The Igbo question on blackness

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Question?:

“How are you identifying that (Igbo) as Black culture? As I find Black culture to be an experience of Western society, Nigerian isn't Western? Black to me is an experience. And if I enter into a space of Nigerians even those on American soil not one will refer to themselves as Black, this goes for any African coming from the continent by way of let's say "plane" for semantics… why not Ghanian culture, being much of those who were stolen came from that area?”

Spliting this question in its two or three parts, first blackness is certainly an experience of western and not African society; and in this sense, we should speak of African societies as plural, because they are as diverse and complex —if not more— than Europeans. It’s also true that Nigerian society is too a western society, since it was determined and organized by Western colonization; as Africa in general is then a western experience in this same sense, so it’s safe to speak in Western terms, in which blackness is a category associated with Africanity, at least in its origin.

It could be a matter politically complex, because its cultural implications, but still —somehow— the reference; even with this ambiguity blurring the lines of race, geography and politics, with phenomena like the Negritude and the Pan African movements. I would say that reality is this ambiguous in its nature, since those categories are all imposed on it and not natural; which can explain the multiple conflicts of politics, culture and geographic entanglement; all of them (curiously enough) in areas originally under England rule, like India, the Middle East or the same central and West Africa.

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As for the second, about the Igbo culture, it’s then under the shadow of African blackness; but as part of this same ambiguity, and in its indigenous nature, it’s not a Western experience; because it predates the Western organization of that African experience. Adding complexity to this complex panorama, the Igbo culture would have a double nature in its Africanity; in which it would be Black but not Western, although we could chose to call it African instead of Black, in an artificiality to make the distinctions.

This should not be necessary though, since the object is defined by its functionality (objectivity); and not by its own consistency, even if this consistency is what provides its objectivity, as two different things. About it, and as digression, we should stablish the value and use of this categories as references; with consistency as the proper value of things, regardless of their perception, and objectivity as the value attributed to it in a function. The example of this is the act of “name the things”, not only as a religious metaphor; but in the anthropologic constitution of culture, as an artificial (technologic) nature of reality; in the attribution of (cultural) functions to the different phenomena of reality.

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So, even if Nigerians —Igbos in particular— doesn’t recognize themselves as blacks, they’re being categorized as such; as a convention referencing Blackness outside Africa, to avoid confusions with its political implications. This is regarding the other problem of Pan-Africanism, which —as a western political organization— is still a western experience; being the Africans who suffers the inevitable ambiguity of this categorization, as part of that western organization.

As for the third question, Africa is then a conventional category for the whole continent of reference; which for more even complications, would exclude the north Saharan area, to concentrate in the south, west and central ones. This is not for nothing, although it could looks incomprehensible for those African and some African descendants; but it responds to the difference of those northern cultures, more related to out of Africa determinations predating the European ones, through the Mediterranean subarea.

This would go directly in conflict with the pretentions of Pan-Africanism, as a kind of Afro-centrism; but that’s just the problem, as it would be just a movement of the western axis towards Africa; as an attempt at political adjustment, which does not solve but aggravates the cultural contradictions of that culture. This is the result of systematic distortion of the black (race) problem in United States, by its intellectual elitism; interested just in political immediate gains, justified in a moral supremacy from the unfairness of slave trade and segregation.

All that is legitimate, but different and progressively distant of the anthropological nature of culture and its problems; and thus doesn’t aimed to solve the political contradictions of segregation, but to turn the tables over capitalism; also, legitimacy doesn't means property, natural development or even feasibility. As a completely another matter, it’s different of that of the Igbo (African) blackness and its relevance; which comes not from its conventional Africanity, but from its exceptionality, with the ability to solve all this other contradictions.