Abstract
The Predicament of Blackness is a groundbreaking critical ethnography of processes of racialization in modern Ghana. Drawing on 5 years of accumulated fieldwork in Accra and Cape Coast and archival research in Ghana and England, Jemima Pierre takes racialization as her site of study (p. 7). She formulates the concept of racecraft: “the design and enactment, practice, and politics of racemaking” (p. xii) in order to address the question of how and why race is important in a majority-Black African nation. Pierre looks at competing racial projects (p. 7) and very effectively demonstrates the continued salience of race from the level of global geopolitics, the state, and the individual in colonial and postcolonial Ghana. Seeking to address the problematic approaches of African Studies where race tends to be ignored, and African Diaspora studies in which Modern Africa is disregarded, Pierre successfully shows that parallel processes of racialization informed by global structures of racialized power affect Ghanaians in multiple arenas of their everyday lives. Overall, Pierre’s ambitious ethnography will have a significant impact on ethnographies of modern Africa for years to come.
The book is divided into seven chapters (in addition to an introduction and epilogue). Each of the book’s chapters focuses on a particular racial project. Chapter 1 examines the colonial era in Ghana, honing in on two social transformations that demonstrate the significance of race even under policies of indirect rule, namely, the replacement of African elites with Europeans and other non-Africans, and residential segregation built into Accra’s landscape through urban planning efforts. Pierre argues that parallel processes of racialization were occurring on both sides of the Atlantic, making Africans of all backgrounds “Black” in the Americas and “Natives” in the Gold Coast, with “Black” and “Native” both constructed as racialized others in contrast to European/White. This chapter also problematizes ethnicity as another tactic of othering Africans by contrasting them to conceptions of a homogenized European civilization (pp. 15, 20).
Chapter 2 examines the continuing impact of postindependence racialized structures. Here, Pierre demonstrates that in a country known for promoting Pan-Africanism, especially under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s social and economic relationships, both locally and globally, continue to be defined by hierarchies based on race and relative positions of power. Some of the examples she uses are of British firms that continued to control Ghana’s largest economic industries and Ghana’s neocolonial relationship to international lenders that championed certain economic policies which negatively impacted Ghana’s economy (p. 50). Pierre’s contribution here is to highlight the fact that even when the discourse of Pan-Africanism was at its height in popularity in Ghana, race continued to define Ghana’s position and bargaining power in a global hierarchy of nations.
Chapter 3 explores multivalent meanings of Whiteness in modern Ghana. Pierre examines both the valorization of Whiteness through aesthetic preferences and the association of White people in general with attributes deemed positive, such as power, money, and status. Pierre explains Whiteness from the point of view of Ghanaians themselves, broadly classifying Whites in Ghana as “development whites” and “Peace Corps whites” (p. 79) not only to show the stereotypes that circulate about Whiteness but also to highlight the larger forces of global political economy that lead to the arrival of these groups in Ghana. For people racialized as Black in Ghana, status must be performed, whereas for Whites in Ghana, it is assumed (p. 86). Arguing that status, wealth, intelligence, technical knowledge, and other positive characteristics are automatically attributed to Whites in Ghana (e.g. one student called Whites demi-gods; p. 73), Pierre effectively demonstrates that “whites enjoy a normative power that points to the country’s intimate relationship with global practices of race” (p. 98). Moreover, Pierre shows how these conceptions of Whiteness affect Ghanaian self-perceptions, such as parents calling a child who is attractive or educated “mi bruni” or “my white person” (p. 77).
Chapter 4 continues the examination of racialization processes in Ghana by focusing on the widespread use of skin lightening products in the West African nation. Pierre seeks to “understand the larger social field in which the benefits of skin lightening is established” (p. 104) by connecting skin lightening practices with upward social mobility attributed to lighter skin in Ghana and the multinational corporations that promote these products. Using interviews, everyday conversations, and bill-board advertisements for lightening products across Accra, Pierre shows that in this majority-Black nation, lightening one’s skin tone is believed to be associated with better life chances overall, mirroring similar processes occurring around the world in places like Jamaica and India, for instance.
Chapter 5 shifts the focus to racecraft in Heritage Tourism in Ghana. Using her experiences attending Pan-African Historical Festival (PANAFEST) and Emancipation Day celebrations as her evidence, Pierre analyzes these two huge events as part of a larger state project that engages the discourse of slavery by reclaiming racial affiliation between Continental Africans and those of African descent in the Diaspora (p. 143). Pierre explores the link between heritage tourism and motivations for economic development (p. 134). Simultaneously, she also questions the focus on slavery in Ghana that privileges the perspective of the Diaspora over that of Ghanaians themselves while also being decoupled from histories of racial colonization (pp. 126–127, 151).
