Afr. j . polil. sci. (1998), Vol. 3 No. 2, 98-101 
Opoku Agyeman: Pan Africanism And Its Detractors: 
A Response to Harvard's Race Effacing Universalists. 
Lewis, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. pp. 140. 
This is a well researched book with more than 350 endnotes. Clearly, the book is 
a response to the dogmas, claims, and assumptions of a specific group of 
intellectuals, its personal experiences, and its historical and cultural thoughts. It 
deals with an ongoing debate on a topic that is intellectually provocative, historically 
multi-dimensional, as well as politically, and philosophically controversial. 
The author examines Pan-Africanism and the nature of the arguments of those 
who oppose its definition and assumptions, focusing in the main on the views of 
Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book, In My Father's House, and his associates, 
including William Wilson. At the centre of this debate are Appiah's views of Pan- 
Africanism, defined as cultural universalism, versus Agyeman's notion of Pan- 
Africanism as the total cultural and historical experiences of the African people 
accumulated in the course of their struggle to redefine their identity. 
Agyeman begins his analysis with a definition of Pan-Africanism as the belief 
that African people, wherever they are belong to an African Nation. Using 
historical and philosophical sources, he discusses why and how Pan-Africanist 
thinkers like Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were 
victimised for their commitment to the cause of Pan-Africanism (p. 3). One of the 
first important questions that the author poses is: What is behind the fear of 
Pan-Africanism that is translated into such ferocious opposition to it? The author 
examines the relevant historical and economic conditions to locate his 
probletnatique, and finds the answers to it in his examination of the nature of the 
relationship between power and labour. He argues that without the slave labour of 
millions of Africans who were uprooted from Africa some 365 years ago the 
capitalist society of the Americas would not have been created (p. 4). 
He argues therefore "that power consolidation in Africa would compel a 
reallocation of global resources, as well as unleashing a fiercer psychological 
energy and political assertion among Diaspora Africans that would unsettle the 
social and political (power) structures of many a polity in the Americas, from Cuba 
through Brazil to the United States" (p. 4). Cultural universalists like Appiah and 
1027-0353 © 1998 African Assnrintion nfPnlitiml <iriimrr
Exiles In Their Own Home 99 
his collaborators, Agyeman asserts, are opposed to the cultural and historical 
specificity of Africa and its peoples. Hence he (Appiah) would define himself as 
a child of two worlds, dismissing race and ethnicity, including even the Asante 
cultural institutions in which his "Father's House" is supposedly embedded 
(P- 6). 
An important part of this assessment leads Agyeman to ask the question: What 
is universalism? He responds to this question with Appiah's personal experience 
as a mulatto who claims that his mother's people - her cousins and grand parents 
related to him in a decent, humane way (p. 7). Even so, he argues, Appiah put a 
premium on his Europeanness and despised his Africanness (p. 8) Agyeman 
argues that Appiah's conception of universalism is a concealed appeal for 
miscegenation or genetic exchange (p. 8). Referring briefly to Fernando Henriques' 
exposition on the Cuban experience for purposes of comparison, Agyeman points 
out that Appiah sees his values in terms of human spirit and a cultural synthesis of 
a "middle way" between "endogenous tradition in Africa and exogenous Western 
ideas" (p. 9). 
For Agyeman, one of the problems of the universalist argument is that it is 
unashamedly racist in essence. Its apologists appropriate African culture as Elvis 
Presley did (p. 13) and sever its content from its history. Another case of intellectual 
appropriation is jazz in the U.S., "the only musical art form to which the U.S. can 
lay exclusive (ownership)" (p. 12). 
Agyeman argues that the attacks against Pan-Africanism are coming at a time 
when the need for regional integration as development strategy is urgent; and also 
at time when the identification of African Americans with Africa is growing. And 
curiously, the new wave of assaults on Pan-Africanism is spearheaded by "black" 
scholars in a number of so-called prestigious American universities. For example, 
in his determination to belittle the salience of race as a critical factor for 
understanding the social conditions of African Americans, William Wilson 
ignores the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and argues that the barriers to 
advancement of black people in the U.S. in the latter half of the 20th century are 
rooted no longer in racism but in basic structural shifts in the U.S. economy (p. 25). 
