JASs forum What is race today? Scientific, legal, and Journal of Anthropological Sciences social appraisals from around the globe Vol. 96 (2018), pp. 213-219 doi 10.4436/JASS.96017

Structure, project, process: anthropology, colonialism, and race in Africa

Jemima Pierre

University of California, Los Angeles e-mail: [email protected]

Other than apartheid South Africa, there is in contemporary Africa. Specifically, I argue that very little contemporary discussion of or engage- it is not so much that race does not matter on ment with race – as concept, ideology, identity, the African continent in places outside of South and practice – on or about the African conti- Africa. It is, instead, that research and scholar- nent. Yet, “Africa” itself is a racialized construct, ship on Africa have been unable to address the and African peoples have been the primary foil complexities of race making particulary key dis- for the modern construction of race. The emer- tinctions between race, racialization processes, gence of racial science depended on particu- and practices of racism. This essay, thus, is in two lar notions of African difference, a difference parts. In the first section, I lay the groundwork deemed inherent, absolute, and inferior. “Africa” by demonstrating the ways that early anthropo- has served as scaffolding for an entire intellectual logical writings actually depended on studies of tradition promoting the idea of European and race and Africa. Here, the work of anthropolo- “western” superiority. As anthropologist Michel- gist Charles G. Seligman evidences a particular Rolph Trouillot pointed out, it was constructed trend of the early racializing and racist scholar- as the antithesis of Europe,” the “savage-object” ship that served as justification for the violence of the so-called “west 1991”. The deployment of of the slave trade and the colonization of the the view of the African continent as the source African continent. Consequently, I briefly link of all or most that is peculiar, nonsynchronous, this early legacy of racial science to the epistemic and fantastical remains. To think and write about regimes in the production of knowledge within race in any part of Africa today is to engage with African studies that ensure that race is not con- this legacy. How is it, then, that historically and sidered a significant site of study for most of the materially, “Africa stands in for race but yet, par- continent. In the second section, I use examples adoxically, race does not exist in Africa” (Pierre, from my ongoing research in Ghana to present 2013, pp. xii-xiii)? a theory and method of studying race in Africa In this short essay, I analyze ways to examine that depend on the recognition of the long arc race about and within the African continent. I of European empire making, and on a theory of focus on Ghana to demonstrate how a local site race that exposes its complex and multiple artic- is structured through racial meanings as well as ulations – even as race continues to rely on the how such meanings are variously mapped onto presumptive superiority of whites/Europeans. individuals, communities, and national identi- The ultimate effort is to recast Africa within a ties – all the while linked to global structures modern frame so that we may see the experiences of race and power. Doing so, however, requires a and practices of its populations as part of broader broader discussion of not only the historical and ideological, political, economic, and sociocul- contemporary centrality of race in Africa, but also tural terrain established and continually updated the intellectual legacies that shape the ways that by racial legacies of European hegemony (Pierre, race is understood while remaining understudied 2013).

