"The black theology movement is suffering from a crisis of method...
This crisis is a reflection of the identity crisis that has plagued African Americans since their status as indentured servants and bondsmen and bondswomen was altered to become that of slaves and chattel. This altering of social relationships and identity, this ignoble differentiation of African persons, was not simply the creation of an Other. It was violation of one of the greatest moral achievements of Western civilization, namely, that one should never treat a subject as an object.
- This practical violation of the Golden Rule and Kantian ethics has had severe moral and social consequences for Africans and Europeans alike. It has caused both groups to reformulate their identity, and it has led to devastating suffering and loss of life for both Africans and Europeans. The unceasing tribal wars in Africa, the loss of life in the Middle Passage and the plantations, and the eventual heart-rending losses suffered by Americans in the Civil War were only some of the negative consequences of this reconfiguration of African humanity.
In order to accomplish the objectification of the African, Europeans not only had to alter their own hard-earned moral principles but also had to suppress the African roots of their own European moral, religious, and intellectual heritage. The Western human sciences became active leaders in the suppression of Africans and the African-Egyptian roots of Western civilization.
- This suppression included an obfuscation of the contribution that the black Moors of Spain made to the founding and establishment of the European intellectual community. Shakespeare's ambivalent rendering of Othello is an appropriate metaphor of Europe's acknowledgment of both the poverty and the vitality of Africa and its fear of both.
Any facts or ideas that contradicted Western ethnocentrism had to be suppressed to justify the African slave trade's role in Europe's expan- sion. This knowledge of the African contribution to Western civilization became dangerous, threatening Western European hegemony and its views of the superiority of Europe's civilization over the denizens of the Dark Continent. Acknowledgment of the humanity of Africans and of the African roots of Western civilization would have undermined any arguments about the chattel status of African Americans.
It is ironic that even a leisurely walk through the British Museum can put to rest any notions of African inferiority. Instead, visitors would be impressed by the genius of African people, and those of us from America should be impressed by the psychic energy that must have been expended in suppressing the African contributions to Western civilization. African people also may feel a sense of loss, as the intricate pieces of West African art in the British Museum of Mankind seem to cry out for the recognition they deserve as magnificent creations of a people whose cultural heritage has long been denied."
Donald Matthews - Interpretation and The African American Situation
Matthews, D. H. (1998). Honoring the ancestors: An African Cultural Interpretation of Black Religion and Literature. Oxford University Press.
-Yogabrofessor
Add comment
Comments