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Cautionary tales, United States immigration and the Fauziya Kassindja case: Toward a theory of cultural romanticism

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Cautionary tales, United States immigration and the Fauziya Kassindja case: Toward a theory of cultural romanticism

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Content CAUTIONARY TALES, U. S. IMMIGRATION AND THE
FAUZIYA KASSINDJA CASE: TOWARD A THEORY
OF
CULTURAL ROMANTICISM
by
Sonia Riera-Penney
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
Doctor Of Philosophy
(POLITICAL SCIENCE)
December 2002
Copyright 2002 Sonia Riera-Penney
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U M I Number: 3093808
Copyright 2002 by
Riera-Penney, Sonia
All rights reserved.
®
UMI
UMI Microform 3093808
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This dissertation, written by
under the direction o f h T.f\ dissertation committee, and
approved by all its members, has been presented to and
accepted by the D irector o f Graduate and Professional
Programs, in partial fulfillment o f the requirements fo r the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Director
Date D e c e m b e r —1-8-,— 2D 02
Dissertation Committee
h A
Chair
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ii
DEDICATION
This study is in memory of my best childhood friend Joyce Hasbrouck Miller
who passed away in the fall of 1996. Joyce’s wonderful presence in my early life
contributed greatly to my belief in my intellectual gifts. The memories of her good
deeds and of her immense love for Africa and Black Africans never strayed far from
my thoughts.
I also want to dedicate this study to the memory of those Americans who
pioneered and participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. I
refer particularly to murdered college students Michael Schwemer, James Chaney,
and Andrew Goodman. For these young men I have attempted to pay a large debt, in
a small way, by writing this dissertation. In addition, I wish to give special
recognition to African American activist Gertrude Wilks, founder of “Mothers for
Equal Education” formed in East Palo Alto, California, along with the late Hilda
Aarons and members of the Stanford University Jewish community. These activists
were the first in the State of California, to seriously address the problems of
academic inequity and African American students. I am mindful, that because of
these heroes I have traveled a long distance from the Civil Rights Movement, to my
position as secretary of the NAACP in Newburgh, New York, to becoming a
member of “Mothers for Equal Education”, and ultimately to my residency in Ibiza,
Spain, where Spanish citizens continually celebrated my African ancestry.
This work is also devoted to those individuals whose enthusiasm for the
betterment of all humans prompted them to inspire others. Author Betty Friedan’s
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very brave Feminine Mystique and Professor Aida Hinojosa come to mind, from
these individuals I learned to revisit the “self.”
My late aunt Margaret Barnhart Johnson, and my late grandfather Frederick
McKinney share in this work. They so well appreciated my love of books and my
constant need to explore the world of literature. Their personal encouragement and
the love they had for “Black folks”, always instilled in me the importance of giving
back to my community. They served as models of academic excellence by
consistently giving of themselves to peoples of African ancestry.
Finally, this work is also devoted to the tremendous support and love I received
from my wonderful son Corey a senior at U.C. Berkeley. The many sacrifices he has
made on my behalf so that I may conduct my research and write this dissertation are
too many to count.
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iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several individuals have provided support throughout this study. First, I
would like to thank Professor Alison Dundes Renteln my “Chair”. Professor Dundes
Renteln’s intellectual gifts, and her respect for graduate students and the structured
world they live in, is admirable.
It is with much sadness that I must posthumously acknowledge the tremendous
amount of guidance given to me by Professor William B. Lammers. His death was
tragically premature. He was a man of integrity and intellect, and I remain
immensely grateful to have known him and to have had him as a member of my
committee. Professor Lammers’ recommendations and professional insights were
invaluable. I miss him.
Michael Lofchie’s willingness to be a part of my dissertation committee is a
dream realized. I join the ranks of many who admire him for his intellectual talents,
teaching gifts, and his strong commitment to the student world. During his tenure as
the Chair of the African Area Studies Department at the University of California Los
Angeles, Professor Lofchie’s wealth of knowledge about the African Continent and
his respect for African citizens greatly influenced the development of my ideas for
this dissertation; his very strong leadership skills are admired by many. He is a
refreshingly unpretentious scholar. Professor Lofchie reminded me of Professor
Norman Jacobson of U.C. Berkeley, kind, compassionate, and always concerned
with the academic needs of their students. More importantly, I am mindful of how
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V
thoughtful and kind Professor Lofchie was to allow me to bring my young son
Corey to class during my early graduate days.
A very special thanks to Professor Barbara Solomon, in spite of the demands on
her time she agreed to serve as a replacement on my committee. This meant that she
had to “catch up” in a relatively short period of time on a great deal of work already
in progress. Without question, she contributed in no small measure to this enterprise.
Professor Solomon’s international reputation as an innovative educator is well
deserved.
I would like to acknowledge my debt to Professor Norman Jacobson (now
Emeritus) of the University of California at Berkeley; in my undergraduate years, he
was the first to appreciate and encourage my interest in the complexity of U.S.
immigration laws and in the problem of race. Hence, this dissertation is really a
product of Professor Jacobson’s tutelage, under which my intellectual identity
flourished. Like most of his students, I was awestruck by his brilliance and
compassion. A “teacher” like him comes along much too infrequently.
Lastly, the author gratefully acknowledges the Eli Lilly Foundation
Dissertation Fellowship. This gift is a high honor, and without it, I could not have
taken the time off to complete this study.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
v i
DEDICATION.................................................................................................. ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................. iv
LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................... ix
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................ x
PREFACE... ........................................... ........................ xi
Chapter Page
I. IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES AND THE
PROBLEM OF GENDER ASYLUM: TWO VISIONS............
