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ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE
RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS
ISSN 2526-9038
What does it mean to be an
African person? Racialized identity
and citizenship policies for the
Sixth Region of Africa1
O que significa ser uma pessoa africana?
Políticas racializadas de identidade e cidadania
para a Sexta Região da África
¿Qué significa ser una persona africana?
Políticas racializadas de identidad y ciudadanía
para la Sexta Región de África
DOI: 10.21530/ci.v18n3.2023.1352
Bas’Ilele Malomalo2
Lúcia de Toledo França Bueno3
Marrielle Maia4
1 This work was carried out with the support of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education
Personnel – Brazil (CAPES) – Financing Code 001.
2 Doutor em Sociologia pela Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio Mesquista/UNESP. Professor de graduação
nos cursos das Relações Internacionais, Ciências sociais, Mestrado Interdisciplinar em Humanidades (MIH)
do Instituto de Humanidades e Letras (IHL) da Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia
Afro-Brasileira (UNILAB). (escolaafricana@gmail.com), ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7889-3385.
3 Mestranda em Relações Internacionais pelo Instituto de Economia e Relações Internacionais da Universidade
Federal de Uberlândia (IERI – UFU). (lucia.toledobueno@gmail.com). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
4167-3274.
4 Doutora em Ciência Política pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas. professora nos cursos de graduação
e de pós-graduação em Relações Internacionais no Instituto de Economia e Relações Internacionais da
Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (IERI-UFU). (marriellemaf@gmail.com). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-
0001-6857-6688.
Artigo submetido em 06/06/2023 e aprovado em 23/05/2024.
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Abstract
With the Declaration by the African Union of the Diaspora as the Sixth Region of the
continent – a centenary demand of activists and intellectuals – debates resurface
around the African identity. It aims to explain via African epistemologies: how does
pan-Africanist thought condition criteria and principles of identity and citizenship
towards the institutionalization of racialized and pluralistic policies for the Sixth
Region? Paths of self-determination are debated when problematizing the concept
of “diaspora.” Endogenous criteria and principles that condition reparatory
and racialized policies are discussed. Finally, contributions and potential of the
epistemological assumptions afrocentered for International Relations.
Keywords: Race and International Relations. Sixth Region of Africa. African
Diaspora. Self-determination. Identity & Citizenship.
Resumo
Com a Declaração, pela União Africana, da Diáspora como Sexta Região do continente
– reivindicação centenária de ativistas e intelectuais – ressurgem debates ao redor
da identidade africana. Almeja-se explicar via epistemologias africanas: como o
pensamento pan-africanista condicionam critérios e princípios de identidade e
cidadania rumo à institucionalização de políticas racializadas e pluralistas para a
Sexta Região? Debatem-se caminhos de autodeterminação ao problematizarmos o
conceito “diáspora.” Em seguida, são discutidos critérios e princípios endógenos
que condicionam políticas reparatórias e racializadas. Na conclusão, sinalizam-se
contribuições e potencial dos pressupostos epistemológicos afrocentrados para as
Relações Internacionais.
Palavras-chave: Raça & Relações Internacionais. Sexta Região da África. Diáspora
Africana. Autodeterminação. Identidade & Cidadania.
Resumen
Con la Declaración, por la Unión Africana, de la Diáspora como Sexta Región –
reivindicación centenaria de activistas e intelectuales – resurgen debates en torno
a la identidad africana. Se pretende explicar vía epistemologías africanas: ¿cómo
condicionan el pensamiento panafricano criterios y principios de identidad y
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ciudadanía rumbo a la institucionalización de políticas racializadas y pluralistas
para la Sexta Región? Se debaten caminos de autodeterminación al problematizar
el concepto “diáspora.” Se discuten los criterios y principios que condicionan las
políticas reparadoras y racializadas. En conclusión, se señalan contribuciones y
potencial de los presupuestos epistemológicos afrocentrados para las Relaciones
Internacionales.
Palabras clave: Raza & Relaciones Internacionales. Sexta Región de África. Diáspora
Africana. Autodeterminación. Identidad & Ciudadanía.
Introduction
When Burkinabé intellectual Ki-Zerbo (2006) was asked what the biggest
problem was for Africa in his book, For When Africa, he replied that it was
the problem of identity. All this because the oppressors have fixed the image
of Africa and Africans “in the scenario of misery, barbarism, irresponsibility
and chaos” (Ki-Zerbo 2010, XXXII). With Du Bois (1925), Hall (1990), Mbembe
(2014), in dialogue with Fanon (2008), taking into account the processes of
enslavement, colonial domination and racism, we would say that African
identity, that is, the identity of African people and their descendants born in
the diaspora, was and continues to be placed in the zone of non-being, that is, it
was and is marked by dehumanization.
Le mouvement panafricaniste au XXe siècle: Contribution to the Conférence
des Intelectuels d’Afrique et de la Diaspora (CIAD I, in free translation: “The
Pan-Africanist Movement in the 20th Century: Contributions to the Conference
of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora”) (Union Africaine 2004), a work
organized by the African Union in partnership with the Republic of Senegal, is
not only full of historical evidence about what the Pan-Africanist movement was
in the 20th century, but also contains reflections that reveal how this movement
was being built, on a global level, as a force for combating racism and for
elaborating African identity beyond national identities.
In the aforementioned work, Le mouvement panafricaniste au XXe
siècle (2004), and in the eight volumes of the General History of Africa,
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which were published by the United Nations Educational, Scientiic and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) between the 1960s and 1990s, one can see
that the concern to forge a Pan-African identity, which takes into account the
particularities of the experiences of being an African person on the continent
and in the African diaspora, is present (Malomalo, 2018, 2019).
