AFRILAC Is a Real Phenomenon

 There has been a lot of discussion about the African Diaspora and its importance in U.S.-Africa trade and general relations. However, just counting the Diasporans in the United States and relating them to Africa misses the breadth of the spread of Africa’s descendants across the world, especially here in the Western Hemisphere, since Africa’s children live in just about every continent on Earth, except perhaps Antarctica.

            The question in discerning Diasporans is how you classify mixed-race individuals. In the United States, it has been federal law for nearly two centuries that one drop of Black blood makes one Black. If that is the case, then Brazil has more African descendants than any country not on the African continent at 55,900,000, followed by the United States with 46,350,467. Canada has 1,198,540. It would be expected that the former colonial nations would have large Diaspora populations, and they do. France has 3,800,000; the United Kingdom has 2,497,373; Italy has 1,100.000; Germany has 817,150; Spain has 690,291, and Portugal has 149,982. Each of these figures are a snapshot in time, but they give a general idea of the size of the Diaspora populations in these countries.

            There also are significant numbers of African people or people of African descent living in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Romania and Russia.

            Alexander Pushkin, considered to be perhaps Russia’s greatest poet, was the grandson of Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a nobleman of sub-Saharan African origin, who was adopted and raised in the Russian Emperor's court household as his godson. Alexander Dumas, a Black French writer, was one of the more prolific writers in the 19th-century literary world. You probably are familiar with at least a couple of his books: The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. So don’t let anyone tell you that the Transatlantic Slave Trade nor the Arab Slave Trade defines the African Diaspora’s history. Our people have achieved wherever they went – whether by force or by choice.

You may have heard on the news in recent months that thousands of African students and African people living and working in Ukraine found themselves trapped after Russia’s invasion when border officials prevented them from leaving until all Ukrainians were taken out of the country first. We may encounter prejudice wherever we go, but we persevere.

According to social scientist Kaiya Aboagye, blackness in the global South region, which is below the Equator, is seen in people from Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, as well as the Torres Straits, Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, as well as people in Papua New Guinea and the Maori. She wrote that the Aboriginal people of Australia make up one of the world’s oldest continuing Black civilizations.

            We often talk about creating and expanding linkages between Diasporans in North America and Africa (as well we should), but that ignores the many Diasporans living in not only the Caribbean, but also Central and South America. This region, called by my colleague Ryan Elcock AFRILAC (African Latin America and the Caribbean), has numerous citizens of African descent:

Haiti:   10,104,000

Dominican Republic: 9,192,000

Columbia: 4,944,400

Venezuela: 3,156,817

Jamaica: 2,731,419

Mexico: 1,386,556

Peru: 1,200,000

Cuba: 1,126,894

Puerto Rico: 979,842

Ecuador: 680,000

Trinidad and Tobago: 452,536

Barbados: 256,706

Guyana: 225,860

Surinam: 200,406

Argentina: 149,493

Grenada: 101,309

            Some of these Diaspora populations seem small, but that’s because the total populations are small, and the larger Diaspora populations in countries such as Mexico, Ecuador and Argentina comprise much larger percentages in those Latin countries than many of us had previously thought. Admit it, when you think of Latin countries other than Brazil or Cuba, do you ever see in your mind someone of African descent? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean millions of Diasporans aren’t living in countries to the south of ours. We just hadn’t taken note of them, but we must now. Consider the accomplishments of these Diasporans in Latin American countries of which we are unaware. We are more aware of Caribbean Diaspora accomplishments, but surely there still are some we’re missing. Conversely, our diaspora brothers and sisters likely are missing some of our North American accomplishments as well.

            I organized a Diaspora conference supported by the African Union in Washington in December 2002, which led to the creation of what is called the Western Hemisphere African Diaspora Network. At that conference, we had the Diaspora advisor to then-Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who was called home urgently during our proceedings. We had representatives from across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, but we could and should have had more from Latin America. It was at that conference that African Union officials were challenged on their narrow definition of the Diaspora as those born in Africa who now live outside the continent. Perhaps they hadn’t considered previously the commitment that many Diasporans born outside of Africa had to the continent and its future. Evidently, they were so impressed that within weeks, the African Union declared the Diaspora the sixth region of Africa (in addition to North, East, Central, South and West).

The African Union currently defines the African Diaspora as "[consisting] of people of native African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union." Its constitutive act declares that it shall "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our continent, in the building of the African Union."

