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African
America –
A Fourth World
Or a Sector of the
Third World?
By Waldron H. Giles, Ph.D.
The promotion of African
America as a Fourth World based upon Fanon’s observation
that there is little in common between the struggles of the
former African colonies and those of Blacks living in the US is
a bit presumptuous and may be an extension of the US propagated
materialistic myth that national wealth is the same as national
power. It takes more than wealth, namely, wealth (natural
resources), population, and political will to move nations into
the power arena. African-Americans
come up short on all three whereas their African Brothers meet
the power criterion by possessing two out of the three necessary
ingredients.
The history of the land ownership where
global Africans reside has nothing to do with their common
struggles against imperialism.
The exploitation of natural resources (labor is indeed a
natural resource!) by the imperialistic powers is the key
element in the commonality in the African, Caribbean, and
African American struggles and not necessarily related to land
ownership or colonial status.
Exploitation of labor is more degrading and dehumanizing
than the exploitation of their natural resources and becomes
the fuel for any resistance movement.
Therefore, land ownership is simply not
enough of an explanation to deny African-Americans colonial
status as Carmichael and Hamilton had suggested in Black
Power. Would
one consider Haiti or Jamaica as part of this Fourth World or
should they be given the status as the nexus for a Fifth World?
In both cases they were former colonies where the
imported slaves gained their freedom and the ownership of the
land, as well.
In all of the Caribbean-African experiences,
their status as colonies and land ownership was distinctly
different from both the African and African-American experiences
but we would agree that to relegate the African-Caribbean to a
Fifth world would be taking the concept of land ownership too
far.
Let us face it, the Native Americans, who
were pushed off their land nearly to the point of extinction,
originally inhabited the land in the US and then the new
occupiers of the land established British, French, and Spanish
colonies. Slaves
were imported in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the US to work land
of which neither the slaves nor their owners were the original
owners but all were colonies with dependent exploitive economies
of their Mother countries
Land is not the major reasons that people
have fought for their independence; however, it does become a
monument to freedom. Land
ownership is not the necessary and sufficient condition to
define a colony. The
items that define a colony is the implementation of conditions
that completely control the inhabitants to the point where they
are totally dependent upon the imperialistic power for all
elements of their subsistence, including their labor.
Ownership of land is a mere detail in the
eyes of the imperialists as we are currently witnessing in Iraq. Three years ago, the Iraqis owned their land and oil but one
must relegate Iraq to a current colonial status even as they
struggle for freedom in the same manner as the Americans did
prior to their revolution.
We see the Iraqis becoming dependent on the US for their
food, water, gasoline (in spite of having the world’s second
largest oil reserves) and livelihood with unemployment running
at 60%; their entire economy has been ripped apart.
Even, their government is in the process of being
transformed into a puppet regime that will insure that Iraqi oil
flows directly into the US corporate economic stream.
I would defend Carmichael and Hamilton in
their comparison of the African American experiences as life
within a colony since most African-Americans live in
semi-isolated communities (ghettos), surrounded by mainstream
America and supply cheap labor to the majority population.
The surrounding majority controls their entire economy
even down to the drug trade.
The entire United States is dotted with these isolated
areas in major cities.
With high unemployment, they are forced to
compete with one another, which keep their wages well below the
wages paid to the majority.
Labor in the ghetto for those lucky enough to work is
provided at free market
prices and is undergoing increasing pressure from the
immigration of Latin Americans and the shipping of manufacturing
jobs to China.
Control and exploitation are the key
parameters that define a colony and Africa, the Caribbean, and
the ghettos of the US fit neatly into the imperialistic pattern
of domination. The
ghettos within the US, the townships of Africa, are all colonies
or neo colonies; yet Africans, African-Caribbeans, and
African-Americans have the same common enemy and therefore a
common struggle, which is to defeat the imperialistic powers
that keep them in economic slavery independent of where they
reside.
What Fanon missed is the population ratio
(minority/majority) differences within the Western hemisphere;
which, of necessity, alters the strategies and tactics, employed
by African-Americans that are certainly divergent from those
employed by Africans and African-Caribbeans.
Since African Americans are only 12.5 % of the
population, boycotts and armed resistance will not have the same
impact in the US and can be easier controlled than in Africa or
the Caribbean.
The African-American’s ethnic network comes
under attack due to their minority status and they are forced to
cater or integrate into the majority communities to survive
and/or satisfy most of their quality of life demands.
