Predicament of Blackness [electronic resource] : Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race

ISBN:

9780226923048

Title:

Author:

Pierre, Jemima.

Personal Author:

Pierre, Jemima.

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (285 p.)

General Note:

Description based upon print version of record.

Contents:

Contents ; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction ; 1. Of Natives and Europeans: Colonialism and the Ethnicization of Racial Dominance; 2. "Seek Ye First the Political Kingdom" : The Postcolony and Racial Formation; 3. "You Are Rich Because You Are White" : Marking Race and Signifying Whiteness ; 4. The Fact of Lightness: Skin Bleaching and the Colored Codes of Racial Aesthetics ; 5. Slavery and Pan-Africanist Triumph: Heritage Tourism as State Racecraft ; 6. "Are You a Black American?" : Race and the Politics of African-Diaspora Interactions

7. Race across the Atlantic . . . and Back: Theorizing Africa and/in the Diaspora Epilogue: Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa, and Interrogating Diaspora ; Notes; References; Index

Subject Term:

African diaspora.

Blacks -- Race identity -- Ghana.

Ghana -- Race relations.

Heritage tourism -- Ghana.

Race awareness -- Ghana.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view book

Publication Date:

2012

Publication Information:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
305.8	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ON-DEMAND	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

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.

Author Notes

Jemima Pierre teaches in the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Pierre (Vanderbilt Univ.) examines the study of race in African and African diaspora studies, arguing that with African independence, race (with the exception of South Africa) does not figure into African studies. Although the study of race relations is frequently the focus of diaspora studies, Pierre notes the absence of connections regarding race made between contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. This provocative, stimulating study encourages readers to think about what race means--specifically, blackness and whiteness--and how race has historically been constituted in association with the European slave trade, colonial rule, and the global dominance of Western-style capitalism. Focusing on Ghana, the author argues that its long history of European exploitation has supported a particular race-based political hierarchy and set of unequal power relations, referred to as "processes of racialization." Following an introduction and a chapter on colonialism in Ghana, Pierre provides examples of these processes in four chapters on notions of whiteness, skin-bleaching practices and privilege, heritage tourism, and Ghanaian and African American work connections, concluding with a chapter on the importance of an interconnected analysis of race within African and African diaspora studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty. E. P. Renne University of Michigan