However, while the Pan-African Congresses, for example, were considered
spaces for activism, politics and science by blacks in the African diaspora, the
General History of Africa, published by UNESCO, devoted more of its pages
to telling the history of Africans on the continent. In order to correct the
shortcomings that were observed in the preparation of the work considered
to be the realization of epistemic and political justice for Africa, and with an
increasing understanding of the importance of the African diaspora, UNESCO
dedicated the 10th volume to the African diaspora with this title: General
History of Africa, X: Africa and its Diasporas (Santos 2023).
As a strategy for both the fragmentation and obliteration of the global
African community, for centuries any recognition of dignity to African people
was denied, through, not only, de-Africanization processes, but also subjective
legal colonial and slavery instruments. Resulting, partly, from movements that
for centuries have claimed recognition of the cultural and historical continuum
of African resistances and solidarity among target peoples of colonization,
enslavement, and racism, “the diaspora” was institutionalized as the Sixth
Region by the African Union (AU) in 20035. That opened new debates around
the African identity that recover a conceptual repertoire from the rise of
African emancipatory movements that promote re-Africanizations and propose
endogenous solutions based on the heritage of African knowledge and culture.
Our research problem, therefore, aims to explain: how does the pan-Africanist
thought condition criteria and principles of identity and citizenship towards
the institutionalization of racialized and pluralist policies for the Sixth Region?
It is not the objective of this research to present a decisive or final meaning
regarding what African identity is. Instead, it consists of articulating, in debate, a
theoretical-conceptual framework referring to the ontological conceptualization
of the African person in the Sixth Region in the footsteps of Doty (1993) and Silva
5 The original ive regions are: Central Africa, Southern Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa and East Africa.
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(2021), as well as its eects on criteria and principles of identity and citizenship
produced endogenously through African epistemologies.
This research is characterized as explanatory since this qualitative
investigation aims to deepen the reasons and paths that lead to the establishment
of African criteria and principles for identity and citizenship, through racialized
and pluralist policies. Considering the theme whose sources of information come
from, mostly, the oral circulation of ideas or institutional means, data collection
through semi-structured interviews and documentary research, in addition
to bibliographical review, were used as procedural methods. Primary sources
consist of interview transcripts, ocial African Union documents, as well as
speeches by activists and intellectuals at congresses.
We dialogue, essentially, with the theoretical keys provided by the critical
approach, in International Relations and related areas, and racist epistemological
assumptions, as explained by Errol Henderson (2013). Thus, our analysis draws
on postcolonial, anticolonial and/or pan-Africanist oral and written texts by
Gonzalez (1988), Doty (1993), Malomalo (2010, 2017, 2018, 2019), Silva (2021, 2022),
and Dagoberto Fonseca (Latitudes Africanas 2022).
Following the introduction, the irst section discusses paths of self-
determination and challenges using the concept of “diaspora” to refer to the
experience of enslavement, colonization and usurpation of African identity. In
the second part, we seek to outline criteria and principles that, based on African
ontologies and epistemologies, shape the endogenous conception of racialized
and pluralistic components of identity and citizenship policies. Finally, we
make final considerations about the contributions presented throughout the
work and the epistemological, theoretical and practical potential research
assumptions for the field of International Relations.
Paths to de-Africanization and self-determination
under debate
This section aims to bring into debate Pan-Africanist intellectual traditions
regarding the processes of de-Africanization and self-determination, racializing
analytical categories that seek to study international relations concerning
African identity in the Sixth Region of the continent based on African
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theoretical-epistemological bases. In this context, it is essential to respond to
questions posed by Doty (1993) dialoguing with both African and Brazilian
libraries. Furthermore, we problematize operationalizing the concept of
“diaspora” in the reality of African peoples, presenting additional discovered
paths from such discussion.
Through the most diverse religious rites, bureaucratic-administrative
processes and intersubjective domination, attempts were made to uproot the
African roots of their peoples. The colonial strategies of de-Africanization of
the Amefrican peoples6 are an ongoing fact. Examples include the deletion
of African names and replacement by European names (Lopes 2011), the
dismemberment of families, compulsory conversions to Islam and Christianity
as well as other physical and symbolic mutilations of African cultural
expressions. Due to its size and terrifying meaning, we must also point out the
incessant Western genocide of racialized peoples, especially original peoples,
traditional and peripheral communities in the Améfricas.
Considering this, we observe that the implementation of colorism is one
of the most ingenious practices for promoting discord and disunity among
African peoples. Disputes, conflicts and rivalries between mestizo people
and black people were strategies provoked by colonial whiteness. The process
occurs through the differentiation, categorization and hierarchization of
African people according to skin pigmentation, degree of hair texture and
“blackness”7 of phenotypic traits. According to Nei Lopes (2011, 446-447):
The main strategy of slavery in the Americas was to make the captives forget
their African status as quickly as possible and assume that of “blacks”, a
sign of subalternity, in order to prevent banzo*8 and the desire for rebellion
or light, frequent reactions, although antagonistic.
9
6 Gonzalez (1988, 77) deines “Améfrica” as “an ethnogeographic reference system, it is our creation and that
of our ancestors on the continent where we live, inspired by African models” whose methodological value
lies in the rescue of a speciic unity between African peoples.
7 Historically, the notion of “black” phenotypic traits has been associated with people from the regions of
Angola-Congo, where the largest population contingent of people enslaved and traficked to Brazil comes from.
We recognize the phenotypic diversity of African peoples beyond this territorial portion of the continent.
8 According to Nei Lopes (2011, 181), banzo can be deined as a “psychopathological state, a kind of nostalgia
with deep depression, almost always fatal, into which some enslaved Africans in the Americas fell.”
