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Lloyd D. McCarthy,
In-Dependence from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael
Manley: Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in
African Diaspora Relations. Trenton, NJ: Africa
World Press, 2007.
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In-Dependence from Bondage
Claude McKay and Michael Manley
Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora
Relations
By Lloyd D.
McCarthy Reviews
In-Dependence
from Bondage is a compilation of the
world views of the well known Poet, Claude McKay, and
the world renowned Afro-Caribbean Socialist, Michel
Manley. Both men, although of different generations, are
known for their dedication to social change as it
relates to the exploitation of the peoples of African
descent in the Western hemisphere. Claude McKay's poetry
was one of the great forces in bringing about what is
often called the Negro Literary Renaissance.
Over a period of
nearly four centuries approximately 4,000,000 Africans
were transported to North America and the Caribbean
Islands as the results of slave trading. Scattered,
dispersed, and separated from their family and culture,
these peoples persevered to maintain their traditions,
religion, language, and folklore. Lloyd McCarthy, in
this book, focuses primarily on the Jamaican
perspective; however, it is relevant to the social,
political, and economic conditions everywhere. I found
the poetry of Claude McKay thought-provoking and
enlightening on the African Diaspora and the plight of
these exploited peoples.
McCarthy
successfully illustrates the impetus, impact and
corrective tactics currently being considered which are
central to combating white racism, classicism, and
Western imperialism. McCarthy gives the reader a
definitive compilation of the writings of Claude McKay
and Michael Manley. He has analyzed their works using
references from dozens of authors and their
interpretations of the ideological clash and policy gaps
in African Diaspora relations. His research is well
documented with complete and thorough endnotes.
McCarthy also is an
Afro-Jamaican, and instills the influence of his
personal history and heritage in his writing. He reveals
his own empathy for the peasants and the working-class
outlook, and the political perspectives that McKay and
Manley expressed.
This work is a
major contribution to the study of African Diaspora as
it relates to globalization, policy planning, and
international relations with developing and impoverished
nations. McCarthy also presents valuable insight into
how literature, biographical narrative, and intellectual
history are interconnected with politics. The book is a
wake up call to the peoples and nations of the African
Diaspora to find collective solutions to survive
globalization.
In-Dependence from Bondageholds
promise of becoming the guidebook or blueprint for the
liberation movement and should be read by our Washington
politicians as well as all New World Africans.
—Richard
R. Blake, Reader Views (2/07)
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In-Dependence
is an important presentation that is scholarly offered
as viewed through the eyes of two important social
change agents. Both Claude McKay and Michael Manley
provided leadership and insightful meaning to the
exploitation of peoples of African descent in the
Western Hemisphere. While the book focuses primarily
upon the Jamaican context, the book is rich in its
relevance to the social, political, and economic
situation of the African Diaspora everywhere. The
author effectively integrates history and currency in
exploring and describing the motivations, impacts, and
proposed corrective strategies that are central to
combating white racism, classism, and western
imperialism.’
—William
M. Harris, Sr., FAICP, PhD, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Visiting Professor Department of Urban Studies and
Planning, School of Architecture and Planning,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
02139
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“McCarthy’s work is methodologically interdisciplinary
in that it explores the political implications of
biographical narrative as it intersects with
intellectual history. It is also interdisciplinary by
virtue of the persons McCarthy examines; McKay was an
artist whose life was one of expanding political
awareness and Manley was a the head-of-state whose
triumphs and tragedies on the international political
stage bring to mind classical Greek drama. “Too often
production of knowledge about the African Diaspora
entails the accretion of cultural-historical pastiches
i.e. the Afro-American story, the Afro-Columbian story,
the, the Guyana story etc. McCarthy’s book avoids
such over particularization by not only exploring
African Diaspora experiences in North America and in the
Caribbean, but also by exploring the lives of two
Jamaicans living in the respective settings, who
address the African Diaspora in global terms that both
embrace and transcend local issues.”
