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Race, Power and Polemic: Whiteness in the Anthropology of Africa

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Race, Power and Polemic: Whiteness in the Anthropology of Africa Race, Power, and Polemic: Regardless of her respectful demeanor, Whiteness in the Anthropology of Cheney professes that her presence Africa “disrupted the regular flow of daily household life,” altering “the social dynamics” of houses and schools she visited Graham R Fox (Cheney 2007:33). Cheney’s experiences in Uganda are likely relatable for many white Introduction anthropologists in Africa and elsewhere. In In her 2007 ethnography Pillars of innumerable communities throughout the the Nation, American anthropologist Kristen Sub-Saharan Africa, the presence of a white Cheney recounts the first-hand experience of Westerner can conjure both positive and living and working in an urban housing negative sentiments. In some regions, the development in Kampala, Uganda. Con- interaction between Africans and non- spicuous amongst her black neighbors, she Africans is complicated by over a hundred describes the attention she received, years of tumultuous history. In Southern, especially in the early days of her research. Eastern and other pockets of Africa, white- skinned Europeans have not only dominated My presence in the barracks always and uprooted Africans, but exploited, elicited excited cries of “Mzungu” marginalized and in some cases, killed. (white person) from the children, most Different historical waves have sought to of whom were not yet old enough for reposition non-white Africans in positions of school. They rarely left the barracks self-determination, begin-ning in the 1960s and so rarely saw white people. Their through to the end of apartheid in South mothers would often point me out to Africa in the early 1990s. Despite these them when they saw me coming, so reconfigurations, Sub-Saharan Africa that by the time I reached them, the remains home to many whites, many of children were lined up along the rutted whom struggle to belong in places where dirt road as if for a parade (2007:26). their skin color carries significant symbolism and connotation. As Cheney’s In the course of her fieldwork in experiences in Uganda demonstrate, being Uganda, Cheney found herself in many white in Africa involves an on-going situations in which her status as Mzungu challenge of negotiating one’s identity was challenging and disruptive. Children against a complex landscape of race and gawked at the novelty of a white woman power. The purpose of this essay is to playing baseball. Classrooms were examine representations of whiteness captivated as she sat in quietly on lessons. against that landscape. With the limited exposure the local children In the first section, I will establish a had to the world outside the barracks, it is historical background in how basic conceivable that Cheney was the first white understandings of whiteness have been person they’d ever interacted with. With the forged in Africa and elsewhere in the children’s parents however, the significance colonial world. By presenting the of Cheney’s whiteness is more subtle and experiences of early European mission-aries, complex. Though “gracious and welcoming” I will discuss factors that established white (Cheney 2007:33), Ugandans altered their identity as both powerful and domineering. behavior when Cheney was present - In the second section, I will focus discussion cooperative and friendly, though with on South Africa, where the question of white evident suspicion (“stranger danger”). status in Africa has been most aggressively unequivocal center of global commerce and debated. Beginning with perspectives from Christian morality. With that history in the later years of apartheid, I will discuss mind, I aim to understand how whites and how conceptions of whiteness (by both their whiteness have come to be represented whites and non-whites) have been rigorously in the African imagination. According to challenged while simultaneously being Magubane (2004:130), early European reified. In a subsequent section on scholarship of Africa explored white Zimbabwe, I will discuss the problem of conceptions of blacks while neglecting the belonging whites now face, stemming from importance of how blacks under-stood the political power their whiteness whites. In spite of the one-sidedness of represents. The last section will focus on colonial scholarship, the lived experiences Kenya, where the topic of whiteness has yet of colonized Africans led many to develop a to receive significant ethnographic attention. keen intellectual critique. “Africans had to at In examining a 1999 article by Kajta least try to penetrate the psychology of their Uusihakala, I will demonstrate how ideas oppressors,” says Magubane (2004), part of from other ethnographies can be justly a long-standing anti-colonial