9 Versão original: “A principal estratégia do escravismo nas Américas era fazer que os cativos esquecessem o mais
rapidamente sua condição de africanos e assumissem a de “negros”, marca de subalternidade, a im de prevenir
o banzo* e o desejo de rebelião ou fuga, reações frequentes, posto que antagônicas. (Lopes 2011, 46-447).”
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The domination over African identity is a seminal point whose tactics
represent one of the specificities of colonialism: its deep and rooted penetration
into the subjectivities of African people, beyond the servile labor bond.
(Bernardino-Costa; Grosfoguel 2016, Curtin 2010, Gonzalez 1988, Malomalo
2017). Exterminating and mischaracterizing the marks of Africanization in
slave societies are steps towards dehumanizing African people, who are no
longer recognized as political or epistemic subjects (Silva 2021, 38).
The de-Africanization processes could be summarized in multiple denials,
among which we highlight the denial of existing according to African ways of
being and living. Operant racism is normalized in such a way that the Western
white subject is placed at the center of morality, intellectual productions and
aesthetics (Silva 2021). This subject parametrizes behaviors, cultural icons and
identities by framing what is acceptable as within normality, what is tolerated
through “cordial racism” and what is retaliated, exterminated, or rejected. Still
according to Professor Karine Silva (2021, 47):
Colonizing Eurocentrism denied the existence of non-white peoples in two
ways: it dehumanized the people it racialized, hierarchized and traficked,
placing them in a zone of not being (FANON, 2008); and used all its efforts
to prohibit the creation of States, placing such nations in a condition of
no place. That is, the subjectivity of the ex-colonized was doubly denied,
both in the sphere of being and in that of international power. It is always
worth remembering that only those that are recognized as states can be
considered subjects of Public International Law.
10
In the Pan-Africanist perception, one of the clear impediments to the
processes of a greater union, unity and cooperation between African peoples in
the Pan-Africanist perception is the colonial capacity to manipulate the memory
and forgetfulness of African people regarding their own identity. As a result of
constant resistance to racism, the Pan-Africanist movement emerged claiming
the self-determination of African peoples. (Gonzalez 1988).
10 Versão original: “O eurocentrismo colonizador negou a existência dos povos não brancos de duas
maneiras: desumanizou as pessoas que racializou, hierarquizou e traicou colocando-as na zona de não ser
(Fanon, 2008); e empregou todos os seus esforços para proibir a criação de Estados, colocando tais nações na
condição de não lugar. Ou seja, a subjetividade dos ex-colonizados foi negada duplamente, tanto na esfera do
ser como na do poder internacional. Não é demais lembrar que apenas os que são reconhecidos como Estados
podem ser considerados sujeitos de Direito Internacional Público. (Silva 2021, 47)”
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Fundamentally, in this research, we aim to make the questions posed
by Roxanne Doty (1993, 444) regarding African experiences, demands and
productions in the Améfricas. We rely on questions such as: Who are “we”?
Who are “they”? To whom we relate? How do “we” relate to “them”?
The invention of racially based hierarchies rests on the view that
race is a biological component of human beings. We must recognize in the
invisibilization of the race category and the autonomous agency of an African
subject the very strategy of denying citizenship to a Brazilian identity already
composed of African presence, even if refuted by dominant eugenics groups.
Hence the importance of conceptualizing race according to Doty (1993). The
place of the category “race” in international relations studies has, only recently,
incorporated a legacy of registered and systematized knowledge since at least
the 19th century. However, according to Doty (1993, 450), the academic traditions
of the field of international relations are still anchored in biological dierences.
In the literature on Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations (ERER) and in
African Studies, for example, the concept of race as a sociological category – as
opposed to a biological category – is consolidated in many countries, such as
Brazil. Despite the eugenic categorization of humanity by biological criteria,
Nascimento (2009 186) exposes that W.E.B. du Bois “locates the shared identity of
African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora in their common historical
and cultural experience rather than in biological criteria.”
The contradiction resides in the attempt to make “race” seem neutral when,
in fact, it is a category inherently linked to practices of exclusion and power. That
is, according to Doty (1993, 449) “the problem is in the concept itself and in how
it is generally defined and applied.” Her conceptualization of “race” deals more
with a critical genealogy of the points where racial dierences were constructed
than with the historical importance of race in international relations. Through
the generation of discursive practices, practices of meaning and the repetition
of these practices in everyday life engrains racialization in society, which is
a dynamic process that enables a social group to be repeatedly defined and
delimited. According to Silva (2021, 39), in addition to “the silencing of memories,
one of the epistemic inflicted violences is discursive disauthorization.” In this
sense, “race” not only crosses borders, but becomes a place where borders are
produced.
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Doty’s invitation to reconceptualize is reflected in the data collection carried
out by the co-authors with professors Dagoberto José Fonseca (Unesp), Jorge
Rasta (Quilombo D’Oiti) and Bas’Ilele Malomalo (UNILAB), with the mediation
of professor Sylvani Euclênio (Thinking Africanly – PA). The conversation
sought to collect information linked to academic reflections, knowledge and
experiences of the guests, varied work profiles and theoretical aliations
within the Pan-Africanist field.
The semi-structured interview, broadcast live and available on YouTube
channels (Latitudes Africanas 2022), was strongly motivated by the re-
emergence of debates around African identity and presence in the so-called
“diaspora.” In exact reproduction of the words of the Rasta master:
We keep looking for the threads that lead us to Africa and the condition
in which we ind ourselves. Because it is very dificult to ind yourself
in a position of African and diaspora or African, despite such being the
concept of the 6th Region, in a world, a society that says that being black is
the worst thing. It is the lower limit of a being; it is to be of African descent
in Brazil, which places us mainly as a descendant of enslaved people, or
of a slave, as literature teaches.