Being at the whims of the majority population forces you
to form coalition with the majority to effect societal gains.
Much of the successes of the Civil Rights movement were
due to coalitions formed with white churches and many of the
white liberal organizations that rallied in support of the many
injustices faced by American Blacks.
This is a major strategic difference that
separates the transatlantic struggles.
Due to shifts to the right such coalitions do not exist
today, which has limited the effectiveness of the
African-American struggle; although the causes for such
struggles have not gone away.
Katrina brings this point home quite vividly.
In spite of the pleas of African American leaders, the
rebuilding of New Orleans will be accomplished for the white
majority’s benefit since no Black network exists that is
strong enough to change the direction of the reconstruction
effort. Even
Black/White coalitions suggest a colonial atmosphere!
Since the Haitian Revolution, the
African-American population has always been kept below 20%.
The principal fears of the slave owners were that the
population of slaves would become too high as to make an
insurrection too difficult or impossible to control.
The pursuit of integration and biased immigration
policies continue to fray the African-American network and their
political will necessary and mandatory for a successful
continuance of the struggle for human rights.
We are talking about a political will, built upon the
self-interests of the Black people, that is strong enough to
focus their limited resources and population on the defeat of
imperialistic exploitation.
The concept of integration can destroy this
political will if the focus remains on the ability to sit at a
lunch counter as opposed to providing equal opportunity to all
Black people. The integration of the lunch counter is a short-range tactic
as opposed to the long-term strategy of equal opportunity.
Not to demean lunch counter integration but it became the
endpoint as opposed to the beginning phase of a long-term
strategy for equality. Sadly,
US Blacks must rely on their government to provide the fuel for
their pursuit of equal opportunity.
The colonial analogy becomes more apparent as we move
further into the 21st century.
Another point that Fanon may have overlooked
in his comparison is the duration of slavery versus the colonial
existence of the African. Imperial
exploitation of the African Americans has a 400-year history as
opposed to the 100-150 year history of Africans living under
colonial domination. European
and certainly American colonialism of the African continent
roughly began during the mid 1800’s and ended close to the end
of the Second World War.
This 250 year longer, duration has had a
serious impact on the psychological differences between African
Americans and Africans. Whereas
Africans concentrate on the struggle for equal opportunity or
equal treatment for their goods and services, African Americans
concentrate on integrating into the major society.
Integration may or may not lead to equal treatment as we
have found.
This longer duration has left the
African-American with a slave
mentality that always limits the full exercising of his
political will and thereby his ability to focus his limited
resources on the key prize of defeating imperialism.
As the Algerians took up arms and defeated their colonial
French masters, they certainly were not suffering from a slave
mentality when they decided upon armed aggression as the means
of expressing their political will.
In this act, two ingredients stand out in
their ultimate victory over the French, their superior numbers
and their political determination to defeat the French.
As the Algerians shared the common struggle with their
African-American brothers and sisters, only the tactics of
engagement, driven by these two elements of national power,
differed.
Slave mentality is the most effective link
that weakens the chain of the African-American political will.
That is, the slave owner imposed separation of color and
work hierarchy that has carried over into current times.
Children of the rapes of slave masters were given
preferential treatment, which gradually was translated into
preferential color treatment.
This treatment also decided working
privileges with the most honored positions being given to those
slaves who worked closest to and with their slave owners.
These positions of favor also implied that reports of
uprisings, escapes, and sabotage had to be reported to the slave
owners. Such layers
of divisions were natural barriers to any formations of network,
solidarity, and political will.
Most of our African and Caribbean brothers and sisters do
not suffer from this slave mentality or many of its
sub-elemental themes.
In the pursuit of the Fourth World separation
the African-American from his global brothers and sisters, we
often hear that African-Americans are more powerful than their
African brothers and sisters since they command a GDP of $688
billion whereas, the highest GDP for an African nation is Egypt
with GDP of $290 billion followed by Nigeria at $113 billion. In
a GDP ranking alone, African-Americans are in the national
company of Spain, Indonesia, and Mexico.
To equate wealth with power leads to a false
sense of national value since national power can be measured by
the product of wealth
(GDP and/or natural resources), population,
and political will that melds wealth and population into a national
force. In the attempts to qualify African Americans as a Fourth
World is to ignore their relatively small population (34th
on a global scale) and their lack of political will to leverage
their relatively high GDP into an international power.