Introduction ......... ............... ........................................................ 1
Political Criticisms and Community Disputes............................ 7
Literature Review........................................................................... 14
II METHODOLOGY
Review of Relevant Literature............................. .......................... 20
Experiential Knowledge.................................................................. 23
Extended Case-Method..................................................................... 25
Respondent Identity Data. ......................... 26
The Recruitment of Respondents...................................................... 27
Cultural Identity Questionnaire........................................................ 28
Asylum Survey Questionnaire.................................... 30
Focus Interview Setting..................................................................... 31
Advantage/Disadvantage to Respondents.......................................
Key Interviewees in the Kassindja Case........................................... 34
THE SELECTION AND EXCLUSION OF THE BLACK
III AFRICAN: MIGRATION POLICY AND THE
POWER OF MYTHS, STEREOTYPES, AND
IMAGERY
Cultural Romanticism and Selection and Exclusion................... 36
Historical Overview of Early U. S. Selection and Exclusion
Of Black Africans........................................................................... 40
Post Slavery Exclusion................................................................... 41
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vii
Chapter Page
Race and Refugee Policies............................................................ 43
Early Anglo-Christian thought on the Black African................. 44
Academic Scholarship on the Black African and Their
Descendants..................................................................................... 47
The Characteristics of Stereotyping....................... ...................... 53
The Print Media and Africanisms................................................. 56
American Apprehensions of Africanisms and Popular Culture:
The Hollywood System........................................................... 60
The Persistence ofNegative Images of Africanisms in the
Hollywood System................................................................... 66
Early Negative Romanticism in the Fine Arts.............................. 74
Early American Politics and Negative Romanticism.................. 83
Modem Politics and Positive Romantic Thought.......................... 89
IV. IN RE KASINGA: THE MYTHS AND STEREOTYPES
OF AFRICA REVISTED............................................................... 100
The Practice of Kakia in Togo ..... .................................... 102
Kpalime: A Cautionary Tale.. ......................................... 105
In Re Fauziya Kasinga.................................................................... 108
Women’s Rights Groups and the Kassindja Case........................ I l l
The INS Organizational Structure: Its Vast Complexity 115
Aftermath of the Decision............................................................... 118
V. THE DILEMMA OF CULTURAL IDENTITY:
THE AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN
RESPONSE TO KASSINDJA: THE MYTH
OF KINSHIP................................................................................... 121
African American Interface with Black African
Realities............................................................................................ 126
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Chapter
viii
Page
VI.
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS....................................... 140
REFERENCES............................................................................................ 150
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INTERNATIONAL
INSTRUMENTS ................................................................................. 166
APPENDICES ....... 168
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LIST OF FIGURES
ix
Prints Page
1. Para na te Varna ino........................................ 75
2. Repose................................................................................................. 77
3. Both Members of the Club........................................................... 78
4. The Cotton Pickers............................................................................. 80
5. Negro Girl with Peonies..................................................................... 82
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X
ABSTRACT
This dissertation is concerned with African women who seek U. S. asylum
protection under the U. S. Department of Justice’s May 1995 Gender-Specific
asylum guidelines and who claim to be victims of persecution under African tribal
customs. This study examines in particular, the successful, precedent-setting asylum
case In Re Fauziya Kasinga. Ms. Kassindja an African female from Togo, sought
asylum in the United States, where she alleged that as a female member of the
Tchamba tribe she was under tribal threat of female circumcision, often called
“female genital mutilation” in the West, and of a polygamous marriage to a tribal
elder.
The theoretical framework for this research suggests that there is a correlation
between the disparagement of African cultures and the success of African tribal
persecution claims. I refer to this theory as “Negative Cultural Romanticism”, a term
through which I attempt to convey the view that the problem of a gender-asylum
policy goes beyond the labyrinth of asylum jurisprudence. The issue of determining
which African asylees are permitted U.S. entry is related to prevailing assumptions
about a barbaric Black Africa. This study examines the extent to which the customs
of a Nation State are permitted to shape the United State’s Immigration and
Naturalization Service’s policy of cultural asylum.
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PREFACE
This dissertation also grew out of my long-term interest in United States
immigration laws and the selection and exclusion of Black Africans. Originally, this
interest led me to Bechtel International Center at Stanford University where from
1967 to 1972,1 became a community volunteer for the Community Committee for
International Students (CCIS); in which graduate students from Black Africa and the
Middle East, comprised a minority. During my interaction with these students, it
was apparent that my knowledge of Black Africa and African cultures did not come
from the true voices of African peoples but were expressed through the stereotypes
and distorted writings of early Europeans. These students conveyed to me that the
African is entitled to their own cultural differences, and to pride in these differences.
Subsequently, in 1987 to 1988, under the auspice of the Congressional Black
Caucus Foundation, I was one of nine graduate students chosen nation-wide to serve
as a United States Congressional Fellow with House Foreign Affairs: Subcommittee
on Africa, where I had extensive one- on- one contact with Continent Africans from
Sub-Sahara Africa. On these occasions, I was acutely aware of how the intercultural
misunderstandings and racism toward Black Africa served as a distinct impediment
in keeping a significant number of Black Africans from immigrating to the United
States.
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CHAPTER 1
1
IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES AND THE
PROBLEM OF GENDER ASYLUM: TWO VISIONS
Introduction
Worldwide, women make up the majority of refugees fleeing persecution and
other global conditions. Of this number, female refugees from Black Africa
comprise the largest group, although unlike their female counterparts from Asia,
Latin America and the Republics of the former Soviet Union, the traditional refugee
route into the United States is almost closed to refugees from Africa.1 However a
new policy in U. S. asylum jurisprudence offers African women a new route to entry.
This new path, calls for members of the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service’s (INS) Asylum Officers Corps (AOC), to take a new look at women
refugees who allege that they are fleeing their home countries because of persecution
1 For the most part refugees from African nation states are not the leading source countries of
legal immigration or of refugees chosen abroad by the United States This in spite of the fact, that they
comprise the majority of the world’s 12 million refugees. See Refugees and Others of Concern the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): 1997 Statistical Overview. See John
Daniszewski “U.S. Plans to Open Doors Wider to African Refugees”. (1998): A1 & A12. The U. S.