11
As for Dagoberto Fonseca’s views (Latitudes Africanas 2022), the
theoretical-analytical foundation allows us to advance in reconceptualization
studies considering that, for him, the “appropriation of the concept (...) it is
fundamental for us to change identity. A concept is not an empty space; it is,
instead, fundamental because it is not neutral, it is political.”
We observed the emergence of many questions and proposals to revise
the concept of “diaspora” as a topic of interest in the field of Social Sciences
in the first quarter of the 21st century (Edwards 2017, Flor 2019, Malomalo,
2017, 2019). Both in the scope of academic discussion and in that of activism,
and the dialogue between both, there are multiple sources of criticism of the
term diaspora, despite not being the only target concept. Terms like “negro”,
11 Versão original: “A gente vai buscando os ilamentos que nos levam à África e à condição em que nos
encontramos. Porque é muito diícil se encontrar numa posição de africano e diáspora ou africano, mesmo
sendo o conceito da 6ª Região, em um mundo, uma sociedade que diz que ser preto é a pior coisa. É o limite
inferior de um ser, é ser descendente de africano no Brasil, que nos coloca principalmente como descendente
de escravizados, ou de escravo, como a literatura ensina.” (Latitudes Africanas 2022).
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“preto”, “Afro-descendant”, “Afro-Brazilian” and many others according to Flor
(2019, 376) also “connote, at the same time, the core of disagreements and the
motto of these disputes.” Therefore, we focus on the “African diaspora” due to
its internationalized institutional dimension within the scope of the African
Union, a field of interest for this research.
A break in the history of relations between Africa and its diasporas marks
2001, given that such year encompasses the transition from the Organization
of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963, to the African Union (AU) (União
Africana 2000, 2003), which represents a new spirit of African insertion in the
new post-1990 world order.
Through the creation of the “Diaspora Program”, the AU aims to mobilize
hundreds of millions of people not only from recent migrations, but also who
have been in a condition of mobility since before or during the European
colonial enterprise. Aer the declaration of the Diaspora as the Sixth Region
of the continent (African Union 2003), technical meetings were organized
to define the concept. The result is to understand the “African diaspora” as
“composed of people of African origin living outside the continent, regardless
of their citizenship or nationality and who are willing to contribute to the
development of the continent and to the construction of the African Union”
(African Union 2005, União Africana 2005).
According to Edwards (2017, 40), the term “diaspora” corresponds to
“[one] of the most embarrassing problems in recent works on black culture
and politics in the international sphere.” One of the most striking criticisms
focuses on the “splitting of the world into two parts by colonial whiteness: on
one hand, there is a humanity entitled to a dignified life and, on the other, a sub-
humanity, a place where lives do not matter – they are silenceable, exploitable,
and disposable.” (Silva 2021, 42). Their perceptions gain more dimensions with
the provocations of Dagoberto Fonseca (Latitudes Africanas 2022) in relation
to the operationalization of the term “diaspora” on African peoples:
(...) the concept of diaspora does indeed create some problems for us. We
have some diasporas: the Jewish diaspora, (in)the gypsy diaspora and
many smaller ones (...) What are these diasporas saying to us, as a concept?
They’re telling us these are smaller people. By the way, non-people. That
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were separated, that were dispersed, that were violated throughout history
and lost their original territories so that today they live in the diaspora.12
In order to analyze its assumptions, the semantic links that dehumanize
peoples, particularly Africans, were investigated when juxtaposed with the
term “diaspora”, to which the following questions are appropriate:
Is this situation applicable to the African continent? Does this concept
apply to us? If we consider that it applies to us, why doesn’t this concept
it the Irish, the Scots, the Britons, why they do not it the Italians, the
Germans, why do these concepts not belong to the Japanese… but why do
these concepts belong to us? (...)
Brazil is the largest country of Italian refugees since the 19th century and
we still call them immigrants, when strictly speaking they are refugees.
Refugees from the wars of uniication in Italy, refugees from the wars of
uniication in Germany, refugees from the Napoleonic wars in the context
of the European 19
th
century.
But we don’t call these populations that lived the diaspora, let alone
conceptualize these refugee populations either. Especially because refugees
are those from Eastern Europe, those from Africa; refugees are from other
countries, but not from (Western) Europe. (Latitudes Africanas 2022).
13
Therefore, it seems essential to deepen – in the wake of Doty’s argument
– the conditions in which the term proves to be appropriate in a very brief
genealogy. Fonseca’s primary argument (PA, 2022) presents as a reflection
12 Versão original: “(...) o conceito de diáspora nos cria de fato alguns problemas. Nós temos algumas diásporas:
a diáspora judaica, (n)a diáspora cigana e tantas outras menores (...) O que essas diásporas estão dizendo para
nós, enquanto conceito? Estão dizendo pra nós que essas são pessoas menores. Aliás, não-pessoas. Que foram
separadas, que foram dispersadas, que foram violentadas ao longo da história e perderam seus territórios
originários de modo que hoje vivem na diáspora.”
13 Versão original: “Essa situação se aplica ao continente africano? Esse conceito se aplica a nós? Se
considerarmos que se aplica a nós, por que esse conceito não cabe aos irlandeses, por que esse conceito não
cabe aos escoceses, por que esses conceitos não cabem aos bretões, por que esses conceitos não cabem aos
italianos, por que esses conceitos não cabem aos alemães, por que esses conceitos não cabem aos japoneses…
mas por que esses conceitos cabem a nós? (...) O Brasil é o maior país de refugiados italianos desde o século
XIX e nós ainda os chamamos de imigrantes, quando a rigor são refugiados. Refugiados das guerras de
uniicação na Itália, refugiados das guerras de uniicação na Alemanha, refugiados das guerras napoleônicas
no contexto do século XIX europeu. Mas nós não chamamos essas populações que viveram a diáspora,
então tampouco conceituamos essas populações de refugiadas. Até porque, refugiados são aqueles do Leste
Europeu, são os da África, refugiados são de outros países, mas não da Europa chamada assim de Ocidental.”