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Race, “Hamites,” and the western “discovery” of Egypt by Napoleon and his scien- construction of Africa tists, and the claiming of Egypt by Europe as the foundation of western civilization, there became In 1930, physician and ethnologist Charles the need to explain its actual geographical posi- G. Seligman1 published the first edition of the tion on the African continent. The Hamitic book The Races of Africa. In introducing the Hypothesis and racial science served this func- text, Seligman states that he is adopting a “some- tion. European scholars argued not only that what mixed classification” that includes physical, there was a superior (and white) “Hamitic” race cultural, as well as linguistic criteria. He then in the northern part of Africa that was distinct posits his measures for the study of race: “col- from “Negroid” (later called “Black” or “Sub- our of skin, quality of hair, stature, headshape, Saharan”) Africa, but that this Hamitic race had character of face including prognathism, and migrated southward on the African continent, shape of nose” (1930, pp. 10-11). Seligman then mixing with the “Negroid” populations and pro- proceeds to delineate what he believes to be the viding them with civilization. existence of four distinct races on the African Samuel Morton, the foremost figure of the continent: “Hamites,” “Bushmen,” “Pygmies,” American School of Anthropology and pro- and “Negroids.” Along with these, he argues, ponent of the theory of polygenesis, used cra- is a range of race mixtures that includes a group nia gathered from the Nile Valley to argue that he names “Hottentots” (considered to be a Egyptians were not Africans but Caucasians (and “mix of Negroids, Bushmen, and Hamites.”). therefore “white”) (1844). Thus, Seligman’s eth- Recognized as one of the first detailed ethno- nographic study of Africa contributed to this graphic surveys of Africa, The Races of Africa is era of European engagement with the African where, as Howard University historian Joseph continent through racial science. He argued Harris notes, “Seligman applied the concept of that the “true Negro” race was immobile and Social Darwinism to African ethnography, which backward and needed the Hamitic influence amounted to the attribution of absolute values to to advance: “The incoming Hamites were pas- white and black physical types, with the latter at toral ‘Europeans’- arriving wave after wave – the lower rung of advancement” (1987, p. 24). better armed as well as quicker witted than the Indeed, Seligman was known as a staunch advo- dark agricultural Negroes” (Seligman quoted in cate of the “Hamitic Hypothesis.” The Hamitic Sanders, 1969, p. 521). Hypothesis was the theory that all aspects of “civi- By the time we are confronted with Seligman’s lization” – language, technology, and certain cul- work on Africa, of course, most of the African tural practices – on the African continent came continent was under European colonial rule. from a “superior” race, the so-called Hamites. Racial science (including the Eugenics move- Seligman believed that, “the Hamites – who are ment) had already taken hold in the context of ‘Europeans’ – belong to the same great branch of the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade mankind as the ‘Whites’” (1930, p. 97). in Africans, the entrenchment of slavery in the Originally deployed as a theory that evoked New World, and the struggle among European the biblical story of Ham and his presumed pun- nations for global hegemony (which eventually ishment of racial Blackness and servitude for sin- led to the Berlin Conference and the partition of ning against his father, Abraham, the Hamitic the African continent in 1885). The history of Hypothesis acquired new meaning in 19th cen- this racial science is well known. Less discussed, tury anthropology (Sanders, 1969). With the however, is the epistemic and methodological legacy of this history. Seligman is credited for 1 Seligman trained a number of notable anthropologists shifting British social anthropology to Africa. including, Bronislaw Malinowski, E. E. Pritchard, and British social anthropology, however, focused Meyer Fortes. less on race than on “tribes.” This is so because JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and 215 social appraisals from around the globe its practitioners, seeking to make anthropology ironic exclusion from contemporary analyses of relevant to British imperialism as African cul- race and racialization processes. In other words, tural groupings were being “pacified,” stressed there is a particularist treatment of Africa “with- the interpretation of local practices and institu- out acknowledging that African distinctiveness tions (Stauder, 1993). Anthropology’s relevance is produced within a field of power relations of to British imperialism in Africa was in its vast race” (Pierre, 2013). production of monographs on a range of topics on African societies – on the politics, kinship, religion and myth, economics, and folklore. To Race and racial formation in West be sure, it is not that racialist ideas about Africans Africa: the case of Ghana retreated among the European scientific commu- nity – ideas about African primitivism and infe- In my ethnographic study of racial formation riority stayed.2 Rather, presumed African racial in Ghana, I focused on Ghanaian engagement inferiority was an apriori assumption within with histories, politics, discourses, and practices research about learning African local practices of race and racial difference and privilege. These, for the sake of empire (ibid; see also Gough, I demonstrated, occurred within a broader set of 1968). And except for the expressed fear of racial processes where local relationships expose recent conflict in settler colonies, such as South Africa histories of imperial domination and the result- and Kenya, the entire theoretical apparatus for ant global configurations of power. The goal was anthropological studies of Africa depended upon to acknowledge that, as a post-colonial space, the “tribal” model. Ghana’s contemporary relations – as all relations I detail the history and politics of this model in all modern societies – depend on the long in an earlier work (Pierre, 2013). And I contend history of imperial “racecraft.” A modern postco- that the racialist theoretical and methodologi- lonial space is “invariably a racialized one; it is a cal scaffolding that undergirded the establish- space where racial and cultural logics continue to ment of the study of Africa and its phenomena be constituted and reconstituted in the images, remains in place. For example, there is the North institutions, and relationships of the structuring Africa/Sub-Saharan Africa divide (a clear racial colonial moment” (Pierre, 2013, p. xii). Thus, in distinction, even if denied), the primary and a place such as Ghana, the history of the science excessive focus on African cultural particularity of race is felt in terms of its material, ideological, through the tropes of “ethnicity,” “tribe,” etc., and cultural legacies on local populations – peo- and, as well, the quiet assumption that African ple’s self-conceptions, views of others, as well as communities are not impacted by historical and views and practices of racial difference that are current global processes of race. Indeed, I argue built upon the palimpsest of colonial conquest that African Studies remains primarily concerned and domination. with what I call horizontal relations (“ethnicity” With a decade long intellectual and political among Africans) but not vertical ones (African industry at its disposal, South African apartheid and European relationships). A focus on race in was deemed the primary site of continental Africa would necessarily acknowledge Africa’s African racial processes. Apartheid was raciali- low structural position in what Trouillot calls zation, and racialization was apartheid, and, the “worldwide hierarchy are races, religions, and despite evidence to the contrary, race seemed to cultures” (1994, p. 146). What we have then, is a matter only in South Africa. This narrowing of particular traditional construction of Africa that the study of race in Africa depended upon a clear is at least partly responsible for the continent’s distinction in the understanding of the role of colonialism in southern Africa compared to the 2 As an example, Seligman’s Races of Africa went through rest of the continent. But it is accepted wisdom, multiple editions and was published until 1979. for example, that colonialism involved racism

www.isita-org.com 216 JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and social appraisals from around the globe and the making of racial subjects (Fyfe, 1992; “culture” and “tradition.” Thus, clearly racialized Go, 2004). And during colonial occupation on policies of residential segregation in Accra (the the African continent and elsewhere European colonial capital) were explained away through colonizing groups were granted, “political, eco- the language of “sanitation” and differing cultural nomic, and social privileges denied to the colo- practices, and the need to create “a European feel nized and the hierarchy was typically sustained or atmosphere” (Pierre, 2013, p. 27). And unlike by claims that the latter were racially inferior” the colonial policy of “direct rule” – employed (Go, 2004, pp. 35-36). Curiously, while there by the French and Portuguese in Africa, Britain’s is agreement that there is a relationship between shift to its new policy of “indirect rule” in Africa colonialism and racism, it is not clear what hap- worked perfectly to obfuscate a racialized rule – pens at the end of colonialism. In my work on even as white supremacy was assumed. Ghana, I have used a rearticulation of the his- In trying to analyze the structures of racial tory of the racialization process of colonization formation in Ghana, I focused on British indirect to deploy a theory of racial formation that helps rule in West Africa and the colonial practice of demonstrate the continued significance of race in “making the native” – what I call “nativization.”3 postcolonial Africa. Thinking about race in post- The categorical distinctions between “native” and colonial Africa requires two significant shifts. “nonnative” represent a fundamental method of On the one hand, we have to understand that ordering colonial society. These