ambition to applied to her perspective on white “unmask, unveil, and expose its Kenyans. My closing section will discuss pretensions… its hypocrisies” (130). As the implications of current understandings of many scholars know, the absence of written whiteness in Africa, specifically its histories in Africa prevented many of these usefulness in under-standing Africa’s place perspectives from being shared, in the world and how best to engage a topic disseminated or preserved. Recognizing of such importance and controversy. I these critical perspectives, I argue, is a acknowledge that addressing whiteness in recognition of the agency colonized the anthropology of Africa reifies ideas of Africans possessed. Africa as the other. Studying whites, many Aside from earlier waves of would argue, is not a study of Africa as it Portuguese slave traders, the first whites to examines Africans only in relation to make a significant appearance in Africa whites. Regardless, anthropological writing were missionaries. In keeping with both by whites on Africa and on whites in aforementioned ideas of European economic Africa demonstrates an ongoing regener- and religious superiority, missionaries ation of the other, not only through political preached the value of commerce and or historical discourse but also through face- Christianity, receptive-ness to which was not to-face encounters on Africa’s streets, in its universally positive. British missionary workplaces, and elsewhere. Thinking about David Livingstone, as a prime example, was Africa (or thinking about the West) is greeted with extreme skepticism by would- marginal to the act of seeing it and be converts and is thought to have experiencing it. The visceral nature of these successfully converted only two or three experiences is in question. Africans by the time of his death in 1873 (Pettitt 2007:124). Examining the earliest Origins of Whiteness wave of missionary activities in Southern The orientalist mentality that shaped Africa, Magubane (2004:132) argues “it was colonial European thinking was in place precisely because of the English long before whites arrived in Africa. The Missionaries willingness to dispense the image of Europe as the center of world, says gospel so freely that many Africans Steyn (2001:3), celebrated Europe as the surmised that evangelism was a cover for more crass material motives”. The melding and theologies anthropomorphizing the of commerce and Christ-ianity was also “seeing” of another’s inside, Magubane obstructive in presenting Africans with an (2004:132) says “it was not uncommon for objective image of white Europeans. The settlers, especially if they were English, to notion of faith and commerce as two declare themselves as having superior different but com-plementary enterprises, abilities to see through the innocuous she claims, served to conflate the identity of performances of Africans to the depraved whites with hypocrisy, mystery and cores lurking inside”. The consequence of skepticism (Magubane 2004:131). these claims was the development of beliefs Comparing these experiences with about the penetrability and impenetrability elsewhere in the colonial world, Bashkow’s of black and white skin, respectively, 2006 ethnography from Papua New Guinea serving the rhetoric that whites were illustrates how perceived hypocrisies in physically/biologically superior (Magubane white wealth accumulation caused 2004:132). This can be considered an early widespread bemusement among the incarnation of colonial bio-power, initiatives Orokaiva people. He claims that the physical enforcing the supremacy of whites through characteristics of whites gave the Orokaiva physiological contrast. From a functional the impression that whites were “soft”, standpoint, the idea of power in visual unblemished by the hardship of working in representation enabled whites to conceive the fields - the only form of wealth themselves as representing mystery in eyes accumulation the Orokaiva knew of. of blacks. According to Afro-American Presuming that a soft person could not feminist Bell Hooks (1992:168), white accumulate wealth, the Orokaiva were superiority is pre-dicated on the philosophy mystified by the material objects white that non-whites are unable to comprehend or visitors possessed. The ambiguous nature of outwit the mastery of the colonizer. “In white wealth accumulation, says Bashkow white supremacist society,” she says, “white (2006:21), made whites inextricably people can safely imagine that they are associated with hypocrisy and/or deviant invisible to black people since the power accumulations of wealth. These ideas also they have historically asserted accorded corroborated Orokaiva beliefs in a “white them the right to control the black gaze” world”, a far-off location operating on (Hooks 1992:168). foreign conventions of morality and political
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