(Latitudes Africanas 2022).
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of the mobilization of racial hierarchies invented by whiteness to define who
migrates, in humane conditions, and those who suer diaspora, migrating as
objects of other peoples.
Moreover, given the etymology of the term “diaspora” as a Greek word
that refers to “dispersion”, he argues that the “notion of a ‘dispersed flower’
conveys that we have no roots and this is fundamental” to be said because it is in
disagreement with the reality of the peoples in the Sixth Region. For Malomalo
(Latitudes Africanas 2022), the fact that this dispersion led people to find new
colonies would be consistent with the practical process of building the recently
institutionalized African region.
The recent use of the term “diaspora” as a concept, beyond merely a notion,
deserves some attention. Flor (2019, 375) states that, although the notion of
what we now understand as “African diaspora” was current in resistance
against colonialism and slavery, it is relatively consensual in black intellectual
traditions that only in the 1950s did the word become popular, “being granted
the status of a concept.” Only since then has the term “diaspora” been preferred
to evoke “the connections and commonalities between groups of African
descent around the world” (Edwards 2017, 41).
The Stateunion Protestant context was perhaps the main responsible for
the link between the terms “diaspora” and “African” and similar terms, as well
as for the propagation and diusion of this chain of linguistic signs. Initially,
there was an explicit religious foundation for the use of “diaspora” associated
with “[Judeo-Christian] religious semiotics and [the] parallel with the history
of the Hebrew people.” The parallels between the migratory experiences of
African peoples and those of the Jews were based on biblical text. According to
Flor (2019, 378), the “Old Testament thus becomes a fertile ground for analogies
about freedom, exile, exodus and redemption between the history of enslaved
blacks in the New World and that of the Hebrew people.”
Within the scope of emancipatory movements, this association was
possible due to the yearning for a physical and spiritual return to the continent,
from which an imaginary about the identity of African people was built through
the transplanted Jewish experience.
At the dawn of the Pan-Africanist movement, “turning to Africa” was
equivalent to a dream of physical displacement to the original, mythical and
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mystical land. (Gala 2019, 85-87) with the purpose of “redemption of the soul”
following the pattern of the Jewish diaspora. However, between the end of the
1970s and the 1980s, another identity linkage with African roots takes shape.
In Flor (2019, 380) we speak of a perceptive transition “from a conception of
genealogical aliation (religious) to a secular conception of belonging (racial).”
We should also be aware that this foundation was oen “conditioned by
an inflexible Stateunion exceptionalism” that does not nullify the advances of
emancipatory movements, but must be debated (Edwards 2017, 47). According to
Gonzalez (1988, 72), there is a fundamental distinction between open racism and
disguised racism or denial. The first is typical of the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic
and Dutch world and guided by the “rule of the single drop of blood” that led
to racial segregation as a device to assert racial superiority. The second is
characteristic of the Amefrican territory where “‘theories’ of miscegenation,
assimilation and ‘racial democracy’ prevail.”
For the Stateunion intellectual Lélia Gonzalez (1988, 74), it is precisely the
racial conscience in relation to racism that gives rise to unity, “in the sense of
rescuing and arming the humanity and competence of an entire ethnic group
considered ‘inferior’.” Techniques and characteristics of disguised racism
cloud collective awareness of its practices and eects. Even so, the notion of
“diaspora” gains strength and meaning in scientific and activist discourse in
Brazil “due to the need for new ways of thinking about the relationship between
national society and the African presence (with regard to cultural and political
issues).” (Flor 2019, 374).
Aer all, in line with Doty (1993), we seek to answer: what elements help
us define what it means to be an African person in the Sixth Region? Given the
ethnic and national plurality in the identity composition, it seems pertinent
to assume that the answer involves speaking not in terms of “Afro-Brazilian
people” or “Afro-diasporic people”, but rather in terms of “Africans from the
Sixth Region”, with the necessary national derivations, forming the “African-
Brazilian” identities, the “African-Argentinean” and so on. The results of the
primary data collection allow us, in the expression of Dagoberto (2022), to
translate Pan-Africanist claims to epistemological endogeneity:
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(...) So I “I’m” claiming that we review our concepts in the light of a historical,
ontological and cultural experience. (...) The concept is political and cultural
because it also has an ontological basis and foundation in what we are
and what we want to be. It is not, therefore, another one who deines
who I am based on the agreements that this other says I am. (Latitudes
Africanas 2022).
14
In Flor’s review (2019, 374), a broad understanding of the state of the art
of Pan-Africanist movements suggests that we are experiencing the “rise of
new forms of belonging/identification, propagated through transnational
movements of (re)construction of bonds with Africa.” The researcher identifies
that systematically questioning the erasure of the African presence is at the
origin of these “new patterns of identity, culture and belonging.”
Therefore, our central point of discussion regarding the self-determination
of African identity in the Sixth Region grows in obstacles from the premises
of cultural and political unity. That is, although there is African resistance to
slavery, colonization, and racism, unity is more dicult in a context where
categorizations based on colorism were promoted and where racial segregation
was not explicitly implemented, despite this being visible to the naked eye. In
the following section, we will address criteria and principles of identity and
citizenship based on African ontologies and epistemologies, in addition to
their concrete and potential reverberations on racialized policies in the
international sphere.