Department of State maintains that these small numbers of African refugees are really a matter of
efficiency, that African Nation States are more “tolerant” when it comes to receiving refugees. See
Lamar Smith “U.S. House of Representatives: Chairman, House Subcommittee on Immigration and
Claims (1998). What is not known is that the United States and other industrialized nations pay cash
strapped African nations to house Black African refugees from war-torn areas or other global
conditions. Also, nongovernmental agencies particularly Christian groups, have historically advised
the U. S. that Black African refugees are for the most part not culturally assimilable. Although, there
are exceptions most of these groups recruit certain Black African students for the many U.S. Christian
based Universities; or, as in the case of the southern Sudanese, and Ethiopian refugees, missionary
based groups have greatly assisted in their legal immigration to the U. S. The majority of the
Sudanese refugees are from the southern part of war-torn Sudan, known as the Christian sector.
Immigration scholar Nathan Glazer makes the point that for some groups there is the presumption that
there is either an ability or inability to assimilate into the American cultural complex (Glazer 1992:
256). Thus, an African group who has been Christianized is perceived as a reasonable risk for U.S.
entry. Note that legal immigrants are defined as those whose place of last permanent residence was in
a foreign country and who are legally allowed U. S. entry for the purpose of permanency. See U. S.
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2
based on their gender. With the combined formidable influence of women’s
advocacy groups and Christian missionary societies and following the lead from
Canada, this new arrangement was formally instituted on May 1995, by the United
States Department of Justice’s International Affairs division, in the form of
instructional guidelines (Coven 1995).2 This course of action was designed to assist
Asylum Officers in adjudicating exotic asylum claims by women who maintain that
they are victims of inhumane home customs based on their gender. Overall, the
guideline’s major objective is to instruct Asylum Officers on how to recognize
legitimate claims of gender-based discrimination and to provide them with
procedures and methods in order to evaluate whether individual claims meet the
standard for asylum refugee.3 The focus of this study is concerned with African
Immigration and Naturalization Service Fact Book (1997): 4, Washington, D.C: U. S. Department of
Justice.
2 These guidelines were actually proposed in 1994 by the Women’s Refugee Project of
Harvard who authored, and presented the first draft to the INS in March 1994. See Nancy Kelly
“Guidelines fo r Women’s Asylum Claims”!1993). In turn, the Department of Justice’s International
Division, developed their own guidelines using the Women’s Refugee Project’s recommendations.
See Phyllis Coven, “Considerations fo r Asylum Officers Adjudicating Asylum Claims From Women”.
(1996). I will further discuss this aspect of the Kassindja case in chapter 3.Canada was the first
country to introduce the gender-specific guidelines in March 1993. They were updated in 1996. The
Canadian guidelines sets forth general principles for Asylum Officers to consider, whereas the INS
guidelines are narrower in focus and engage more directly in U. S. Asylum case law. See Guidelines
issued by the Chairperson Pursuant to Section 65(3) o f the Immigration Act, Women Refugee
Claimants Fearing Gender-Related Persecution ”. See Nurjehan Mawani, “Determining Gender-
related Claims to Refugee Status: The Canadian Perspective,” Ottawa Immigration Review Board
(1993).
3 The Refugee Act o f 1980, Pub.Law.No.96.222: 2 &: Q (a), 94 Stat. :02 :02 provides a clear
legal foundation for the grant of asylum in the U. S. which is explicitly incorporated into the United
Nations definition into U. S. Law (Sec. 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act), and the 1951
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 19 U.S.T. 6259, 189 U.N.T.S. 150
(entered into force April 22, 1954), hereinafter 1951 Convention. As a concept asylum offers two
crucial parts (a) protection from immediate punitive action, and (b) a careful objective determination
of the need for longer-term protection. As a category, U. S. asylum status differs from refugee only in
terms of location of the person upon application; for example, an asylee refugee is already in the
United States or has arrived at a U. S. Port of entry, and “who is unable or unwilling to return to his or
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3
female refugees who seek U. S. asylum protection under this new policy and who
argue that they are the victims of gender-based tribal customs that constitute
persecution. This is clearly an alternate vision to the one that perceives these
customs as outside the purview of government and its intervention. Second, the
prevailing theme of this study is the examination of the impact this alternate vision
has had on both the African national and African American communities. This study
addresses some of the political criticisms and community disputes that have
engendered debate and controversy. These disagreements range from the
appropriateness of governmental interpretation of African tribal customs to the
influence of America’s apprehensions of “Africanisms” on successful asylum claims.
Also contentious are the roles feminist advocacy coalitions, human rights
organizations, and Christian missionary groups have played in attempting to
influence how Americans should view the tribal customs of Black Africa, and in
particular, traditions in the claimant’s home country. In what follows, I analyze each
of these concerns by drawing upon the successful June 1996 precedent-setting case
her country” and can show a “well-founded fear of persecution in their respective countries for
reasons of race, ethnicity, religion, political opinion, or association” (1951 United Nations Convention
relating to the status of Refugees, Art.1.2. United Nations Treaty Series No. 2545, V ol.189, p.137;
1967, United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of refugees, Art.1.2, United Nations Treaty
Series No. 8791, Vol. 606, p. 267). Refugees chosen abroad through the traditional route to entry, are
assisted by U. S. Embassies, INS field workers, and more importantly, by nongovernmental agencies
(NGOs). The President in consultation with Congress sets the sending countries involved in the
number of refugees admitted annually. However, refugees whether they are selected abroad or seek
asylum status in the U. S., must meet the same standards as to what constitutes a ‘refugee’. In
contrast to international law, Congress expanded the term refugee to include someone who has been
persecuted in the past, as well as someone who has a well-founded fear of future persecution (INA
Section 101(a) (42)).