In fact, a closer look at their GDP, we find
that the necessities of living such as food, clothing, rent, and
transportation consume a huge part of their incomes, which
yields them a colonial rather than national status.
Very little is left for economic development, which they
must look to their former slave masters to provide, and they
possess nothing but labor as a natural resource that can be
valued and devalued by forces in a controlled market driven
economy.
Too much emphasis is placed on the
African-American vote in influencing national and local
elections. The last
two national elections in Florida and Ohio have a sobering
effect on the political power wielded by African-Americans.
Had the political will of the African Americans been
stronger; Al Gore would be in the White House and Iraq would
have been a bad political novel. Also, since the 60’s there
have been over 400 Black elected officials with only a
regression in the economic status of Africa-Americans to show
for these political gains. Most elected Black officials find themselves constrained to
the point of impotency.
The gains to be made in solidifying our bonds
with the Third World far outweigh the benefits, if any, to be
had as being a part of this new Fourth World.
As stated earlier this Fourth World would be far too weak
to be of any national or international significance; however,
African-Americans have a lot to bring to the table in the form
of wealth, education, management, professional services, etc.
that could be leveraged in ways that will bring a much larger
benefit to themselves, their heirs, and their African
counterparts.
African Americans could help their African
brothers and sisters harness the natural resource wealth that
the African possess. This
would be a win-win for both parties on both sides of the
Atlantic and certainly would be a much better deal for both
suffering under the yoke of exploitation.
The four hundred year struggle of the former slaves in
the US has yielded some modest gains but these gains will be
miniscule when viewed in the demands for gains in the new
competitive global markets.
Viewing the emergence or the entry of China
as a world power with its market socialism, places
African-Americans at great jeopardy within the US as more and
more manufacturing jobs are exported to China.
This is further compounded by the increases in
immigration of Latin Americans as a source of cheaper labor
foretells of higher than twice the levels of unemployment within
African-American communities (levels of unemployment for Black
youth currently run at 35-46%).
Since labor is the only resource that
African-Americans bring to the market place and that labor (a
commodity) can be purchased elsewhere at cheaper prices; the
African-American will become a drain upon the American economy
as his or her future income continues to decline, dragging with
it his or her value as a consumer.
The future bodes as an upcoming disaster for
the Fourth World and the only hope for the continued existence
of African Americans is for them to join and embrace the Third
World from whence they came.
As China sets the pace, the Third world is on the move in
spite of all the negative vibes emanating from the press.
Now is not the time to accelerate the
divide and conquer concept that has been utilized by the
imperialist powers to subjugate the people of color on both
sides of the Atlantic. Now is the time to shed our slave mentality and embrace our
future that is aligned with our brothers and sisters across the
Atlantic.
The 21st century is the time for
the people of color to come together in order to hasten the
decline of imperialism which began with the liberation of the
African-American after the civil war, continued in the 60s with
the civil rights struggle, followed by Viet Nam, and now Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Due to the much lower birthrates within the
imperialist nations, they now have revised their strategies for
exploitation by picking on small nations with lightning
invasions, kidnapping of the nation’s leaders, and finally
administrating the robbery of their natural resources.
Recent examples of this strategy can be found in
Equatorial Guinea and Iraq.
Larger countries, like Sudan, require a
different strategy, since military occupation can lead to
disaster as they are now experiencing in Iraq.
The question for the authors of “Shock and Awe” is -
when is a country small enough to be picked off.
It now appears that Iraq may not be small enough after
stepping down the smaller nation ladder from Vietnam.
Well-governed populations are a source of
strength; that is why China and India will be formidable
competition for the West as we move further into the 21st
century. Both of
these countries are reasonably well governed, i.e. they have a
political will that moves both countries’ resources in
purposeful directions for the general good of their people.
Both of these countries, when ranked on a
national power scale are equal to, in the case of India, and 3
times more powerful than the US, in the case of China.
Within that power equation, the African Union will be the
most populated entity on the globe by the year 2050.
This Union has wealth, albeit in the ground, but lacks
the political will and cohesion to harness both its people and
it wealth.
From this vantage point, Africa holds a great
deal of promise for those African Americans who are deemed as a
surplus (unemployment means surplus) here in our eviscerated
portion of the US. Again,
in the national power equation, Africa has two out of the three
necessary ingredients to become a major world power.