Principles and criteria of African identity and citizenship:
racialized and pluralist policies
The afirmation of our African origin does not imply any rejection of
our Brazilian national identity, for the simple reason that the Brazilian
national identity is also African. (...) the dominant segment refuses to
assume its own face. (...) They speak of ‘reminiscence’ or the ‘survival of
14 Versão original: “(...) Então eu “tô” reivindicamos que nós revisemos os nossos conceitos à luz de uma
experiência histórica e ontológica e cultural. (...) O conceito é político e cultural porque ele também tem base
e fundamentação ontológica naquilo que somos e naquilo que queremos ser. Não é, portanto, um outro que
deine quem eu sou a partir de concertações que esse outro diz que sou.” (Latitudes Africanas, 2022).
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traces’ of an African culture supposedly alien to the Brazilian one... Such
euphemisms cannot cover the sun with a sieve. The truth is that deep
and broad African dimensions permeate our culture and our history
and constitute the integral deining basis of Brazilian national identity.
Senator Abdias Nascimento in his inaugural speech at the Federal Senate
(Nascimento 1997 quoted by Gala 2019, 321-322).
15
Under the title “Africa: the root of Brazil”, the above words reflect the
fight against racism in national legal and political institutions that erodes the
resistance, self-determination and self-government of the African-Brazilian
people.
In this section, we outline how agents guided by African ontologies and
epistemologies, in response to the colonial concession of sub-citizenships, shape
the endogenous conception of principles, criteria and racialized policies of
identity and citizenship as part of a path of self-determination and armation
of the African presence in the Sixth Region.
Rescuing the assiduous pulsão palmarina16 encompasses demarcating
the centrality of cultural awareness for Africans, considering the location of
a person as the “psychological, cultural, historical or individual place” that
they occupy in relation to their own culture, history and African heritage.
Therefore, policies euphemistically referred to as “assimilationist” naturalize
a white European core of the human experience, marginalize African peoples
and obliterate “their presence, their meaning, their activities and their [African]
image.” In contrast, for Asante, Afrocentricity “is a type of thinking, practice
and perspective that perceives Africans as subjects and agents of phenomena
acting on their own cultural image and human interests.” (Asante 2009, 93).
Queiroz (2017), Malomalo (2010), Gala (2019) and Abdias in the 1997
inaugural speech converge in the argument that the persistent denial of
15 Versão original: “’A airmação da nossa origem africana não implica nenhuma rejeição à nossa identidade
nacional brasileira, pela simples razão de que a identidade nacional brasileira também é africana. (...) o
segmento dominante se recusa a assumir sua própria face. (...) Falam de 'reminiscência' ou da ‘sobrevivência
de traços’ de uma cultura africana supostamente alheia à brasileira… Tais eufemismos não conseguem tapar
o sol com a peneira. A verdade é que profundas e amplas dimensões africanas permeiam a nossa cultura e
a nossa história e constituem a base integral deinidora da identidade nacional brasileira.’ Senador Abdias
Nascimento em discurso de posse no Senado Federal “. (Nascimento 1997 citado por Gala 2019, 321-322).
16 Reference to the legacy of Quilombo dos Palmares.
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citizenship, whether passive or active, only on the text in law or in full ecacy,
supports the invisibilization of African identity(ies) as a project.
According to Doty (1993, 459), since racial relations are global and vice
versa, racial identity becomes an important element in the construction of
national identity. At the end of the 19th century, disputes around Brazilian
identity and the implementation of eugenic projects intensiied. The
reformulation of afirmative policies for white people concomitant with
the genocide of the African-Brazilian people, however, have not been able
to materialize in Brazil the plan to eradicate the high African demographic
presence and its cultural manifestations.
Queiroz (2017, 125) states that the citizenship denial to enslaved Africans
was “based on the fear of past experiences, such as the Haitian one”, namely
the Haitian Revolution. According to the author (2017, 98), it was through the
feeling of fear that the phenomenon of Haitian Revolution would be reproduced
in Brazil that the white society “(...) developed practices, national narratives,
founding myths and discourses that build excluding social structures.”
For Lélia, “in the face of resistance from the colonized, violence will assume
new and more sophisticated contours; sometimes not seemingly violence,
but “true superiority.” The historical-cultural formation of the Améfricas
reverberates the experience that the Portuguese and Spanish had developed in
terms of “more eective processes of articulating racial relations”, especially
aer the Moorish (African and black) conquered Iberia. (Gonzalez 1988, 71).
It seems opportune to relect on the sophistication of these colonial
domination mechanisms in direct dialogue with Doty (1993, 460) as she claims
that the presuppositions of racism would not be based on inferiority, but
on the relationship between the “insiders” and the “insiders.” That is, her
approach relates to the normalization of an identity model and the retaliation,
rejection, marginalization and obliteration of the person who deviates from
the invented norm.
Doty’s text (1993, 457) is indicative in proposing that such discursive
practices be examined in specific historical instances of imperial expansion
in order to analyze how questions of identity and dierence, “self” and “other”
were articulated. Denying citizenship or granting of nationality, in the sense
presented by Roxanne, would correspond to the abnormalization of the African
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person as well as their ways of being and living. For Ambassador Irene Vida
Gala in her book “External Policy as Armative Action” (2019), “reflections on
the construction of a Brazilian identity have been frozen”, significantly due to
Gilberto Freyre’s works (Casa Grande & Senzala, 1933), as they formed elites,
public opinion makers and diplomats.