distinctions were the ideas and practices of race that emerged with conceived in terms of absolute physical difference European expansion and colonization of the within a racial frame and consolidated through world have impacted all modern societies. This cultural discourse, legal practices, and social is even as I am fully sensitive to the particular- convention. In particular, “Native” for British ity of historical experiences and their impact colonial agents not only indicated a strictly bio- on various localities. On the other, we need an logical identity, but such reference was only sig- understanding of race not as biology, of course, nificant in as much as it was linked to a distin- but as socially constructed. That race is socially guishing set of cultural practices and “customs.” constructed is a common perspective. But what The “Native,” therefore, is more than just a cat- is less common is the view of race as a set of pro- egory marking a subject of rule, it is a distinc- cesses that is historically situated and of racial tion of ethnological proportions linking beliefs meanings as fluid, decentered, and continuously about the subjects’ physiological, emotional, and made and remade by changing sociopolitical and mental character to, ultimately, capacity for rule. economic relationships (Omi & Winant, 1994). Through colonial discourses about the “native” For Michael Omi and Howard Winant, racial and practices of native making, the institution- formation is a set of processes – often multiple alization of racialized rule came to be hidden and sometimes contradictory – that give race its beneath local articulations of power. constant and shifting social, cultural, and politi- Colonial domination in Africa was distinc- cal meanings and determine how such meanings tive. It was the site of a significant shift in British are deployed through various ideologies, prac- colonial policy from the “zeal of a civilizing mis- tices, and institutions. sion” to, according to Mahmood Mamdani, a In this sense, it is not enough to understand hegemonic cultural project of incorporation, that colonialism was racist; it is also important to “harnessing the moral, historical, and commu- understand how race worked in different ways in nity impetus behind local custom to a larger different colonial contexts on the African conti- colonial project” (1996). With the expanded nent. In their colonies, for example, the British were explicit in their disavowal of racist dis- 3 This discussion in this section is based off of chapter 1 course. Colonial officers rarely mentioned “race” of my book, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial or “racial difference” and instead focused on Ghana and the Politics of Race (Chicago, 2013). JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and 217 social appraisals from around the globe focus on the notion of the “customary,” we see non-Native political, cultural, and civic identity the marshaling of indigenous culture (real, per- presented itself as a singular racial power con- ceived, and invented) for authoritarian rule. In trolling the group of “natives,” the force of this dealing with the “Native Question” – that is, power was diffused through the various cultural the most effective way for a small of number of “authorities” of the Native tribal groupings. In conquerors to rule a majority – colonial powers practice, this worked through the distinctions followed two paths: direct rule and indirect rule. between “civil society” and “customary society,” Direct rule came first and was aimed at provid- juridically enacted through notions of “civil law/ ing a small local elite access to European “cul- rights” and “customary law” respectively. Similar ture” and “civilization” in return for strong allies to “native” identity, customary law was not sin- in the colonial enterprise. Indirect rule, on the gular; it was a set of laws based on a varied set other hand, was about incorporation of the colo- of customs and practices believed – and often nized masses - without assimilation. Key to this rendered – by colonial authorities, to be custom- incorporation, and to indirect rule, is the con- ary. What “customary” meant, how the Native figuration of “racial” and “tribal” identities – for Authority enforced a set of “customary laws,” Africans as well as for Europeans. The colonial and how these were set up against the “civil soci- state had a two-tiered structure: on the ground, ety” made up of the European group, all reflected the subject population was ruled by a constella- the solid racial structure of colonial power as well tion of ethnically defined “Native” institutions as assumptions of the native’s cultural alterity. which were, in turn, supervised by non-Native/ Most significant, however, was that the crude European officials “deployed from a racial pin- violence of colonial rule was also disseminated nacle at the center” (Mamdani, 1996, p. 287). through the Native Authorities, where “custom” But this two-tiered rule constructed and repro- also became the language of force in everything duced these two sets of identities in a dual move from land distribution to forced labor and direct for Africans. In the first instance, there