On Afrocentrism, Race and Identity in the Caribbean… [IMO]

this photo went viral on the internet amidst the "controversy" of the Exodus casting

After a very lengthy discussion on a facebook post, yes this is where a lot of discourse takes place in 2014, I was once again forced to evaluate my own outlook on race and how I see myself in this post-colonial modern world. The discussion surrounded a  “controversial” casting of a new movie ‘Exodus : Gods and Kings’ and the apparent whitewashing of the lead cast in roles as Ancient Egyptians. 

Among the questions I had to ask myself as a result of these discussions were : should racial profile in the casting matter? Why are we so upset about the casting of white as opposed to non-white, blacks specifically, in the roles? Are Egyptians (modern and ancient alike) even black anyway?

I found that I had two main criticisms coming out of this whole casting fiasco that led me to answering my own questions:

1. The whitewash casting of this movie was an oversight bordering on ridiculous, considering our modern societal climate.

As a  black man born,bred, and still living in the Caribbean, I must say I can’t fully grasp race relations in the United States of America. I'd like to believe this is true for the most of us. But I do have ,what should be, a universal awareness of the sticky topic of race and how it sets off, sometimes unwarranted, alarms. It should have occurred to  producers or casters or  whichever powers that be, that given the historical time period and location of the movie’s setting, and the racial sensitivities that exists today, it would have been wise to have a more racially diverse and balanced casting, that would have at least given an appearance of attempting to be historically accurate. In casting this movie  my sensibilities would have me throw a few racially ambiguous and/or black people up in there, in roles other than lower class and servant folk.

Of course, you want to cast persons that will bring out audiences to the box office: Christian Bale certainly will, and casting him alongside non-white actors to play royals and leaders would have been nice. It would have been smart actually. Maybe that would have sufficed to avoid a hashtag, “#boycottExodusMovie”.

This movie would have had the perfect opportunity of featuring non-whites in  leading roles in an epic and it was disregarded in favour of whitewashing, whether wittingly or not, the lead cast. In 2014 when people are more vocal in criticism of their entertainment, largely due to the internet, having the blacks play the “slaves” would not have gone unnoticed. The casting was a five minute internet scandal waiting to happen. So yes, racial profile in the cast should matter.

I seemed to have better expressed this thought  in a FB message I sent to one of my friends in continuing the discourse. He had asked :

“As it relates to accurate representation, which is more important, the story being told or the picture being seen?”

my response:

“to answer your question though... they can be true to history and also (inevitably) take some artistic liberty.... they will inevitable have less accurate depictions of people of that time... i'm sure the pool of American-Egyptian actors is very limited lol... but they should also try to be (somewhat) accurate in their visual depictions as well... I iterate that the smart thing to have done would be casting more racially ambiguous actors and adding to the colour spectrum of the primary and supporting cast as well... Egypt was always a very mixed group due to its geographic location and history especially... nowadays they are more homogeneous it would seem.. so mixing cast is a good idea... but they should have been careful to make sure its a more balanced mixed... they should have known there would have been a backlash in the country where race is still an issue #USA ... and that black ppl would not take well to seeing themselves depicted mainly as underlings when the casters could have taken advantage of the place and time time period of the setting to include a more balanced diversity”

By now you must be wondering “On afrocentrism, race and identity in the Caribbean” ?  I haven’t digressed. My next criticism follows.

2. Many of our under-informed internet-distorted manifestations of afrocentrism in our sense of race, history and identity is another unfortunate result of slavery.

Ancient Egyptian Papyrus

Afrocentrism defines an American ideology that focuses on the history and cultural contributions of Africans. The main connection with afrocentrism and the issues arriving out of the movie casting is that some of the most vocal protesters are of the impression that the lead cast should have been black because [they believe] ancient Egyptians were black. It has always been a hefty debate among afrocentric ideologies and their opponents whether or not ancient Egyptians were black and/or “Negroid”. Where afrocentrism meets conspiracy theory in when many an “afrocentric” will claim that ancient Egyptians were definitively black and that there has been a concerted effort by “the white man” to whitewash our history, painting over a whole culture and people as having Caucasian origin.

Examining both sides of the debate from the layman, scholarly and especially scientific perspectives my conclusions are: ancient Egyptians then and now are a mixed people ; their racial and cultural origins are hard to pin ; modern Egyptians would be the best representatives of what the racial profile of ancient Egyptians were.

Truthfully, I do not consider modern Egyptians as black. Wait… what did I just say? Just hear me out.

Egyptian school-aged boys

It is reasonable to assume that modern Egyptians accurately reflect what ancient Egyptians would have looked like. Of course there is a colour and feature gradient in which any given Egyptian might appear more Caucasoid or more Negroid but in any case I would not consider them black… wait… What?!.. If it’s any consolation I don’t consider them white either, though, by and large, they seem to be a Caucasoid group. {I can feel torches being lit already}. Their history is one that lends them ancestry from Eurasia as much as, or maybe even more than {guns cocked}, the rest of Africa.

I believe the idea that everyone on the largest continent in the world should identify as the same is a ridiculous notion. Egypt and most of the horn of Africa do not share the same history, and experience with colonialism as the rest of Africa. We cannot hold them to disassociating themselves from a race or ethnic group with whom they do not share a history. That, added to the fact that the majority of them don't closely resemble the majority of Afro-Americans or Afro-Caribbean, or western and southern Africans, should be enough for us, in the Americas, to stop making claims to a people and a history that isn't ours.

I believe the watered down, far from scholarly, “afrocentrism” that many of us do display is a sad act of self validation in a society that has taught us to look down on ourselves.  We want to believe that we are a great people who built pyramids and all that Jazz. We seek out information that confirms and asserts our greatness, whether or not accurate or closely related to us and who we are.

We should be focusing on the real reasons we are a great people. We overcame slavery, became leaders of our states and have been making progress in steady strides out of the darkness and cruelty that lies in our history. We've been surviving, and some thriving,  in a climate that puts us at a disadvantage, especially if we’re from a white dominated county as the USA.  We've lost a lot of our original cultures and identities and have managed to newly define our own. We do not need African history to validate ourselves, we need only our own history and accomplishments to do so.

If Egyptians don’t identify as blacks,fine. I don’t identify as Egyptian. I don’t Identify as African. I identify as black (regardless of whatever mixing some of us just love to point out), and I identify as Jamaican and Caribbean. There is no doubt that slavery and colonialism has significantly affected our sense of identity. Now when left to assert our own identity we often find it difficult. But why make it difficult? It has always been that peoples of the past identified as tribes and localities and nations distinguished by appearance,yes, but also locations and cultural practices. Why complicate things? Two things, for us, are certain. The first is that we are black (most of us) and the second is that we are Caribbean (or American or whatever). We easily identify with each other because of our shared history and experiences, our culture and our place in the world. Why hold on to things and places  and histories that don't belong to us?  

There is nothing wrong with getting connected to our roots and wanting the truth in our histories. But we must be wary that, in doing so, we don’t inadvertently grasp at everything that glorifies black Africa and demonize (although often rightly so) “the white man” ; that we don't claim the entire continent of Africa and its people as our own.  Instead, be rational and scholarly in your approach to information.

Jamaican school children

To make it simple, we only need to look at each other, look at our own faces, and look at the bits of the motherland retained in us and our culture to know who we are and the history we belong to and the people of the present we belong to.

Jamaica just celebrated it’s Independence Day and Emancipation Day. Let us focus on who we are and where we need to go as a people of our own.

“Out of many, one people”