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4
In Re Fauziya Kasinga.4 Ms. Kassindja, a member of the Tchamba-Koussountu
tribes of the West African nation of Togo, sought asylum relief in the United States
because, as she alleged, she was under tribal threat of the traditional custom of
“Kakia” referred to in the West as “female genital mutilation,” and a forced
polygamous marriage to a man 28 years her senior. Initially, Kassindja was denied
asylum status In the Matter o f Kasinga on August 25, 1995, in an INS “exclusion”
proceeding held in front of Immigration Judge Donald V. Ferlise in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania on the grounds that her allegations of tribal persecution by the
Tchamba’s custom of “Kakia” was not “credible” (1995). She was thus ordered
expelled from the United States.5 Judge Ferlise determined: (a) Ms. Kassindja was
not being singled out for persecution since it is required that all female members of
her tribal group undergo “Kakia,” and (b) the government is not the entity carrying
out this custom (1995). Ferlise concluded that there were serious inconsistencies in
4 In Re: Fauziya Kasinga M 3 476-795, 21.1. & N. Dec. 357, 377(BIA June 13, 1996). It should
be noted that the correct spelling is Kassindja. Her name was consistently misspelled in court
documents, academic journals and most news accounts. This case represents the second precedent-
setting political asylum case to come before the BIA, which involved a gender-related issue.
5 In the Matter of Fauziya Kasinga, 1995, Case No. A 733 47666 695._ Charges; (1) Section 212
(a) (6) (C) (i); (2) Section 212 (a) (7) (A) (i) (1). More of this aspect of the case will be discussed in
chapter 3. However, as of April 1, 1997, the so-called “Summary Exclusion” and deportation
proceedings have been eliminated, and one new combined process referred to as “removal procedure,”
was created in 1996 titled “The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.” This
Act gives low-level asylum officers the express power to deny immediate entry to aliens without the
proper documents by a process called “expedited removal to deport,” or to “remove” an alien who
arrives at ports of entry in the U. S. without the proper legal papers (Public Law 104-208,11 Stat.
3009-546). As a result of the passage of the Illegal immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996. If Kassindja had attempted to enter the U. S. one year later, she in all
probability would have been immediately deported from the U. S. Thus, Kassindja’s chances of
asylum relief would have been considerably lessened. It should also be noted that Judge Ferlise has
come under severe criticism for the way he handled the Kassindja case by advocacy groups and the
print media. Therefore, he does not make himself readily available for interviews and he is still
hearing asylum cases. See Fredric N. Tulsky (2000) “Despite Tales of Horror: Court Kept Many
Refugees Behind Bars”.
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5
Kassindja’s story, and ruled that there appeared to be a lack of persuasiveness, and
“ internal consistency” in her testimony. With the help of human rights
organizations Kassindja successfully appealed Judge Ferlise’s ruling to the Board of
Immigration Appeals (BIA), the highest immigration tribunal in the U.S. The Board
determined that a threat of forced female circumcision by the Tchamba tribe did, in
fact, exist, thereby overruling Judge Ferlise’s order of expulsion.6
The BIA reasoned: ’’ The applicant has met her burden of establishing that it
is both reasonable to believe and probable, that the mutilation she faces is on account
of her status as a young woman of the tribe who opposes the practice of genital
mutilation and is therefore eligible for political asylum.” 7
6 In Re Fauziya Kasinga, 2 1 1. & N. Dec.357, 375 (BIA June 13,1996). I should note that the
term” female circumcision” is chosen by me as preferable to the controversial term, “female genital
mutilation” (FGM) coined in the West by human rights activists, scholars, and the claimants
themselves. All of who consider the term female circumcision a misnomer. Other scholars refer to
this custom as: female genital surgeries”. See Sandra Lane and Robert A. Rubinstein (1996) “Judging
the other; responding to Traditional Female Genital Surgeries”. Although Ms. Kassindja is a
Moslem by religion, this tradition is not required by any religion. For the most part, it is custom.
More of this subject will be discussed however in chapter 3. I use the term “tribe” because Ms.
Kassindja and those who were her supporters, curiously, used the term continuously throughout the
asylum process, both in documentation to the immigration courts, news accounts, and throughout
Kassindja book, see Do They Hear You When You Cry (1998). Most Africanists rejected the use of the
term several decades ago employing the more modern use “ethnic.” This is especially interesting
because of the debate over the correct terminology of FGM. I suggest that the term “tribe,” as in
FGM, was carefully chosen to influence the evaluators of Ms. Kassindja’s claims because of its
primitive connotation.
1 In Re: Kasinga (1996) the common use of the phrase “political asylum” suggests that the
paradigm refugee is the lonely dissident at risk because of a conscientious refusal to conform to a
society’s political culture. See the United_Nations 1951 Convention. The BIA is part of the
Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and issues appellate
administrative decisions that are binding on all INS Offices nationwide. Thus, they are binding on all
INS Officers and immigration Judges unless modified or overruled by the Attorney General, or a
federal Court. However, it should be noted that the BIA is not a federal court, and its decisions are
subject to judicial review in the federal courts(/MS' Fact Book .Government Printing Office U.S..
