Louise Asmal
THE BLACK DIASPORA by Ronald Segal (Faber & Faber, R135)
THIS extraordinary compendium attempts to compress within less than 500 pages not only a description of the trade in human beings from Africa to the colonies of the various European powers, but also an account of the fate of their descendants up to the present day.
The resulting book is dense with facts and figures. Indeed, the author recognises in the preface that the task is virtually impossible, and that really what he hopes to achieve is to spark off ideas and inspire fresh insights.
Ronald Segal is a man of huge ability and passion. Unfortunately the passion hardly surfaces in The Black Diaspora except in his preface, in which he presents an apologia for his lack of political correctness in writing as a white man on such a topic. If his intention was to eliminate all traces of Eurocentrism, and to present the facts as they emerge from the history of the diaspora and the impact of that history on the development of black society outside Africa, then he has succeeded.
To my mind, however, he has succeeded at the cost of producing a book consisting of an unvarnished catalogue of facts, in which the sheer accumulation of horror almost anaesthetises feeling.
The terrors of the actual slave trade are bad enough. The cruelty of the colonists is, one is tempted to say, unbelievable, except that one knows from the recent history of our own country that no cruelty is taboo when the oppressors treat the oppressed as less than human.
By contrast, the slaves themselves clung to their hopes of freedom and often displayed the most extraordinary heroism and courage in their attempts to achieve it. By and large, slave rebellions everywhere were far more merciful to their white oppressors than the oppressors were to them.
Yet in spite of this, the slaves themselves and their descendants were not immune to the moral corruption of racism. The colonisers themselves were quick to seize on and foster the divisions between blacks and mulattos, or between blacks and Indians. The resulting conflicts proved terribly destructive. Elsewhere numbers of those who seized power, or their successors, lost their idealism and succumbed to the same greed and selfishness displayed by the colonisers. As Segal himself says in his preface, it is the ultimate injustice that ”the victims are so often also victimisers of one another and themselves”.
It is, I think, a major defect of the book that one is left with such a depressing picture. Attempts by Segal to alleviate this with chapters on black art, music, sport, and religion do not really succeed. The chapters on blacks in America, Brazil (evidently far from the miracle of a raceless society that is usually presented), and Britain are equally depressing.
Certainly this is partly the result of leading up to a particular point in time (the book ends in the early 1990s) when we are past the age of decolonisation and the hope that that presented. And whether or not the ”end of history” has really been reached, it is true that the world has at present no cohesive ideology which offers a vision for progress in the future. Perhaps in South Africa we may aspire to offer an example of race relations for the future, but South Africa does not fall within the purview of this book.
However, there are certainly lessons for us in the experience of the decolonised countries, which future writers may tease out. So often in the world of the black diaspora class structure manifests itself most obviously along colour lines, with the result that where blacks are at the bottom of the pile, and visibly so, the class structure becomes more rigid and racial resentments intensify.
Paradoxically, it is in one of the societies where this is seen most clearly that Segal sees most hope for the future. This is Jamaica, where virtually all those at the top are white, and growing richer, while virtually all those at the bottom are black, and growing poorer. Yet here Segal reflects that the Jamaican ”acceptance” of the slave experience produces a ”creative realisation of identity and meaning for the black diaspora”.
Tantalisingly, this concept is not explored further. One is tempted to hypothesise that Segal has in mind a colonisers’ truth commission. Whether or not this is so — and it is not an entirely novel idea — it is undoubtedly an idea which merits further exploration, and the book provides a basis for it.
Segal’s conclusion that the black diaspora provides hope for a world torn by ethnic divisions also deserves amplification and exploration. One may not agree that this contribution is absolutely unique to the black diaspora, but there is indeed a spirit of freedom and comradeship inherent in all struggles against oppression that is inspiring, and that in South Africa in particular we need to hold on to for the future.
It was the great-grandson of an African slave, Dr WEB du Bois, who wrote that ”the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the colour line”. This book lays starkly bare the bones of the problem.
Louise Asmal is a former honorary secretary of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement