I Want to Be African
Paul Robeson
I am a Negro. The origin of the Negro is African. It would therefore seem an easy matter for me to assume African nationality.
Instead it is an extremely complicated matter, fraught with the gravest importance to me and some millions of coloured folk.
Africa is a Dark Continent not merely because its people are dark-skinned or by reason of its extreme impenetrability, but because its history is lost. We have an amazingly vivid reconstruction of the culture of ancient Egypt, but the roots of almost the whole remainder of Africa are buried in antiquity.
They are, however, rediscoverable; and they will in time be rediscovered.
I am confirmed in this faith by recent researches linking the culture of the Negro with that of many peoples of the East.
Let us consider for a moment the problem of my people—the African Negroes in the Occident, and particularly in America.
We are now fourteen millions strong-though perhaps "strong" is not the apt word; for nearly two and a half centuries we were in chains, and although to-day we are technically free and officially labelled "American Citizen," we are at a great economic disadvantage, most trades and many professions being practically barred to us and social barriers inexorably raised.
Consequently the American Negro in general suffers from an acute inferiority complex; it has been drummed into him that the white man is the Salt of the Earth and the Lord of Creation, and as a perfectly natural result his ambition is to become as nearly like a white man as possible.
He is that tragic creature, a man without a nationality. He claims to be American, to be British, to be French-but you cannot assume a nationality as you would a new suit of clothes.
In the country of his adoption, or the country that ruthlessly adopted his forebears, he is an alien; but (herein lies his tragedy) he believes himself to have broken away from his true origins; he has, he argues, nothing whatever in common with the inhabitant of Africa to-day–and that is where I believe he is wrong.
It may be asked "Why disturb him if he is happy in his present state?"
There are two sufficient answers to that; one that he is not happy, except in so far as his natural gaiety of disposition overcomes his circumstances–and the fact that a sick man laughs is surely no reason for not attempting to cure his sickness; and the other is that there is a world-necessity above and beyond his immediate needs.
This world-necessity is for an understanding between the nations and peoples which will lead ultimately to the "family of nations" ideal.
To this world-community every nation will contribute whatever it has of culture; and unless the African Negro (including his far-flung collaterals) bestirs himself and comes to a realization of his potentialities and obligations there will be no culture for him to contribute.
At present the younger generation of Negroes in America looks towards Africa and asks "What is there there to interest me? What of value has Africa to offer that the Western world cannot give me?"
At first glance the question seems unanswerable. He sees only the savagery, devil-worship, witch-doctors, voo-doo, ignorance, squalor, and darkness taught in American schools.
Where these exist, he is looking at the broken remnants of what was in its day a mighty thing; something which perhaps has not been destroyed, but only driven underground, leaving ugly scars upon the earth's surface to mark the place of its ultimate reappearance.
We know that in China there was a great and mighty culture—mighty in the sense not of pomp but of potency. An exiled Chinese to-day, at University in Manchester or Birmingham, might look towards China and ask the self-same question-"What has that chaos of conflicting misgovernments and household gods and superstitions to offer me?"-but we know enough of history to be aware that great cultures do not completely die, but are soil for future growths.
That portion of China that is only Buddhist is negligible, the publicized part, the unscratched surface; below are the vast depths of spirituality of which Taoism in its present-day form is the broken relic.
Somewhere, sometime-perhaps at the Renaissance, but I think much earlier-a great part of Religion went astray. A blind groping after Rationality resulted in an incalculable loss in pure Spirituality. Mankind placed a sudden dependence on that part of his mind that was brain, intellect, to the discountenance of that part that was sheer evolved instinct and intuition; we grasped at the shadow and lost the substance ... and now we are not even altogether clear what the substance was.
Now the pendulum is swinging back. Preaching in London not long ago, Father Bede Frost is reported to have said:
The epoch that began at the end of the sixteenth century is now ending. You can see the tiles fall from the roof, the walls beginning to crack…
During that epoch men's minds have been influenced by three dogmas:
The perfectability of man in himself,
The inevitability of progress towards a golden age,
The infallibility of physical science.
Mankind is gradually feeling its way back to a more fundamental, more primitive, but perhaps truer religion; and religion, the orientation of man to God or forces greater than himself, must be the basis of This religion, this basic culture, has its roots in the Far East, and in Africa.
What links the American Negro to this culture? It would take a psycho-anthropologist to give it a name; but its nature is obvious to any earnest inquirer.
Its manifestation occurs in his forms of religion and of art. It has recently been demonstrated beyond a possibility of doubt that the dances, the songs, and the worship perpetuated by the Negro in America are identical with those of his cousins hundreds of years removed in the depths of Africa, whom he has never seen, of whose very existence he is only dimly aware.
His peculiar sense of rhythm alone would stamp him indelibly as African; and a slight variation of this same rhythm-consciousness is to be found among the Tartars and Chinese, to whom he is much more nearly akin than he is to the Arab, for example.
Not long ago I learned to speak Russian, since, the Russians being so closely allied through the Tartars to the Chinese, I expected to find myself more in sympathy with that language than with English, French, or German. I was not disappointed; I found that there were Negro concepts which I could express much more readily in Russian than in other languages.
I would rather sing Russian folk-songs than German grand opera- not because it is necessarily better music, but because it is more instinctive and less reasoned music. It is in my blood.
The pressing need of the American Negro is an ability to set his own standards. At school, at university, at law school, it didn't matter to me whether white students passed me or I passed them. What mattered was, if I got 85 marks, why didn't I get 100? If I got 99, why didn't I get 100? "To thine own self be true" is a sentiment sneered at to-day as merely Victorian-but upon its observance may well depend the future of nations and peoples.
It is of course useful and even necessary from an economic and social standpoint for the Negro to understand Western ideas and culture, for he will gain nothing by further isolating himself; and I would emphasize that his mere physical return to his place of origin is not the essential condition of his regeneration. In illustration of this take the parallel case of the Jews.
They, like a vast proportion of Negroes, are a race without a nation; but, far from Palestine, they are indissolubly bound by their ancient religious practices–which they recognize as such. I emphasize this in contradistinction to the religious practices of the American Negro, which, from the snake-worship practised in the deep South to the Christianity of the revival meeting, are patently survivals of the earliest African religions; and he does not recognize them as such.
Their acknowledgment of their common origin, species, interest, and attitudes binds Jew to Jew; a similar acknowledgment will bind Negro and Negro.
I realize that this will never be accomplished by viewing from afar the dark rites of the witch-doctor–a phenomenon as far divorced from fundamental reality as are the petty bickerings over altar decorations and details of vestment from the intention of Christ.
It may be accomplished, or at least furthered, by patient inquiry. To this end I am learning Swahili, Tivi, and other African dialects–which come easily to me because their rhythm is the same as that employed by the American Negro in speaking English; and when the time is ripe I propose to investigate, on the spot, the possibilities of such a regeneration as I have outlined.
Meanwhile in my music, my plays, my films I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.
Multitudes of men have died for less worthy ideals; it is even more eminently worth living for.