Department of Justice 1996 Washington, D.C.). It should be mentioned that immigration Judges are
not judges in the traditional judicial sense, but are lawyers nonetheless. They serve under the
Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that operates as the administrative system, which
oversees the 179 judges who unfortunately receive only one-hour optional seminar on asylum issues
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6
Karen Musalo, a law professor and human rights activist, argued
Kassindja’s appeal. She based Kassindja’s defense on three basic premises. First,
Professor Musalo pointed out the alleged incompetency of Eric Bowman Kassindja’s
first Attorney. Attorney Bowman, accordingly, delegated much of the handling of
her case to his law clerk Layli Miller-Bashir, thereby denying Kassindja the benefit
of the proper legal council.8 Second, Professor Musalo similarly argued that in fact,
her client did not have an opportunity to clearly present her case forcefully due to
attorney Bowman’s poor legal representation. Third, Professor Musalo argued that
Judge Ferlise’s adverse ruling was due to his insensitivity, his lack of cultural
fluency, and his reliance on incorrect information regarding the Tchamba’s practice
of “Kakia” (Musalo interview, 1996).
at a yearly convention. The Department of Justice recruits experienced Attorneys to represent the INS
as Judges through its “Lateral Attorney Recruitment Program (LARP), which is administered by the
Department’s Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management. To qualify, applicants must have a J.
D., be an active member of the bar (no matter jurisdiction), and have at least one year of post-J. D.
experience. According to Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy, there are no real written
standards for becoming an INS Judge. That he (Creppy) primarily looks for seasoned lawyers who
are able to conduct administrative hearings. See U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
Memo. Washington D.C. February 26, 1999, and Lisa Getter (2001), “A M an’s Asylum Fight in the
Land of the Free.”
8 Much of the first hand information regarding the legal implications of the Kassindja case, is
the result of an in-person interview with Professor Musalo in Berkeley California (1996); Fauziya
Kassindja’s telephone interview during her book promotional tour (1998); Interview with Kassindja
expert witness Professor Merrick Posnansky (UCLA) anthropologist/historian (1998). Attempts to
interview Judge Ferlise were unsuccessful. Judge Ferlise does not grant interviews in regard to the
Kassindja case. This decision could in part be a result of the negative publicity he has received in the
media regarding his adversarial ruling in the Kassindja case. I was also unsuccessful in my attempts
to reach Layli Miller Bashir. She is co-author of Kassindja’s book and is depicted throughout her
memoirs as Kassindja’s heroine. She was primarily instrumental in bringing the Kassindja case to the
attention of the various women’s human rights groups, religious organizations, and to the attention of
Professor Musalo. She is a graduate of American University Washington College of Law. She is a
devotee of the Baha’i religious organization, and with her portion of the books proceeds, founded the
Tahirih Justice Center, a human rights organization that provides legal and other services to refugee
women. See Fauziya Kassindja (1998) Do They Hear You When You Cry?
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7
It is not the intention of this study to debate the morality of African tribal
female circumcision. The custom is merely used as a vehicle to explore the impact
that claiming a traditional custom associated with African communities as a basis for
asylum may have on those tribal communities as well as on the African American
population in the United States. This latter dimension is important because European
Americans have, with historical consistently, turned to Black Africa to account for
the cultural realities of the descendants of the enslaved African American (Skinner
2000).9 In the remainder of this chapter, the political criticisms and community
disputes that reflect two contrasting visions of gender-sensitive asylum will be
described. Finally, we will examine this double-vision in literature about culture,
race, and immigration policy. Of particular interest is the opinion literature
generated in response to the Kassindja appeal and to subsequent decisions.
POLITICAL CRITICISMS AND COMMUNITY DISPUTES
Those who continue to advocate a gender-sensitive approach argue that claims
by refugee women in particular are traditionally received with either insensitivity or
hostility by immigration judges and asylum officers who have difficulty relating to
9 According to Elliott Skinner, the principal reason for this attitude was that the dominant
Europeans, so long maligned Black Africa and the Diaspora, that their societies saw no reason to
judge both groups separately. The result Skinner maintains is that Continent Africans and African
Americans are still involved in a separate struggle to gain total freedom for themselves, and from the
Continent in which these myths and stereotypes are associated. I will use the term Continent African,
Black African, and African national, interchangeably, to denote Africans whose birthplace and home
state, is not in the America’s. Also, the term, Black American and African American are used
throughout to indicate those African Americans who birthplace is the United States and who are the
descendants of the enslaved African. See Elliott Skinner (2000), “Transcending Traditions: African,
African-American Studies in the 21st Century: The Past Must Be the Prologue, ” The Black Scholar,
pp. 4-10. See Elliott Skinner (1977) “History and Context: Africa and Afro-Americans, ” Harvard
University Conference on United States Policy Toward Africa. See Rupert Emerson (1967) Africa
and United States Policy. Prentice Hall Inc.New York.
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unconventional, foreign-based customs. They maintain that these claims are either
viewed as a “personal” event or are traditionally perceived as defenses that did not
qualify as political persecution. Some have pointed out, however, that the U. S.
should go further than the guidelines that Canada first promulgated by broadening its
policy to include not only race, ethnicity, religion, political opinion, and membership
in a particular social group, but also gender as a sixth category of what constitutes
“persecution” (Anker 1996).1 0
Those who oppose an emphasis on tribal asylum claims by women from
Africa argue that the language and tone of cultural asylum are ethnocentric and this
strategy is simply an attempt by women’s human rights groups and Christian
missionary societies to promote Euro-centric beliefs of what constitutes “civilized”
behavior. Questioning European American based assumptions that condemn African
social-biological customs, they argue, that it is important to understand the ways in
which these conjectures are based exclusively on the Western experience, and are
therefore, inadequate as a moral guide to the practice of ancient African customs
(Tamir 1995). Opponents also argue that the majority of tribal defense claims by
1 0 This view is reinforced by the fact that the 1951 United Nations Convention regarding the
status of refugees does not list gender specifically, and is viewed as a gender-neutral document. Also,
as I have already pointed out, International and domestic law has a decidedly narrow construct of
what constitutes “refugee”. However, Anker points out that the gender-based guidelines merely
acknowledges the rights of women as being universal in scope and they necessarily point out the
various types of ‘persecution” that are unique to women refugees. See Deborah Anker (1994), The
Law of Asylum in the United States. American Immigration Law Foundation, Washington, D.C. Ms.
