Chapter 1

Part A – The “Radical Scholars”
In the first chapter of our textbook, Africana Studies, a survey of Africa and the African Diaspora as edited by Mario Azedevo (3rd edition)2005, we are given an background analysis on the study of Africa and African studies from a variety of disciplines and methodologies. In understanding the work that must be analyzed as students, we also need to understand the filters that exist to create them.

Most in African Studies realize the prior studies done historically across all disciplines contain many bias and lacked empirically soundness. However, the new researchers, also called ”radical scholars”(pg. 10), push to ensure that these studies involve research that is not “Eurocentric, but Afri or Afrocentric” in nature to correct or report unbiased, stereotypical or superior accounts of the culture, history, behavior and politics of Africa.
Two Sociologist from Kenya, D. Kayongo-Male and P. Onyango have specific issues with the methods used to gather data in researching African families. They indicate that problems occur from the types of methods (non-empirical questionnaires and interviews) from outsiders who may not have a full understanding of the culture of African families. They also indicate that translations of gathered information are problematic.
A non-African perspective of Religious studies has also been a large perpetuation of myths about the “barbaric” African. Scholars J. Mbiti, G. Parringer and A. Shorter in 1975 have provided works to show African religions as comparably respectable to other world religions and to show both similarities and differences with major religions such as Christianity and Islam (pg. 19.)
The benefits of these researchers to provide an Afro-centric lens is immeasurable, especially in light of the damaging historical perspective in which Africa has been portrayed for centuries. The families and religious beliefs in Africa have been exaggerated and stereotyped into exotic, sensationalist portrayals that lacked the perspective of cultural, economic, and psychological explanations from Africans themselves. The challenge here is that the African perspective may be over-reaching to either correct past negatives perception in lieu of objectivity. This would be true for any culture that wants to examine itself.

Part B
Aligning Articles: WorldFocus.org and Ruth Simms Hamilton’s Toward a Paradigm for African Diaspora Studies
The African Diaspora essay by Ruth Simms Hamilton is her attempt to provide a study of the African Diaspora from a global perspective. Three of the areas that she focuses in describing characteristics of a Diaspora of a people are as paraphrased as follows:
1. Migration and Geo-social Displacement
2. Social Oppression: Relations of Domination in reference to Race, Gender and Class discrimination and inequality
3. Endurance, Resistance and Struggle
In this analysis, the website WorldFocus.org provides meaningful videos, articles, and other forums from around the world. Two videos on World Focus Website relate to 2 of the three areas described by Hamilton.
One blog entitled, Living in fear: a lesbian in Zimbabwe shares her story, describes an increasing phenomena of homophobia against Homosexuals in many countries in Africa. As with the young woman in the article, being open about her sexuality causes her fear from her family, friends and the community. In Hamilton’s discussion on Race, Gender and Class, she states, “the relationship of race, class and gender is overlapping, forming multiple bonds of inequality, pulling across each other, conflicting with one and contradicting the other”(pg.23). The increase of hostility toward gays is an added layer of complexities facing African countries, communities, families and individuals.
Hamilton’s essay is careful to state that “peoples of African descent have been objects of oppressive social, political, and economic structures…”. She further states that “black people are not mere products of their economic and political situation, but products of the interaction between these conditions and effort to develop their own sense of what they are and what they want to be, to deal with life in particular ways and to live life as they transform life”(pg 23). It is helpful to put articles in perspective when looking at them through this philosophy. An article from WorldFocus.org entitled, West African leaders Pledge to Battle Corruption , aligns with Hamilton’s section on Endurance, Resistance and Struggle. Many of Africa’s internal struggles stem from the political, economic and psychological effects of colonialism and the realignment of power after many countries became independent. The tragedy is, that because the struggles are portrayed and perceived as the sole result of African’s inability to rule themselves and seldom viewed from the results of hundreds of years of domination and control under barbaric circumstances.