Mr. Du Bois' mistake, a view on blackness

By Miguel Alejandro Bignotte

As a category of analysis, negritude described a Marxist-influenced movement of political and literary elites; emerged in the Caribbean of the 30’s, with the purpose of specifying the sociocultural and aesthetic identity of black tradition; against the political positions of their colonial metropolis, with which they had a relationship of dependence. 

Léopold Sedar Senghor defined blackness as "the set of cultural values of black Africa"; while Aimé Césaire, defined it as  "the rejection of cultural assimilation", proposing  the cultural above the political". Years later, Césaire would retract this concept because of its apparent racist connotations; as well as by the circumstances that ruined the need for the movement, especially of that category of blackness.

For the author, however, blackness has a broader framework, with its roots in human trafficking in Africa; with these essays, he intends to analyze blackness in that sense, different from the movement that coined the category. As an expression of this, he addresses the elitist vision (necessity) of W.E.B. Du Bois, versus the industrialist of Booker T. Washington; for which it also analyzes other forms of this elitism, such as the Black Renaissance of Harlem and the Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and even other non-elitist expressions, such as pro-capitalism Garveyism or the case of Morúa Delgado. 

Thus, in tight synthesis, it opens the diapason of that spectrum of blackness, addressing broader stages and spaces; which include other former colonies of Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon descent, with only one mention of such emblematic cases as SouthAfrica and Liberia. For this, he analyzes outstanding figures in various fields such as military, political, academic, literary and journalistic; in which we can find Morúa Delgado, Quintín Banderas, Juan Gualberto Gómez, Evaristo Estenoz or Juan Gualberto Gómez. 

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The work is not easy to understand for those who are not familiar with specialized subjects, such as history or philosophy; in fact, a review of the sharp eye of a consecrated intellectual is essential. That does not mean that it cannot be studied by those who do not know these issues in depth, taking into account that the author does not use elaborate language, although he does use very specific categories; therefore, a first reading is recommended to point out those topics in which it is essential to deepen; and then a second reading of deepening, which allows a maximum apprehension of the concepts, facts and historical characters used by the author.

Granados perceives himself as a Black, not a person of color or an Afro-descendant; And it is elementary that he does not do it because of the banal argument of the mere color of his skin. He is born into a family with an awareness of what it means to be black, and why being black means a different existence; his mother, the poet Georgina Herrera, was inspired by the black woman, and it about her it was said that she walked with her race and poverty on her back; his father Manuel Granados, a black novelist, was marginalized by Cuban cultural authorities, because he was considered a "black mouthy and marginal". These harsh circumstances influenced the author's thinking, and because of them he was born black and lived conscious of being black and wrapped by blackness; marginal by vocation and marginalized by racial origin, are the circumstances that traced his path as a Renaissance and free man.

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Despite the abandonment of blackness as a category, the author continues not only to study it in this broader spectrum; but it is inscribed within it and approaches it without fear, although in certain literature —based on the work of Claude Lévi Strauss— it affirms that there is no racial division of humanity. However, regardless of the political influence —sometimes opportunistic— that this thesis of biology has had, blackness will continue to need these qualities; to be able to address social phenomena that have not yet been overcome, and that have –at least as a base– what we have called race, and that does not always coincide with ethnicity. 

In this way the essayist, although not unaware of it, distances himself from black nationalism, and uses concepts as "Afro-descendant" with moderation; and does not use terms as "defensive racism," "exclusion of other races or ethnicities", or "affirmative action". Finally, the suggestion to the reader is to not only read the work but also studies it, and complements it with other readings; the request to the author will be to extend his essays to the phenomena of discrimination that occurred in southern Africa.