Anker is one of the co-founders of the Harvard Women’ Refugee Project and she has tremendous
influence with the State in regard to this issue.
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African women are fraudulent and that they are willingly being used by advocacy
groups who wish to promote their human rights agendas (Stein 2000). Others
contend that these asylees are merely motivated to seek a better economic way of life
by engaging in asylum shopping— the attempt to maximize one’s chances by
choosing the State to which one will present one’s claim (Krikorian 1996). They
make the point that in most African States there are vigorous ongoing attempts by
powerful women’s organizations to eradicate any custom that is perceived as harmful
to both women and children.1 1
The success or failure of African female asylum claims appear to be
inextricably tied to America’s primordial views of African customs and traditions by
women’s advocacy groups, case adjudicators, Christian missionary societies, and
Americans in general. These shared racial assumptions are based upon the
misinterpretations of African belief systems generated in the powerful Hollywood
system, the arts, politics, and the print media. There is evidence that these
misinterpretations have made their way into American popular culture and continue
to influence how we view Black Africa and African Americans. I refer to one
manifestation of such misinterpretations as “Negative Cultural Romanticism,” that is,
the perception by groups of western cultures that other “out” customs and traditions
1 1 There are many grass roots women’s organizations throughout Black Africa and most are
attempting to address the issue of tribal female circumcision. However, many of these organizations
are women’s secret societies who complain that Western women are deculturalized persons and that
their assumptions of African cultures are based solely on the Western experience and are thus,
inadequate as a moral guide for African belief systems. See African EXPO Times, Sierra Leone,
Editorial page, August 28,1996, Equality Now, December 2001. See Davan Maharaj, “Kenya to Ban
Female Genital Excision,” The Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2001, A18. The results of the 1998
Gender-Asylum Survey will be discussed in chapters 2, and 5. The issue of Western feminists and
their relationship with African women is explored in Chapter 3.
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are bound by the rules of morality and ethics that characterize the Western world;
thus, for “negative cultural romantics” there is the prevailing notion that African
belief systems are uncivilized, wild, and nearly savage. Therefore, for the European
American, it necessarily follows that the Western Anglo-Saxon belief system is
superior.
A more “positive” romantic perception may be that other “out” cultures are
distinguished by their free expression of feelings, creativity, and community
awareness, and unspoiled by the puritanical and materialistic values of Western
cultures. Therefore, Western Culture is not viewed as necessarily superior.
However, whether one assumes a “positive” or “negative” stance, “cultural
romanticism” as I am defining it, is based on the existing historical stereotypes and
myths than on the fact, of the complex reality in which non-Westem peoples live.
The intent here is to convey the view that the problem of a gender-specific asylum
policy goes beyond the simple agreement on political forms and contemporary public
policy directives. “Cultural romanticism” as political theory, suggests that when one
nation state perceives another from a culturally romantic perspective, political
decisions involving the two states may frequently be based on principles that
contradict existing political rules but conform to “culturally romantic” perceptions.
Thus, the problem of State Actors determining which African female asylees
are allowed U.S. entry through a policy of cultural asylum and which are denied
residency through the traditional refugee entry route, derives from these prevailing
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racial assumptions and stereotypes of Black people, whatever their country of
origin and wherever they may reside.
Although it may appear paradoxical to speak of “romanticism” within the
same context as U. S. immigration policy, I am using this term to mean in a popular
sense. If we keep in mind that this term can be made operative in many different
ways and can take various forms of expression significantly different from its
classical meaning (Phelps 1893).1 2
It is my view that the Kassindja case illustrates the central core of “negative
romantic thought” about Black Africans and African Americans. I contend that
Fauziya Kassindja and subsequent genital cases rely on Americans underlying racist
assumptions toward the African continent. Thus, the tendency of African asylees to
exploit Americans racial assumptions in favor of a successful claim outcome, or, to
find other creative ways to entry, is almost inevitable. This attitude is readily
understandable, however, because the traditional refugee route to the United States is
not realistically available to them.
I will not argue that “negative “ or “positive” cultural romanticism explicitly,
is rule-defined, but that making such an argument gives us a plausible conceptual
1 2 Phelps discusses Alfred de Musset’s 1836 classic “Lettres de Dupuis et Cotonet,” in which
de Mussett expresses the futility of finding a satisfactory definition of romanticism. Two letter writers
try definition after definition only to find that something critical has been left out, or that the
definition is rather self-contradictory or that it is somewhat meaningless. They finally conclude that
the term “romanticism” consists in employing a significant number of passionate adjectives; which,
though meant to be amusing, is as useful a definition as many others that have been promoted. Phelps
points out however that de Musset acknowledged that the term “romanticism” is widely used in
various forms, but also argued that its use was an abuse in adjectives. See William Lyons Phelps
(1983) The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement: A Study in Eighteenth Century
Literature. (The Charles M. Pratt Fund donated this rare book to the Claremont Colleges Honnold
Library).
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framework for assessing the series of criticisms and disputes that are leveled at the
INS’s policy of “cultural asylum”. The object of this study is therefore to describe
how three factors play a central role in determining the success of tribal persecution
defenses.
The first lies in the denigration of African cultures and traditions. My
approach is to analyze the ways in which immigration and Black African selection
and exclusion intersect with the ideological function of “Africanisms” in American
popular culture. I will describe the evidence that points to a correlation between the
denigration of African cultures and the success of African asylum claims. When
evaluating cultural defense claims by African asylees, the assessor cannot help but be
influenced by both the ancient, and contemporary misinterpretations and stereotypes
of African customs. Decision makers are therefore predisposed to consider these
interpretations when adjudicating claims.