—Deidre Crumbley, PhD, Professor, Interdisciplinary
Studies Division, North Carolina State University
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In-Dependence from Bondage
illuminates the historical philosophies and ideologies
of Claude McKay and Mr. Michael Manley, both of whom had
familial ties to Jamaica. Your work is an
extraordinary researched history lesson for the reader
and a work that challenges the reader to use higher
level thinking and critical analysis. Your writing draws
us into the drama of the lives of these two men. At the
same time, you have given even greater meaning
and value to the lives of all those Afrikans who
suffered, were brutalized, and died under colonialism,
while their resources were plundered in order for
europeans to build wealthy empires in europe and the new
world. Drawing together and chronicling the lives
of both men, McKay and Mr. Manley, was a well conceived
idea that was synthesized in the presentation of
this brilliant manuscript. This work ought to be a
required textbook for the university.’
—Dr. Kamau Kambon, Former Assistant
Professor of Education, Former Special Adjunct Professor
of Africana Studies, Co-Managing Director of
BlackNificent Books and More
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgment xi
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Bondage: Plunder
and Resistance—The Legacy That Shaped Their Common
Outlook
7
• Spanish Elites and
Genocide
7
• “Nanny” Resisting
Cromwell’s Men
9
• Blacks and Browns in
the Struggle Against Colonialism
12
• From the English Elites
to the American Elites
16
Chapter Two: Claude McKay: From
Colonial Poet to Militant Internationalist
25
• Wha Cultural Resistance
without “Hannah Ann Elizabeth McKay”?
25
• Crysstal Eastman, The
Liberator and Workers Against Workers
31
• Syllvia Pankurst’s
Workers’ Dreadnought and the Militant Internationalist
33
• Reaction to Stalinism
and U.S. Communist Party Racism
39
• From the International
to the Personal
41
Chapter Three: Michael Manley:
From “Joshua” to Globalist
49
• What Humanism Without
Edna Manley
49
• Progressive Women and
Michael Manley’s Globalism
50
• Manley’s Regional
Consciousness
52
• Manley’s Global
Awareness and North-South Reality
55
• Manley’s Understanding
of U.S. Relations
57
• From the Global to the
Personal: Women and Myths
62
Chapter Four: McKay’s Worldview
for African Diaspora Development
71
• The Foundations of
McKay’s Worldview: Struggle for Philosophy and Strategy
71
• McKay on “Fifths”
73
• Invoke “Obi,” the
Uncompromised Ancestral Spirit
75
• Race Struggle Is Also
the Class Struggle for Black Workers
79
• Black Consciousness Is
Class Consciousness
81
• Media Democracy and the
African Diaspora
88
• “Anglophile” Ideology
and the Struggle of the African Diaspora
89
Chapter Five: Manley’s Worldview
for African Diaspora Development
97
• The Foundations of
Manley’s Globalist Worldview
97
• Neocolonialism: “One
Shilling a Ton”
100
• Moving “Out of Babylon”
102
• Manley’s Amendment: The
Race Struggle Is the Class Struggle
109
• South-South and the
African Diaspora are the Proletarian Nations
111
• Man On Northern Elites’
New World Order and South-South Crisis
114
• South-South—African
Diaspora and Proletarian Nations, Unite!
116
Chapter Six: “In-Dependence” and
Reformist Views
127
• “A ‘New’ Decree”:
Globalization
128
• “To the Ancient Gods of
Greed”: Globalization and Economic Growth
133
• “Offered Up as
Sacrifice”: Globalization and Life Expectancy
137
• “Oh, We Who Deign to
Live But Will Not Dare”: Globalization and Human
Development
142
• “The White World’s
Burden Must Forever Bear”: Debt
• Reformist Views:
“Democratic Deficit”
147
Conclusion
165
Works
Cited
173
Index
187 * *
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posted 26 February 2007 /
updated 15 October 2007 |