Anti-racist movements in Améfricas move from a perception of Africa as
an idyllic and untouched territory to the reconstruction of an imaginary that
considers the challenges of contemporary Africa. Layers of complexity are
added to the relations between Africa and America, which begin to recognize
the interplay between tradition in hodiernal, and unity in diversity. In
addition to deconstructing and eliminating white supremacist myths, the black
movement is now guided by a struggle for reparations. The foundations of this
period enable rescuing and forging social, political and legal emancipatory
categories through which the African self asserts itself not as an invisible and
dehumanized object, but as an autonomous and Afro-centered agent.
In view of this, Malomalo (2010, 305-306), assesses that the “citizenship
claimed by black social movements is based on the notion of a plural nationalism,
therefore, the national identity that it claims is also plural.” Transposing to
the field of Pluralist Constitutionalism of Bien Vivir, professor and researcher
Santos (2018, 141) questions the homogeneity of the sources producing ocial
legal norms: “the crisis of the modern Eurocentric paradigm also represented
the exhaustion of its main pillar of support: legal monism, according to which
the State is the only source of legal normativity.”
During the 1
st
Conference of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora
(CIAD), held in Dakar, Senegal in 2004, Souleymane Bachir Diagne defended
prioritizing an understanding of African identities through internal pluralism,
since any pretense homogeneity would only disguise the cracks that certainly
would be revealed over time. The need to “become aware that plural legal
systems in Africa exist, on which the colonial legal systems were implanted”,
was confirmed. (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie 2013, 603-605).
Faced with the systematic inferiorization of African cultures, including in
its legal dimension, the African Renaissance, which joins the spirit of the AU,
ocially founded based on Pan-Africanist values in 2002, proposes a rescue of
tradition. According to the Programme of Debates entitled “Traditional Peoples
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and Communities of African Matrix” prepared by the Special Secretariat for
Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality in 2016, Paulo Oliveira (2011)
arms in his speech that “tradition is closely linked to the concept of asèsè,
origin and passage, theme of this chant sang by the Yorùbá people in death rites,
signifying the return to one’s own origin..” (Brasil 2016, 12).
Ìyá mi, àsèsè! My mother is my origin!
Bábà
17
mi, àsèsè! My father is my origin!
Olódùmarè un mi àsèsè o! Olódùmarè is my origin!
Ki Ntoo bò Orìsà à è. Therefore, I will worship my origins.
Traditional, as understood in the Yoruba epistemological foundations,
carries an intergenerational meaning of transmission of values and know-how.
Despite the use of a fragmentation strategy against African families, it is an
educational process primarily implemented through kinship networks.
Since we start from the principle of “unity in diversity” coined by the
Senegalese polymath Cheikh Anta Diop (1987), we can say that when exposing
its ontological unity, considering the kaleidoscope of cultural expressions,
we are referring to the core of African culture. Certainly, we reserve
ourselves the possibility of not following the revolutionary thought of such
intellectual. Even so, the Yoruba tradition would still be largely explanatory
of the contemporary social reality in Brazil since the cultural manifestations
coming from Yorubaland undoubtedly correspond to the best preserved and
most widespread and practiced African cultural expression on Brazilian soil.
Traditions are reterritorialized in the Sixth Region.
Silva (2021, 39) understands “knowledge as situated and embodied.” The
construction of racialized identity, as is the case of African identity, is the
result of African roots and social and cultural interaction. Its developments
are associated with experiences of body socialization, leading us to glimpses
of African meanings of “body-territory”, with Muniz Sodré (2002) being one of
the main references of this theme in African literature in Brazil.
17 Oyěwùmí (2021) warns that the Yoruba language, which is not gendered, suffers serious errors and
translation problems when interpreted from the logic of Western Euro languages. As an illustration, the
word “bábà” is often translated as “father”, when it actually means “master” or “wise person”, without prior
determination of gender.
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In the dialogue between Dagoberto and Bas’Ilele (Latitudes Africanas, 2022)
during the interview, dierent and convergent interpretations emerged. The
first asserts: “What does ‘Africa in us’ mean? It means we don’t need territory.
It means that we are ourselves the African territory.” The theologian and
philosopher Malomalo (Latitudes Africanas 2022) makes his contribution by
explaining that “‘Africa in us’, for me, has to do with knowing how to deal with
ancestry and spirituality.”, in the case of “an ontology that was built by [African]
ancestors.” According to Elisa Larkin Nascimento (2008, 141):
[although there is a lack of articulation records,] the existence of similar
struggles, as well as the reproduction of African forms of organization
within the cumbes, palenques, cimarrones and quilombos, refers to a
community of longing and experience of freedom that marks the
phenomenon as a unity of aspirations that crosses the African world.
(emphasis added)
18
In the sharing of a common cultural heritage lies the main driver for
claiming access to African citizenship or multiple citizenship, whether African
people are geographically located on the continent or not. For Lélia Gonzalez,
Améfrica corresponds to an “ethnogeographic reference system, it is our
creation and that of our ancestors on the continent where we live, inspired
by African models.” There is no purely geographical restriction because
“it incorporates an entire historical process of intense cultural dynamics
(adaptation, resistance, reinterpretation and creation of new forms) which is
Afrocentric.” (Gonzalez 1988, 76-77).
Among concrete experiences and intellectual traditions that influence
the debate around African citizenship or multiple citizenship, the Haitian
Revolution stands as a pioneering undertaking in the search for endogenous
solutions to ancestral African knowledge. Haitian constitutionalism occupies
the role of a hermeneutic, epistemological and methodological key, not the
“basic locus of an essentialized history.” (Queiroz 2017).