The second is the impact of African tribal persecution claims on both the
Continent Africans, and African American communities. Of particular interest is the
impact on identity formation, and intra-group relationships. At certain periods of
U.S. history, misinterpretations of African cultures by early European Americans
have created an atmosphere of ambivalence; and, in some instances, the hostilities of
some segments of the African American community toward Continent Africans, and
by Continent Africans toward African Americans. These concerns compel us to
view In Re: Fauziya Kasinga within a larger context.
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Lastly, the influence of women’s rights organizations and Christian
missionary groups will be analyzed. Questions have been raised as to whether the
influence of these groups skews the priorities of U. S. asylum policy, thereby
creating the potential for undue influence. That the interpretation of African tribal
customs consistently resurfaces as their focus of inquiry is problematic at best.
Therefore, it crucial to examine to what extent the State depends on the testimonial
expertise of these groups and Christian missionary societies for legitimizing which
African tribal customs are solecistic. Historically, these groups have played a
significant role in perpetuating the notion that there exists a cultural hierarchy of
racial superiority that favors Anglo-Saxon belief systems.1 3
Since government responsiveness to these societies is a precursor to a policy
of gender-asylum, it is also important to assess the extent to which their influence
has shifted the debate of exotic asylum claims from a public arena into the secrecy of
back rooms. The inevitable consequence of such a shift is the exclusion of
community input from those groups most affected, in this case, Continent Africans
1 3 Tribal female circumcision has historically been a very contentious issue for Christian
missionary groups who attempt to spread Christianity in Africa, and their vigorous campaigns have
resulted in the destabilization of various tribal societies. See Jomo Kenyatta, (1961) Facing Mount
Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuvu. London, Mercury Books. During my tenure as a Congressional
Fellow with the Sub-Committee on Africa, I witnessed the ongoing interference by influential
Christian missionary groups in their tenacious attempts to school Congress in the Affairs of African
nation states along with their racial assumptions of particular African regions. Because they testify
before Congress first-hand accounts of their knowledge(sometimes espousing erroneous
interpretations) of particular African-governments from everything to food relief efforts, to the more
sinister activity of African states, they are taken seriously by House Members. Their influence should
not be underestimated. For example, The Mennonite Christian Society and the “Jesuit Advocacy
Network,” to name a few, all track immigration and country conditions throughout Black Africa.
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and African Americans.1 4 It is thus also critical to examine why the State has not
taken into account any possibility that tribal persecution claims might pose severe
problems for the Continent African and African American communities. The
unfortunate union between asylum jurisprudence and African tribal customs can only
represent a troubling contribution to an already complex, and tense racial climate
between both African and European Americans.
Although this study may not assist us in understanding why “race”, a social
construct, is still central to the American character, it might well help us to
understand that perhaps the ways in which one comes to form one’s quest for racial
identity, may be one day viewed as a core component to harmony in American race
relations.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In the aftermath of In Re Fauziya Kasinga, a large body of opinion literature
has developed not only on that case, but also on gender-sensitive female asylum in
particular. The existing materials are for the most part authored by female legal
scholars, staff members of human rights organizations and academics. Most of these
groups are emotionally and politically linked to the issues raised in this study. The
majority of these readings therefore tend to lean heavily in the direction of their
respective political and moral passions on this subject. Even the few exceptions
1 4 African governments have repeatedly maintained that U. S. foreign officials have historically
failed to “consult” or “ignore” their warnings of bogus asylum claims). For example, Emile Short,
Ghana’s Commissioner of Human Rights and Administrative Justice, has consistently advised the
United States and Western Governments in general, to be especially prudent in accepting claims of
tribal persecution. See “Governments Cautioned about Bogus Asylum Seekers,” Pan African News
Agency, December 22, 2000.
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while more balanced, focus on the narrowest aspect of gender-asylum, evading
more salient issues. Yet despite these impediments, such materials remain
instrumental in illuminating the central issues posed in this study.
To a certain extent, the thesis of this study is not dissimilar to certain aspects
of “Critical Race Feminism “(CRF) as a theoretical critique of racism in American
society. The premise is that the experience of White Americans as the normal
standard for civilized behavior is subject to challenge. Expounded upon for decades,
this is hardly a new idea. This study, however, departs from CRF’s main theme that
racism is so inherent in American society and the Law that the possibility for a just
and equitable society appears remote (Wing 2000). This view suggests that
continuing discourse on these issues is limited and futile, and that U. S. racism
toward persons of the Black race should be considered a permanent component of
the American cultural character (Bell 1992). This scholarly stance remains not only
too polemical and discriminatory in tone; it also lacks both objectivity and balance.1 5
In her book Do They Hear You When You Cry (1998), Kassindja’s account of
her plight proves emotionally riveting, and plays on the appeal of an exotic romantic
tale. Her book becomes useful for the assessment of the theory of “negative cultural
1 5 Some researchers might argue that by declaring oneself polemically, through academic
scholarship, might signal e an attempt to register his or her perceived cultural invisibility in their
respective fields. Nonetheless, I examined as many of these articles as possible for the purposes of
this study, but more often than not, most lacked an unbiased position on this subject. See for example
the writings of legal scholarship by professors Derrick Bell and Kimberlie Crenshaw. Most of these
legal scholars argue that racism in the U. S. is permanent. They attack “liberalism” and the belief that
a “ just” and “equitable” society is available through the legal system. See Derrick Bell(1992) Faces
at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence o f Racism (Harper and) See Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil
Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas eds. (1995) Critical Race Theory: Key Writings That
Formed the Movement ( The New York Press,). See Adrien Katherine Wing (2000)Globa ICritical
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romanticism” that provides the framework for this study. She discusses at some
length, for instance, the practice the issue of racism toward African detainees by the
INS and cites a 1995 study that reveals that over 90% of detained immigrants by the
INS are illegals of color (190-210). Yet on the other hand, Kassindja ‘s negative
characterizations of African Americans throughout her book are astonishing, and
appear particularly prejudiced. In several negative passages, she vividly describes
the major prison villains during her incarceration by the INS as African Americans:
I turned around. A tall, skinny black woman was standing
slouched against the doorway. She was missing one of her
front teeth, her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, and her
features were hard and bony. She looked like she was
maybe in her thirties. She was smoking a cigarette and
looked really scary. I couldn’t stay here with a convict.