Chapter 6 examines the interactions between Ghanaians and resident African Diasporans as mutually constitutive and influential processes that shape Ghanaian racial consciousness. As in other chapters, Pierre connects these interactions to larger global forces. Here, she explores US propaganda efforts in Ghana to promote positive images of African Americans during the Cold War (p. 165), large conferences of Black academics being held in Ghana (p. 168), and cosmopolitan networking events that provide opportunities for young professional Ghanaians and Diasporans from all over the world to interact together (p. 177). What Pierre ultimately shows is that while certain stereotypes of those from the African Diaspora do abound in Ghana, the encounter with diaspora Blacks shows the ways in which local meanings of the racialized (Black) Ghanaian self is, and has always been, constructed within a complex set of overlapping histories that are set within transnational understandings of race and Blackness. (p. 157)
With Chapter 7, Pierre lays out her primary intellectual contribution by focusing on how her book addresses existing gaps in African Studies and African Diaspora Studies. She explains the larger historical and intellectual trajectory that evolved from identifying the connections and shared experiences between Africa and the Diaspora to one that was more inward looking on both sides of the Atlantic. Pierre notes that this led to “first, a reconceptualization of understandings of race from its global and interconnected structural dimensions to more local concerns … second, it necessitated the end of the recognition of the coevality of Africa and the Diaspora …” (p. 195). In African Studies, scholars rarely deal with race or the effects of global White supremacy (p. 202). Moreover, they tend to focus on the local so much that in Pierre’s view, current studies of Ghana, for example, “deny the country and its people worldliness” (p. 204). For African Diaspora Studies, Pierre points out that Africa is often only significant in terms of its relationship to the Diaspora, and for many African Diaspora scholars, it remains in the past (p. 210). Indeed, most African Diaspora scholars do not deal with modern Africa (p. 212). Pierre’s intervention is to argue for a coeval understanding of Africa and the Diaspora that recognizes the parallel processes of racialization that impact people’s lives and beliefs on both sides of the Atlantic.
One of the strengths of this monograph is how Pierre continuously connects local practices and experiences of race-making with global processes and structures. Some examples of outside influences on ideas of race in Ghana include employees of the global development industry (USAID, World Bank, etc) who influence local perceptions of Whiteness in Ghana (p. 89), Blackface minstrelsy productions coming from the United States that shaped perceptions of Blackness and generated local theater productions in Ghana (p. 165), and multinational corporations that promote skin bleaching products across the world to countries formally colonized through European expansion (p. 111). Pierre argues in each chapter for taking into account the global systems and processes that affect racialization in Ghana. This is one of the most compelling arguments of the book, which reinforces the groundbreaking work of anthropologists such as Arjun Appadurai (1996), Anna Tsing (1994), and Charles Piot (1999), as well as other recent scholarship in anthropology such as Deborah Thomas’ analysis of geopolitical relations of power and larger global structures in Jamaica (2011). All of these authors challenge ethnographers to really consider the larger forces that shape the field sites, lives, and experiences of not only the subjects of interest but also ethnographers themselves.
Other key insights of this ethnography are the vignettes weaved throughout that chronicle Pierre’s experiences as a Haitian-American woman of the African Diaspora conducting research in Ghana. These stories provide examples of the effects of race in everyday life in Ghana. From her stories of being denied entrance to an independence celebration event because she was assumed to be an ordinary Ghanaian and needed a friend to, in essence, use his “white privilege” to get her in (p. 84), to Ghanaians asking her about the possibility of jobs in Haiti (p. 174), Pierre’s experiences demonstrate anthropologist Brackette Williams’(1996) point that anthropologists could not “… construct an identity for participant-observation that was autonomous of the range of role identities that constituted the social order of power relations into which they entered” (p. 92). Indeed, Pierre as an ethnographer was racialized as well, in her everyday experiences and interactions in Ghana.
By studying and analyzing processes of racialization in Ghana, Pierre brings African and African Diaspora Studies together into a critical dialogue. Her attempt to link them challenges long-standing practices in both fields, and also provides researchers with new approaches to understanding the connections between the two fields. Seeing racialization as parallel processes that affect those on both sides of the Atlantic allows us to move past the limitations in both fields.
Paradoxically, one of the few weaknesses of the book is tied to its strength: its focus on the global. Pierre clearly states that the book is not a local ethnography of a specific site (p. 7); however, the larger narrative could have been improved with greater detail of local practices of race-making. Overall, while Pierre did conduct interviews, there are too few formal interviews cited in the book itself. The book would have been even more compelling giving the reader a better sense of Ghanaians themselves and how they wrestle with processes of racialization. Researchers have to make choices about this balance between the local and the global, and while not all scholars may agree with Pierre’s choice, her monograph remains a stellar example of one particular way to write an ethnography.
Another aspect of the book that some scholars might take exception to is Pierre’s treatment of ethnicity. While she challenges studies of Africa that privilege ethnicizing African phenomena (p. 202), I would suggest that while race clearly has meaningful effects on people’s lives throughout the African continent, that does not mean that other forms of group affiliation (i.e. ethnicity, gender, religion) are insignificant. In fact, they are not mutually exclusive. Taking these other identity markers that prevail in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent into account would allow researchers to explore the multiple nuances and intersections among these many aspects of identity and affiliation that shape people’s lives across Africa.
Overall, The Predicament of Blackness is a thought-provoking ethnography of racialization in Ghana that provides a model for interrogating the global political economy that was created through enslavement and European colonialism and remains structured around ideas of race, and its impact on local understandings, contexts, beliefs, and actions in Modern Ghana. Moreover, Pierre provides a dialogic framework for engaging both African and African Diaspora studies. This ethnography is a valuable must-read for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars across the social sciences.