was the taxation to the colonial state. In late 19th and distinction between “Native” and “non-Native” early 20th century thinking, this biological and (or European) – and later, others such as those “racial” distinction was also a cultural one and of “Asiatic origin” – that was based on notions of would define political status since race identity absolute racial and cultural difference. In the sec- was assumed to determine cultural as well as ond movement, the “Native,” while categorically behavioral tendencies (Stocking, 1968). If the representing the racialized mass of subjects under Native was rendered racially distinct from the rule, was further subdivided into distinct (and European ruler, it also meant that she was cultur- presumably culture-bound) “tribal” groupings. ally distinct, and this was marked by distinctions The “Native,” in this configuration, was actually made between “custom” and ‘civilization.” fragmented as a singular subject group. In prac- The conflation of race and culture deployed tice, each “tribal” group was said to be governed within the structure of colonial rule also meant by its own set of rules framed under its specific that, on the ground, the actual contours of white cultural patterns, however defined. Moreover, racial power were often obfuscated. Colonial power “tribal” identities were associated solely with was diffused through various Native Authorities – the natives. with seemingly disparate groups of “tribes” enact- Significantly, the European, in fact, was ing individual and unique sets of laws. In other racialized but not tribalized (or “ethnicized”). words, the racial character of colonial rule was hid- The “native,” on the other hand, was both trib- den beneath constructed “tribal” differences. alized and racialized – but its racialization was The historical processes of constructing subsumed under its “tribal” affiliations. In this “natives” as the racially inferior opposite of social patterning of indirect rule, there emerged a “European” allow us the room to understand dis- dual set of consequences. Whereas the European/ cussions about race and identity in Ghana – and

www.isita-org.com 218 JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and social appraisals from around the globe the rest of the African continent (both settler and and conquer through tribalism, and because it non-settler states). Nativization concretized the created a group of “native” racial others. But shifting modes of African self-conception that while this anticolonial racialized consciousness – had begun at the moment of contact and sub- articulated through political and cultural move- mergence within the forces of European empire ments of nationalism and Pan-Africanism – ulti- making (the slave trade and colonialism); it gave mately led to nominal political independence, it Africans “race” and shaped them culturally, polit- did not succeed in completely dismantling the ically, and materially as “Black” within a global structures of white supremacy. Significantly, hierarchy of (white) privilege and (black) pow- notions of race and its myriad articulations and erlessness. At the same time, the mode of imple- practices remain ensconced within all cultural, mentation of the process of nativization localized political, economic and social sectors of postco- that self-conception; Africans were also natu- lonial African society. ralized (and primarily represented) as “tribal” In Ghana, as in every modern society, there with seemingly autochthonous traditions. This are competing sets of “racial projects” that work predicament – of the interrelation of race and to continue to give race meaning on the ground. “tribe” configured within white supremacy – is The transatlantic slave trade and colonialism are cemented in how scholars approach African phe- two such projects – as the viability of African nomena: through the discourses of “tribe” (and, enslavement depended upon the construction now, “ethnicity”4) but not through the enduring of a scientifically justified notion of race and practices of race and global white supremacy. the making of Africans as “Black.” Formal colo- Studies on colonial racism have recounted the nial rule of the African continent also depended numerous ways that the colonial state apparatus upon the deployment of racial projects to sus- established white supremacy and maintained tain the ideology of white supremacy. Political power. Yet it remains important to explore how independence from British colonialism did not the creation of the (particularly Black) “native” mean the end of racial processes; rather it shifted and the (white) European depended on the race- some of the relationships while cementing oth- craft of indirect rule that set the foundation both ers. For example, Ghana’s independence allowed for a structural white supremacy and anticolo- for a coexistence of a number of competing racial nial racial consciousness among Africans. This projects5 that continue to make race significant. anticolonial racial consciousness emerged both I have focused on a number contradictory “racial despite colonial authorities’ attempts to divide projects” in Ghana. They include, among other things, ethnographic