The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race

by Jemima Pierre

What is the meaning of blackness in Africa? While much has been written on Africa’s complex ethnic and tribal relationships, Jemima Pierre’s groundbreaking The Predicament of Blackness is the first book to tackle the question of race in West Africa through its postcolonial manifestations. Challenging the view of the African continent as a nonracialized space—as a fixed historic source for the African diaspora—she envisions Africa, and in particular the nation of Ghana, as a place whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics.



Against the backdrop of Ghana’s history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent and disruptive forces of colonialism and postcolonialism, Pierre examines key facets of contemporary Ghanaian society, from the pervasive significance of “whiteness” to the practice of chemical skin-bleaching to the government’s active promotion of Pan-African “heritage tourism.” Drawing these and other examples together, she shows that race and racism have not only persisted in Ghana after colonialism, but also that the beliefs and practices of this modern society all occur within a global racial hierarchy. In doing so, she provides a powerful articulation of race on the continent and a new way of understanding contemporary Africa—and the modern African diaspora.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, Anthropology, Ghana, Sociology, Race

263 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[The Blaxpat · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short, this book is largely about what is at stake when global society gets Africa wrong. This is a significant intervention in mirroring those wrongs and introducing alternative waves of thought. I found this book to be not only refreshing, but also provocative and careful. As a Lusophone Africanist, I can relate to seeing the glaring blindspots in African historiographies, African Diaspora theories, and Af-Am scholarship. I think Pierre articulates her experiences with these gaps in Ghana and does so with careful attention to her own racial, national, and economic positionality. I think this is a useful piece of contemporary scholarship that current day academics will draw on heavily as we explore African experiences in more modern and diverse ways. Pierre raises to the fore the reality that Afro-Atlantic tropes no longer ring true to lived experiences on the continent in the 21st century.

[Helen Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pierre offers a bold critique on topics that I haven't seen in academic analyses of African diaspora and global blackness. She unpacks how the structures of whiteness remnant from Ghana's colonial era shape its post-colonial failures to connect diasporic African Americans to the "motherland" of Ghana through evocations of slavery. She also offers fresh insight on Ghana's contemporary Pan-Africa movement while making a biting argument that its ties to neoliberal apparatuses render such a movement performative and distracting. Underlying her arguments is a solid presentation, rich with pieces from her personal experiences, of how seemingly-benign state and social practices reproduce the violence of both capital and psychological control from the days of European colonization.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skimmed this fairly quickly, but Pierre writes clearly about a topic that could easily become tangled for someone not already very familiar with the debates at hand. Will likely return to this in the future, particularly around her discussions of place and geography.

[Charlie Bavis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great ethnography

[Ruthie Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

#gradschool need to read Colleen Hoover or something now for balance