PAN-AFRICANISM REVISITED: NAVIGATING THE COMPLEXITIES OF MODERN WORLD POLITICS, ECONOMY, AND CULTURE
Abstract
Over the past four centuries, Black people have endured a relentless Western narrative that has painted a distorted image of Africa and its inhabitants. This narrative, perpetuated by European and American popular literature, has given birth to a mythical and fantastical version of Africa. The colonial rule imposed by Europeans was deeply rooted in this Western myth, emphasizing Africa's alleged backwardness and subhuman nature. The literature preceding and accompanying their colonization efforts aimed to negate African civilization, culture, and humanity, fabricating false images, stereotypes, and assumptions that reinforced their hegemony and brainwashed populations into believing Africans were inferior, lacking intelligence, uncivilized, barbaric, inhuman, and living in perpetual darkness.
This historical narrative has played a pivotal role in shaping the tumultuous history of the Black race, marked by the scourges of slavery, colonization, racial oppression, and contemporary forms of neo-colonization and exploitation. Regrettably, these phenomena have proven highly profitable and advantageous to the West at the expense of Africa. This exploitation laid the foundation for the New World, the transatlantic Slave Trade that spanned Africa, Europe, and the Americas, the relentless extraction and exploitation of Africa's natural resources, and its subsequent colonization by European powers. Today, Africa remains dependent on its relationship with Europe and the United States for development, perpetuating a legacy of exploitation.
The enslaved Africans forcibly transported to the New World were dehumanized, treated as commodities devoid of dignity or respect, destined solely for servitude and obedience. Colonization in Africa and segregation against Africans in the Diaspora became the hallmarks of imperialist domination, cloaked under the guise of a so-called "civilizing mission." The invaders brought with them a new form of education, religion in the form of "colonial" Christianity, and stripped the land and natural resources from the African continent. They disrupted local ways of life, culture, traditions, identities, as well as social, political, and economic structures.
It is essential to clarify that in this context, the term "Diaspora" specifically pertains to the early experiences of Black people after slavery in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, and not to all Africans living outside of Africa today.