The third ingredient that is missing is a big
enough to challenge any and all of our college graduates to
greatness. For this
challenge, we, African Americans, need to cohere rather than to
continue to isolate ourselves within the evacuated sphere of a
Fourth World.
If we were to look at ourselves, honestly, we
would find that we have more in common with our African brothers
and sisters than we have been programmed to believe.
Whether we reside in a colony, colonette, or neocolonial
nation, our struggles are the same, i.e., how to remove the
imperial leeches that sap all of our resources, limit our
personal and national growth, and kill our heirs. To move to
another world is an escape and a denial of our future greatness.
We need to make a commitment to seriously join the up and
coming Third World and collectively find solutions that will
successfully merge our hemispheres.
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Responses
Waldron, I am very pleased you have
responded to Amin Sharif's Afro-America
& The Fourth World . If you have not you should read his
other pieces dealing with the Fourth World, including The
Fourth World: In the Belly of the Beast and The
Fourth World and the Marxists.
I agree with much
of the hard content of your essay but the use of it as argument
is another matter. I do not think you gave Sharif's
argument a fair reading. That is to say, your
argument tries unconvincingly to make an argument for a Third
World, mostly on the basis of color. To these points I'm sure
Sharif will respond.
But let me point
out problems I found. First, Sharif does not base his argument
on the elements of the "materialist myth," which you
sketch out as wealth, population, and political will. The wealth
element is only considered in the sense that the middle-classes
are problematic in a struggle for justice because of their
problematic ties to power.
Sharif, I believe,
explores much more effectively the nature of the populations he
includes in his concept of Fourth World, than your argument does in
what populations constitute the Third World. (I will come back
to this point in a moment.) His view of political will is
more or less related to its lack among the middle classes and
the lack of an international awareness and consciousness. But
allow me to deal with a couple of other points before I go
headlong into concerns for African potentiality.
The concept of the
Third World was stillborn, basically because it undermined the
concept of nationalism, which was the direction that these
former colonies were headed or had already begun to establish.
The Biafran War first exposed the concept as useless.
It was shredded to pieces when the Berlin Wall fell. Its funeral
was held with the election of Mandela as President of South
Africa. The concept was interred with the ethnic slaughter in
Rwanda and the aftermath that reverberated throughout Central
and West Africa.
Pan Africanism does
not exist on the continent of Africa itself, not even in Ghana,
where attempts have been made to popularize it. Some samples of
this sentiment can be seen in Kalamu's exposition, I titled, African
Criticisms of the Diaspora .
Much of Africa is in disarray
and sinking, surely this is true of West Africa, East Africa,
and Central Africa. The problem is not a matter of colonialism,
but rather the lack of an effective national spirit, poor
governance, and outright corruption and brutality.
You misread the
general character of Sharif's argument. His concept of Fourth
World is not a racial concept in which he separates U.S. blacks
from the rest of the world's population, including Africa. He
views black Americans as the most developed element of the
Fourth World because of their centuries long struggle against an
imperial power that exploits its non-white populations in a more
callous manner than its white citizens. In America, he would
include not only blacks, but also Latin Americans (Mexicans,
Puerto Ricans at home and abroad, and others) and other
conscious non-White populations, like Native Americans and those
from what which were Third World nations, like the Chinese and other
Asians.
You mention Brazil.
I do not think Sharif dealt with Brazil. So I think that
issue is indeed a good criticism. Brazil as country may indeed
be part of the Third World or what is now called the developing
world. Its blacks, I think Sharif would argue, are part of the
Fourth World. The other larger part of the Fourth World would be
all those non-Whites in Europe. But it would include any person
in any country who has not been integrated into the national culture
and economy because of race and culture or both, especially
among the young people who have been influenced by an
international youth culture,.
On this basis Haiti
and Jamaica and other independent nations of the Caribbean would
indeed be considered part of what you call the Third World.
However, once its citizens take up residency or citizenship in
America or Europe they become part of the Fourth World.
Like other Fourth World peoples they do not suffer national or
colonial oppression but rather alienation and subordination on
the basis of race and culture.
Several more small
points and I will be done. One, I do not think that black people
in America have a psychological problem. This pathological
argument should be interred and allowed to rest. That is, they
do not have a "slave mentality," no matter what class
you consider among blacks. Contrary to your assertion, Sharif is
not pursuing
a Fourth World "separation." He seems rather to
be identifying those persons that seem to have most in common in
relationship to "white power."