            As fantastic as this honor and idea was, it has yet to be realized fully nearly a decade later. That is largely the fault of Diasporans around the world who have made no sincere effort to come together for a common cause: the future of our ancestral homeland in Africa and our respective conditions worldwide. Such a monumental venture is hampered by the lack of leaders with wide international gravitas to organize such a union. People like Ambassador Andrew Young or Rev. Jesse Jackson are now too old to take on such a labor-intensive task. They made their contributions to Diasporans years ago, but no one rose to take their mantle. It would have to be someone of accomplishment with integrity that wants our people to jointly use our talents to advance the state of our people worldwide without being overly concerned about his or her own publicity – someone willing to sacrifice their time and energy and take chances when necessary.

Unfortunately, people like that are hard to find in today’s world. Where are the Martin Luther Kings or Malcolm Xs willing to speak truth to power and withstand criticism and risk their own lives if necessary? Where are the next Marcus Garveys or George Padmores who have an international vision of the African world? We have in today’s world so many platforms on which to build unity among Africa’s descendants. The Internet has provided ample communications options through social media to connect, and translation devices make even successful person-to-person contacts possible. But for whatever reason, we still seem disinclined to make those contacts.

Because of this reluctance, we don’t know an untold number of potential business partners, investors or investment destinations in these countries, and they are missing similar opportunities with us in North America. Each day we continue this disconnect, an increasing number of deals are lost; an increasing number of personal connections are lost. We could not only pool our financial resources; we could form joint efforts to meet the challenges such as the many health concerns Diaspora people collectively face. No one would be more dedicated to finding preventative or treatment strategies than those of us who are subject to diseases and medical conditions.

As stated earlier, we all came to be where we are through different means. Arabs first brought African slaves from the central and eastern portions of the continent (with the collaboration of other Africans) and sold them into markets in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Asia. Beginning in the 15th century, Europeans captured or bought African slaves from West Africa (again with the collaboration with other Africans) and brought them to the Americas and to Europe. The Atlantic slave trade ended in the 19th century, but the enslavement of Africa people into the Middle East did not. The dispersal of African people through slave trading represents the largest forced migrations in human history. The economic effect on the African continent proved devastating, as generations of young people were abducted from their communities, and societies were disrupted. Some communities formed by descendants of African slaves in the Americas, Europe and Asia have survived to the present day, such as the Gullah in South Carolina in the eastern U.S. In other cases, native Africans intermarried with non-native Africans and increasingly non-Africans, and their descendants have blended largely into the local population.

Apart from some African slave catchers close enough to the Arab and European slavers to know their true feeling about African slaves, African slave catchers generally would have thought they were continuing their tradition of enslaving those whom they defeated. In traditional Africa, if I defeat you, you now serve me, and all your possessions now belong to me. However, slaves in Africa were not considered sub-human and could rise from their status and often did so. Centuries later, African chiefs from countries such as Benin and Ghana have come to the United States, for example, to apologize for their ancestors’ part in the slave trade.

            Over the centuries, we in the developed world have been conditioned by those in power to think of those living in developing countries as primitive and lacking the ability to contribute to our wellbeing or society. Gradually, we have found this to be untrue, thanks to people such as Garvey, Padmore and W.E.B. DuBois. Through the successive Pan-African Congresses, an increasing number of elites on both sides of the Atlantic connected and realized what contributions we could make together. Ethiopia’s defeat of Italy in 1896 at the Battle of Adwa stimulated pride among Black people in the United States fighting against Jim Crow segregation and oppression. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, a leading pan-African organization, named as an official organization anthem “Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers.” The writer of the song, Harlem resident and renowned musician Josiah Ford, later accepted the offer to migrate to Ethiopia. The UNIA’s Black Star Line was created to ferry Diaspora goods and eventually Diasporans throughout the world. That symbol later was used by Ghana and is in that country’s flag today. When Italy invaded Ethiopia again in 1935, many thousands of Black Americans turned out to demonstrate on behalf of U.S. assistance to the resistance in Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s provided inspiration to the African Independence Movement, and when newly independent African nations sent representatives to the United States, they broke the color barriers at hotels and restaurants as much as our it-in and boycotts did. So, our Diaspora-Africa linkages are broad, but not as deep as they once were.

            We continue to have much we can contribute to one another. Along the way of collaboration, we will find how much we have in common despite what we may have been told over the years. Pope Francis has referred to “ideological colonialism,” by which he means Western groups encouraging Africans to go against their traditions to line up with outsider views on how to live. It is these ideological obstacles that members of the Diaspora and Africans must overcome to collaborate with one another. We have differences to be sure, but we must find ways to cooperate with one another and build solidarity, especially those of us in the Western Hemisphere. To do so successfully, we must respect one another and learn from each other, realizing that while we may have things to teach, we also have things to learn.

AFRILAC is indeed a real thing, and we must find ways to acknowledge that and build linkages with those who are so near and yet so far.