Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26

“GHOSTS OF THE PAST”: HISTORIC MEMORY AS A FACTOR IN THE MUTUAL PERCEPTION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MIGRANTS IN THE USA

Dmitri M. Bondarenko

Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
30/1 Spiridonovka Str., Moscow, Russia
Russian State University for the Humanitie
Moscow, Russia
dbondar()hotmail.com

Abstract: African Americans, descendants of slaves forcibly brought from Africa to America hundreds years ago, and contemporary voluntary African migrants to the USA do not form a single “Black community.” Remarkably, this fact contradicts the postulates of many breeds of “Black nationalism” from the mid-19^th century onward, which argue that all Black people are “brothers and sisters,” because they share a common spirituality and have a common cause that demands their joint action all over the world. Among the reasons for this, differences in the reflection of the past in their historic memory play an important role. Based on evidence collected in six states in 2013 and 2014, this article discusses reflection in historic memory and place in the mass consciousness of African Americans and contemporary African migrants of the key periods and events in Black American and African history: pre-slave trade and pre-colonial time; transatlantic save trade, slavery and its abolition in the US; colonialism and anticolonial struggle in Africa; civil rights movement in the USA; and the demise of apartheid in South Africa. It is shown that contemporary African migrants and African Americans see the key events of the past differently. Even more so, each group sees different events as key. Many members of both groups do not feel that they share a common “Black history.” To some extent, visions of the past promote Africans and African Americans’ rapprochement as victims of long-lasting White domination. However, in the final analysis, collective historic memory of both groups works more in the direction of separating them from each other by generating and supporting contradictory or even negative images of mutual perception. In general, the relations between African Americans and recent African migrants are characterised by simultaneous mutual attraction and repulsion of two magnets. They understand that among all ethnoracial communities in the country, they (and also African Caribbeans) are the closest to each other, but myriads of differences cause mutual repulsion. The differences in the historic memory of African Americans and recent African migrants in the USA play a significant role in the fact that the “magnetic poles” of the Black communities both attract and repel them.

Keywords: African Americans, African migrants, historical memory, mass consciousness, intercultural interaction.

To cite: Bondarenko D., '“Prizraki proshlogo”: istoricheskaya pamyat kak faktor vzaimovospriyatiya afrikano-amerikantsev i sovremennykh migrantov iz Afriki v SShA' [“Ghosts of the Past”: Historic Memory as a Factor in the Mutual Perception of African Americans and Contemporary African Migrants in the USA], Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26, pp. 87–126.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/026/bondarenko.pdf