18 Versão original: “[ainda que faltem registros de articulação,] a existência de lutas semelhantes, bem como
a reprodução de formas de organização africanas no seio dos cumbes, palenques, cimarrones e quilombos,
remete a uma comunidade de anseio e experiência da liberdade que marca o fenômeno como uma unidade
de aspirações que atravessa o mundo africano. (Nascimento, 2008, 141, grifo nosso)”
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We contribute, therefore, with a brief analysis of the Amefricanity in the
assumptions and principles referring to citizenship in the Haitian Constitution
of 1805. In the text, Haitians are treated as “blacks”, celebrating the term as a
“landmark of citizenship” and going against colonial strategies to destroy the
structures of African families and peoples. By stating that every Haitian citizen
is black, whether or not he or she is black, the document (1) neutralizes the
fragmentation of the African people, (2) assumes the autonomy and agency of
the black person as a subject (3) focuses on the African heritage as the core of
national identity and, above all, (4) configures the constitutional instrument
from an “anti-colonial subject of utterance, self-referenced in its collective,
emancipated from the edges.” (Santos 2021, 58-80).
The criteria for deining Haitian citizenship differ from Eurocentric
models because they are not guided solely by the principles of jus soli and/or
jus sanguinis. As Queiroz (2017, 75) clarifies, “Haiti oered citizenship to all
indigenous peoples, Africans and their descendants who came to reside in its
territory – that is, all those who potentially could have been victims of slavery
and genocide.” By radically inverting components of colonial logic, it managed
to recreate endogenous ancestral African knowledge through the regulation
of the unified African identity in its plurality.
Especially after the brutal murder of the young Congolese Moïse
Kabagambe, on January 24th, 2022 at the Tropicália kiosk in Rio de Janeiro, the
importance of incorporating race as a “guideline category for repairing the
historical debt with Africans, Africans and Afro-diasporic people who built
this nation” is beyond visible. (Silva 2022).
Among Pan-Africanist intellectuals, Silva (2022) has defended the
racialization of legal norms related to migration issues, in addition to
armative policies for Africans regardless of nationality. As a reverberation,
in the contemporary Brazilian context, of activism and intellectual traditions
guided by the Haitian spirit, many black social and political groups have
proposed the broadening and deepening of debates around the proposal to
grant automatic Brazilian nationality to African people born or not in the Sixth
Region. By arguing “in favor of automatically granting Brazilian nationality
to all black Africans and people from the diaspora, and the implementation of
armative action policies for these contingents”, it deals with the unity of the
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African community on the globe and the explicit racialization of political and
legal-institutional mechanisms.
Final remarks
The bridge between debates about African identity and the conception of
racialized and pluralist politics is a path of ontological and epistemic justice
claimed by African peoples for centuries. We highlight below some of the
contributions of this article and explanatory potentialities of Pan-Africanist
epistemological assumptions for International Relations.
Based on the bibliographic review, on data collection via interviews, it
seems to us that the African identity anchored in the common matrix has
been regarded as the possible solid base of the African renaissance in the 21st
century. At least via the African Union and in specific countries (such as Ghana,
Senegal, and Ethiopia, for example), there is a growing interest in promoting
dual or multiple citizenship for people from the Sixth Region. In order to stir
up policies of ontological and epistemic justice for the African people, civil
society in each locality, for example, African-Brazilian society, must continue
to organize itself and expand networks to revive complex themes such as self-
determination, the African presence in Sixth Region and the responses to the
sophistication of colonial rule instruments.
Reconceptualization of key elements of racial dynamics have a strong
impact on public policies of identity and citizenship through discursive
strategies of coloniality and, ultimately, on the self-image that African people
build of themselves from the Western aesthetic imaginary of “modern.” The
colorist nomenclature used by the Brazilian Census Institute – IBGE, which
distinguishes blacks and browns, is a perpetuation of colonial tactics that
foment disagreements, misunderstandings and disunity among the African
population based on phenotypic elements. That promotes, therefore, the
destitution of African cultural identity and the incrustation of a Euro-Western
nomenclature.
Conceptualization informs practice and self-determination becomes
essential. Recognizing the importance of this finding creates conditions for
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examining the producing and radiating role of public policy formulations and
colonial norms on processes of subjective self-identification on the part of each
social group on Brazilian soil.”
The fact is that the contemporary national citizenships of Africans,
regardless of geographic location, were not usually deined based on
endogenous principles and knowledge. Even though there is an interconnection
between culture, politics and law, the modeled citizenship for Africans in
the world follows the Eurocentric pattern of nation and state construction,
marginalizing Africans to sub-citizenship, either in comparison with
other citizens of the same country, or in the scale of the white supremacist
international system whose borders were arbitrarily defined in the neocolonial
context.
The reviews and criticisms of the concept of “African diaspora”, especially
after the institutionalization of the Sixth Region by the AU, open a new
discussion regarding the belonging bond of the African person and their
cultural roots. With the institutionalization of the “diaspora” as the Sixth
Region, new meanings of African identity and new semantic possibilities
reappear in contemporary international relations.
In line with the key provided by Haitian constitutionalism and bearing in
mind that the apparent non-racialization of the legal and political apparatus
consists of the very strategy of annihilation, we extend the proposal to conceive
the racialization of constitutional texts through multilateral international
treaties in AU’s scope. In addition, given the plurality of legal systems
endogenous to Africa, we guide the diversification of the sources that produce
oficial legal norms, relying on the African ontological contribution as a
basis for establishing assumptions and principles based on a legal ethos and
epistemological structures.
Finally, an emancipatory perception of the African people would
encompass that such identities – anchored in a cultural matrix and common
experiences regardless of nationality or citizenship – must be organized not
only through developmental lenses, the driving force behind the African
Union’s African Diaspora initiative, but also through those of the epistemic
justice and historical reparations as important pillars of the African
Renaissance.
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