Liberian Literary Magazine
reliably, and to put them
together in ways that provide
reliable narrates about the
past.”
This
means
historians
cannot simply assume that
sources are telling the truth.
In our battle against racism
in
scholarship,
Africacentered
historians
can
neither ignore nor bend
counter evidence. Doing so
deceives
our
readers,
dishonors our ancestors, and
diminishes
our
own
reputations. Instead, our
writing must involve a
constant
conversation
between the perspective and
the evidence.
What themes do you find
yourself
continuously
exploring in your work?
Racism. Just as West African
farme rs burn a field to clear it
of weeds, fell trees and bush,
anyone writing African history
must first tackle the long,
poisoned legacy of racism in
Western scholarship.
Racism is evident in Liberian
studies in the continued
classification of the Gola and
Kru-speaking
people
as
“hunters and gathers.” That
label implies placement at
the lower rung of an
evolutionary chain with a
corresponding
lack
of
“civilization.” But, many
transnational
corporations
today are dependent on
“hunting
and
gathering”
timber and seafood from
around the world. Why, then,
are they considered more
civilized that the Gola who
trafficked in kola from the
forest and the Kru who
harvested fish from the
ocean?
Promoting Liberian literature, Arts and Culture
Despite evidence of local
agriculture, pottery and iron
smelting, the presence of
hunting is used by racist
scholars to suggest that some
people living in the area of
Liberia before 1820 were
stuck at a “primitive” stage.
However, it is clear that
hunting persisted in many
parts of West Africa because
wild game was plentiful and
the presence of the tsetse fly
inhibited the keeping of
livestock. What is more, the
devastating impact of slavetrading
actively
fueled
underdevelopment.
The use of words like
“fetish,” “witch,” “country
devil” and countless others
keep African culture trapped
in a language web that
portrays it as “strange,”
“weird,” even “evil.” Instead
of challenging this negative
discourse, some Westerneducated Africans argue for
the continued use of those
demeaning words because
they are widely used by
uneducated
Africans.
In
truth, uneducated Africans
copied those pejorative words
from their educated brethren
of an earlier era who copied
them
from
Western
13
missionaries and “scholars.”
Instead of “blaming the
victims,”
we,
educated
Africans,
must
accept
responsibility for fixing the
problem, since we helped to
legitimize this language of
racial inferiority.
While a lack of evidence has
slowed research on Liberians
before 1820, so too has a
sense of “shame” about our
history.
Our
unfounded
“embarrassment”
stems
mainly from the way our
history has been portrayed by
Arab Muslims and European
Christians. The result is an
estrangement
from
our
history, an alienation often
accepted as the price for
being
true
Muslims
or
Christians. If Arabs and white
Christians lived by that
standard, they would reject
pagan traditions that have
been incorporated into their
contemporary
religious
practices.
Instead,
they
celebrate the pre-Christian
cultures of Arabia, Greece
and Rome.
To break out of a
patronizing
Eurocentric
discourse,
we
must
deliberately use more neutral
words to describe African
culture, such as ethnic group
(not “tribe”) and energy or
power (not “spirit”).
Tell us a little about your
two
upcoming
booksstoryline,
characters,
themes, inspiration etc.
One of my books is Between
the Kola Forest and the Salty
Sea: A History of the Liberian
People Before 1820. The title
is a bit poetic but the subtitle
is
self-explanatory.
It
presents the long neglected