Sharif's
pragmatism, I know, is astonishing. He sees that our natural
allies in struggle are those that are close to our condition or
those that have been forced to view the world as we see it. I do
not see how India and its people; or China and its people
are relevant to this argument at all, except where they appear
in Europe or America. When Nehru and Mao died, those countries ceased
even to be part of the Third World, politically.
Sharif also
sees allies among our fellow Americans who are white, those who
will stand for that which is just and right for all. He does not
consider that Americans are 100% White Nationalists or even 100%
Conservative or 100% racist or 100% imperialists. And he is
right. As far as the political struggle we have to wage in
America, these potential white allies are more practically
beneficial than any group that now exists in any African
country. Africans have problems helping themselves. And I
am not sure that there are that many heads of states in Africa
that I would even want on our side.
Most of what we can
do for Africa, I suspect, will not occur on the continent itself
but right here in America. Moreover, those wealthy blacks who
are billionaires and millionaires can find better investments
than in Africa. As we know well enough, few of them are willing
to invest even in our American cities where black male
unemployment is 50% or more. Neither American inner cities nor
Africa hold any attraction for them, except for maybe its
textiles or some of its cultural patterns.
Maybe in 50 or 100
years a Pan African spirit may be a feasible thing in Africa at
home and abroad, that is, after they have worked out their national
questions. Most US blacks have worked out their national
question: they are Americans by history, birth, and culture. And
it has always been the case that few of us are willing to be
African missionaries. For those who choose that way of life, I
applaud their adventure.
Outside of politics and economics there is much
in which Africans and African Americans can find common
ground and interest. We are indeed distant cousins. However, we
still do not know each other well and have yet to grow
sufficiently a healthy respect. -- Rudy
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* * * *
Rudy your points are well
taken and forced me to re-read all three of Sharif's essays on
the Fourth World. To that end I will modify some of the
positions I have taken about the Fourth World and its future.
It cannot be successful without an alliance with the Third world
from whence it came. A rough examination on my data base
of World power proves this to be the case. it is even more
important since Brazil with its 100 Million descendants from
Africa have not been included in Sharif's Fourth world. It
is an interesting concept, but it needs to be analyzed further
to point out the strengths and weaknesses in order to develop
the strategies that are required.
Fourth world needs for continued longevity. You
are a contribution editor to African Renaissance and this
should be a relatively easy matter for you to effect. In
any event, I will return, to the topic, that is. --
Waldron
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* * * *
Agreed.
I welcome further discussions from you, on whatever the topic.
My primary concern is that too many of us are not open to open
discussions. Too often we have our set ideological positions and
we are only interested in pushing them. So your note, for me, is
a hopeful sign.
We
need to go beyond the unity of silence in dealing with
ideological positions. We are dragging with us from the
19th and 20th centuries too many ideologies unexamined for our
present condition and situation. I agree that the situation of
Third World countries should not be ignored and that we should
be willing to make temporary alliances wherever they present
themselves. ChickenBones is open for these kind of
discussions. Too many do not make use of this resource for real
analysis and discussion
As
you may have noted our site is open to African journalists,
presently primarily Nigerians
Uche Nworah and
Ugochukwu
Ejinkeonye; most of their writings, however, are
limited to the national politics of Nigeria. Neither had
anything to say about the New Orleans tragedy. We also have a
few with a Caribbean focus, like
Louis Reyes Rivera,
a Puerto Rican; and
John Maxwell of Jamaica.
Maxwell is often commenting about the American scene. He also
had considerable to say about the New Orleans tragedy. So we
have a Third World interest but the only people I see writing
from that perspective are U.S. blacks.
We
also have a few Asian Americans making submissions. But they are
young college students still developing. So I am not
against the Third World concept, but rather as you suggest about
the Fourth World concept, we need to point out its strengths and
weaknesses pragmatically for us today. As I suggested before,
except for Caribbean writers I am not certain that there is a
Pan-African or a Third World feeling being extended to us from
Third World countries. Too often they see U.S. blacks as
competitors or irrelevant.
Just
a final point. I'm not sure that the 100 millions of Brazil view
themselves as Black. That presents another kind of problem. I
suspect that you will have to cut that number by at least 50%.
There is indeed a black consciousness movement in its nascent
stage and that we should keep an eye on that development --
Rudy
posted 20 January 2005 * * * *
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update 5 July 2008
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