black German women and the politics of belonging -- 5 Beyond disability: the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and female heroism in Manu Herbstein's Ama -- 6 Reverse migration of Africans in the Diaspora: foregrounding a woman's quest for her roots in Tess Akaeke Onwueme's Legacies -- PART III Gender, subjection and power -- 7 Queens in flight: Fela Kuti's Afrobeat Queens and the performance of "Black" feminist Diasporas -- 8 Women and tfu in Wimbum Community, Cameroon -- 9 Women's agency and peacebuilding in Nigeria's Jos crises -- 10 Contesting the notions of "thugs and welfare queens": combating Black derision and death -- 11 Culture of silence and gender development in Nigeria -- 12 Emasculation, social humiliation and psychological castration in Irene's More than Dancing -- Index

Spain’s former African colonies—Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara—share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men. In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects. She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.

In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue. Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are “racist buffoonery” or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts. Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones’s groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans’ agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.