Predicament of Blackness

Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race

Pierre Jemima

What is the meaning of blackness in Africa? While much has been written on Africa's complex ethnic and tribal relationships, Jemima Pierre's groundbreaking "The Predicament of Blackness" is the first book to tackle the question of race in West Africa through its postcolonial manifestations. Challenging the view of the African continent as a nonracialized space – as a fixed historic source for the African diaspora – she envisions Africa, and in particular the nation of Ghana, as a place whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics.

Against the backdrop of Ghana's history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent and disruptive forces of colonialism and postcolonialism, Pierre examines key facets of contemporary Ghanaian society, from the pervasive significance of "whiteness" to the practice of chemical skin-bleaching to the government's active promotion of Pan-African "heritage tourism". Drawing these and other examples together, she shows that race and racism have not only persisted in Ghana after colonialism, but also that the beliefs and practices of this modern society all occur within a global racial hierarchy. In doing so, she provides a powerful articulation of race on the continent and a new way of understanding contemporary Africa – and the modern African diaspora.

Content

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Of Natives and Europeans: Colonialism and the Ethnicization of Racial Dominance
2".Seek Ye First the Political Kingdom": The Postcolony and Racial Formation
3".You Are Rich Because You Are White": Marking Race and Signifying Whiteness
4. The Fact of Lightness: Skin Bleaching and the Colored Codes of Racial Aesthetics
5. Slavery and Pan-Africanist Triumph: Heritage Tourism and State Racecraft
6".Are You a Black American?": Race and the Politics of African-Diasporic Interactions
7. Race across the Atlantic... and Back: Theorizing Africa and/in the Diaspora

Epilogue: Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa, Interrogating Diaspora

Notes
References
Index

Reviews

"In 'The Predicament of Blackness', Jemima Pierre makes an important intervention in Africanist anthropology, which is in dire need of analyses, such as Pierre offers, that illuminate the workings of race. This book is in a class by itself. It is not only a welcome addition to the field but will in fact inspire a new generation of African Studies scholarship that is more attentive to the cultural practices of race" – Bayo Holsey, Duke University

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