rendering of: 1) the supe- 4 The concept of “tribe” is no longer as popular as it once rior position, in Ghana, of a transient but nev- was. “Ethnicity” has become the acceptable replacement. ertheless important foreign white population But as I show in the discussion of “nativization”(Pierre, (primarily in the aid and development, and com- 2013, chapter 1) and its racializing processes, ethnic- mercial industries) and the significance of the ity comes after the Boasian revolution in which “cul- tropes of whiteness as always already associated ture” replaces “race” as terms of analysis of difference. with technology, advancement, and superiority; However, as scholars such as Stocking (1968), Trouillot (2003), and Visweswaran (1998) demonstrate, culture 2) the near epidemic practice of chemical skin (and, later, ethnicity) is applied without both acknowl- bleaching practices that point directly to the edgement of the sociopolitical context of its current usage (still through essentialist notions of “tribe”) or 5 Omi & Winant (1994) rightly argue that racialization a clear theoretical framework that exorcises the racial processes are multiple and entail the interplay of often logic upon which the term was originally deployed contradictory “racial projects” each of which works to (Trouillot, 2003). As a result, as ethnicity becomes a advance its own conception of race. So, “racial forma- stand in for culture (which, itself, came to be a stand tion” entails a number of competing racial projects that in for race), culture and ethnicity are often essentialized are simultaneously interpretations, representations, or and biologized. explanations of racial dynamics. JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and 219 social appraisals from around the globe valorization of lighter skin; and 3) state spon- Gough K. 1968. Anthropology and Imperialism. sored cultural productions that deploy the coun- Mon. Rev., 19:12-27. try’s long history of Pan-Africanism to encourage Hall S. 1980. Race, Articulation and Societies Structured heritage tourism from people of African descent in Dominance. In Unesco (ed): Sociological Theories: outside of Ghana. The interplay of these projects Race and Colonialism, pp. 305-45. Unesco, London. – along with various other projects that create Harris J. 1987. Africans and their history. Penguin and/or challenge racial meanings – will con- Group, New York. tinue to make Ghana a site of racial formation Mamdani M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary processes. Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton I would be remiss if I did not make clear that University Press, Princeton. arguing for a theory of race and race formation in Morton S. G. 1844. Crania Egyptiaca; Or Ghana (and throughout the African continent) is Observations on Egyptian Ethnography Derived not to deny the significance of other processes of from Anatomy, History and the Monuments. John political and identity formation such as ethnicity, Penington, Philadelphia. religion, class, and gender. I do want to stress, Omi M. & Winant H. 1994. Racial Formation in however, that even in the postcolonial moment, the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. and because of its historical legacy, race continues Routledge, New York. to be one of the modalities through which these Pierre J. 2013. The Predicament of Blackness: other identifications are rendered (Hall, 1980). Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. In a world made interconnected through the vio- University of Chicago Press, Chicago. lence of European conquest and domination, the Sanders E. 1969. The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its sedimentations of racial difference are difficult to Origin and Functions in Time Perspective. J. extinguish. And since the established hierarchies Afr. Hist., X: 521-532. of conquest remain entrenched in sociocultural, Seligman C. G. 1930. The Races of Africa. intellectual, and political relationships, all soci- Thornton Butterworth, London. eties have to contend with the realities of race. Stocking G. 1968. Race, Culture, and Evolution: In this sense, confronting race in Ghana, and Essays in the History of Anthropology. University other parts of the African continent, means both of Chicago Press, Chicago. acknowledging these societies’ banality and uni- Stauder J. 1974. The "Relevance" of Anthropology to versality – and their connection to the rest of the Colonialism and Imperialism. Race CL, 16:29-51. world structured through race and power. Trouillot M. 1991. Anthropology and the ‘Savage Slot’: The Poeticsand Politics of Otherness. In R Fox (ed): Recapturing Anthropology: Working in References the Present, pp. 17-44. School of the American Research Press, Santa Fe. Fyfe C. 1992. Race, Empire, and the Historians. Trouillot M. 2003. Global Transformations: Race & Cl., 33: 15-30. Anthropology and Modern World. Palgrave Go J. 2004. ‘Racism’ and Colonialism: Meanings MacMillan, New York. of Difference and Ruling Practices in America’s Visweswaran K. 1998. Race and the Culture of Pacific Empire. Qual. Sociol., 27: 35-58. Anthropology. Am. Anthropol., 100: 70-83.

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