Agyeman dismisses such scholars and their collaborators like Lerone Bennett 
(1965) and Hilary Silver (1995), among others, arguing that blacks are kept down 
the social ladder not because they do not have an education, but because they are 
blacks (pp. 28-29). The processes of job retention and structurally low wages, for 
instance, reflect racism. 
Agyeman insists that within the Pan-Africanist movement is Afro-centrism, the 
scholastic movement that seeks to confer proper recognition of the African 
experience in world history by rectifying the distortions, downright falsehoods, 
and deliberate omissions that characterise European "scholarship" (p. 39). This 
movement has also become the subject of attacks by scholars of European
100 Okechukwu Ibeanu 
rationality who continue to insist that Africans have no history, and that they 
are of an inferior race (pp. 41 -42). Gates, another member of the "eminent breed" 
contends that Afro-centric scholarship is "bogus" because it is essentially about 
inventing an African past that never was (p. 42). Ayittey, who seemingly aspires 
to join the ranks of the "eminent breed" of European thinkers by labouring 
assiduously in the field of African mea culpa, writes about exaggerated claims 
about Africa. Ignoring conclusive historical and scientific evidence in the works 
of Herodotus of the fifth cent B.C., Sheikh Anta Diop, Basil Davidson, and Bruce 
Williams (to cite only a few), concerning the advanced civilisations that Africans 
produced before European civilisation hit the world stage, Ayittey concludes 
that Egyptian society was Arabic (p. 43). Agyeman challenges such Eurocentric 
scholars and asks why the triangle of Nubian-Ethiopian-Egyptian 
civilisation, the epicenter of antiquity, should be excluded from the curriculum of 
classics departments. 
In the same vein, Agyeman criticises the attitude which, for example, marginalised 
Harvard University's Department of Afro-American Studies. For instance, when 
there were in the 1970s at least six departments with some one hundred professors 
teaching the various languages and literature of Europe alone, African languages 
and literature were not taught at Harvard (p. 56). Courses taught in the Department 
of History were, in essence, about the history of the Arabs and the Europeans in 
Africa, or taken with topics of the likes of "Alcohol in Sub-Sahara Africa, 1850 to 
the present" (p. 57). 
In Agyeman's view, Appiah's book is full of logical and historical contradictions. 
For example, while Appiah recognised that "culture" and "civilisations" are 
real, he denies that has Africa a connected culture. Agyeman points out that 
throughout his book - In My Father's House - Appiah demonstrates a determination 
to employ illogicalities to rationalise absurdities in the service of anti-Pan- 
Africanism (p. 76). While he (Appiah) believes that the only Pan-Africanism that 
has legitimacy is one without race, at the same time, he acknowledges that Pan- 
Africanism is black solidarity (p. 77); and that there is no American culture without 
its African roots (p. 79). 
Agyeman also states that Appiah "displays throughout his book a perplexing 
incapacity to grasp the core reality of powerlessness that hobbles Africa and its 
people" (p. 91). In a world of realpolitik what should Africans do to reconstruct 
themselves? Here, the universal cultural movement is the vanguard force. Although 
the argument in this book does not have anything to do with a political case for 
African empowerment, Appiah maintains that it is in the political sphere that issues 
should be raised. Yet, his knowledge about politics is next to nothing (p. 91). 
Indeed. Agyeman raises fundamental issues concerning the origin of underdevelopment, 
political instability, social misery, and the cultural identity of African 
people the world over. It revives and advances the debate on Pan-Africanism that
apologists of Western imperialism like Fukuyama would want to see buried for 
good. The book makes a major contribution to the Pan-Africanist struggle, and 
deserves the closest attention of all Pan-Africanists 
Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo 
Wells College, Cornell University, USA 
Exiles In Their Own Home 101