What if she was like the inmates in Hudson always fighting,
always shouting? They had to move me! (295).
Throughout her narrative Kassindja’s attempts to persuade the reader that
she is made of better cloth than is the African American.1 6 In addition, Kassindja
insufficiently discusses one of the major actors In Re: Fauziya Kasinga, Attorney
Karen Musalo- an oversight that renders certain aspects of Kassindja’s story suspect.
In critical events the important contributions of particular key actors are
de-emphasized, while those of others are exaggerated purely for dramatic appeal.1 7
Race Feminism (New York University Press).
1 6 In my telephone interview with Ms. Kassindja, I raised this issue; she has indicated that African
Americans were especially mean to her during her detention period. She said ; “They do not like us”.
However, Kassindja had praise for Congresswoman Maxine Waters to whom she described as
“wonderful”. This praise is due to Waters, along with Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s offer of
public support, the only influential members of the Congressional Black Caucus to do so. (Kassindja
interview March 15, 1998), (Musalo Interview February 12, 1996).
1 7 According to Legal Scholar Pamela Goldberg Kassindja’s book “highly readable.” However
she cites this aspect of Kassindja’s book as a serious omission in the sense that the significance of
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Moreover, Kassindja’s observations on skin color and race drive her
judgments and undergird her opinions. She treats Europeans with undisguised
reverence. In one episode, without realizing it perhaps, she describes her early
admiration for them:
My friends and I would run behind any white person we
did see calling out to everybody along the way, “ come look
come look”. Sometimes we tried to touch him, because we
thought if we touched a white person we would turn white too
(Kassindja 1998,12).1 8
Vron Ware’s research in Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History
(1992) provide an uncanny insight into the hierarchical relationship between African
females and their white female protectors. Ware examines the ways in which
African females, presumably sexually degraded and under threat by the hypersexual
African male has elevated and enshrined the white guardian. Her scholarship was
extremely beneficial in reinforcing some aspects of this study.
Through my research, it became immediately apparent that while we can point
to an abundance of material on the forced migration of African peoples to the United
States, we could also address the concentration upon this theme within U. S.
immigration history to the exclusion of other pressing issues, such as the role culture
Professor Musalo’s entrance in the Kassindja case is somewhat understated, since it was Musalo’s
brilliance as an attorney that (in my judgment) allowed her case to proceed successfully. Goldberg
points out that the second shortcoming in Kassindja’s book is its failure to capture the legal
significance of its precedent for asylum law. She admits however, that the book was primarily
designed for the lay reader. See Paula Goldberg review, Do They Hear You When You Cry, “The
Lawyer’s Bookshelf, “ New York Law Journal, June 5 (1998): 1-3. Although it should be pointed out
that the real impetus for minimizing Musalo’s importance might be due to Kassindja’s wish to enlarge
the heroic role of her co-author Layli Miller Bashir to whom Kassindja feels particularly indebted.
1 8 This aspect of my telephone interview with Kassindja was striking and perhaps indicative of
African female asylees positive images of white womanhood.
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plays in shaping immigration policy. This subject has escaped the concerns of the
large majority of mainstream social scientists and historians, even those who
consider the topic of immigration and ethnic inequality their own special fields of
interest.
Consider the fact that no viable place has been given in the Social Sciences to
the discussion of the exclusion, or the degree of racial discrimination shown toward
the Sub-Saharan African as a prospective immigrant to the U. S. A few exceptions
exist, notably the recent newspaper accounts of the inequitable treatment African
refugees have received by world relief efforts in contrast to the special treatment they
granted Eastern European victims of the Kosovo war experienced (Kempster 1999).
Bill Berkeley’s strong analytical discussion on the genocide trials of the Rwanda
government lead credence to the United States’ tendency to exclude refugees from
African wars from U. S. shores (Berkeley 2001).
In general, newspaper accounts tend to seek out the peculiarities of African
customs as a major theme rather than to focus on the inequity of refugee allotment.
Such was the case In the Matter ofKasinga (1995) where most of the print media,
particularly The New York Times, capitalized on the “primitive” aspect of
Kassindja’s home village Kpalime (pronounced pa-lee-may), her family structure,
and the seemingly backwardness of the citizens of Togo (Dugger 1996).1 9
1 9 See Celia W. Dugger, “A Refugee’s Body is Intact but Her Family Is Tom," The New York
Times, pp. B l, 6-7, 1996, and “African Ritual Pain: Genital Cutting,” The New York Times (October
5, 1996): A1 & A6. Although Duggers’ articles on the Kassindja case significantly helped to elevate
the notoriety of the Kassindja’s asylum claim. The presentation of these articles greatly assisted in
Kassindja’s case by consistently emphasizing the primitive aspects of the Tchamba tribal customs,
their home village, and the seemingly backwardness of the Kassindja family, members.
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CONCLUSION
This chapter both provides an overview of this dissertation’s focus on those
cultural defenses that emphasize African tribal customs, and establishes some
practical objectives. This study will concentrate on the problem of the INS and
cultural asylum policy by centering on several crucial issues: (a) the relationship
between U.S. immigration policy and the denigration of African tribal cultures, (b)
the policy impact of tribal persecution claims on the welfare of the Continent African
and African American communities and the serious limits placed on Black African
immigration in comparison to other sending countries; and (c) the influence of
advocacy coalitions e.g. women’s rights groups, and Christian missionary societies
on U.S. asylum jurisprudence. I will now turn my attention to a discussion of the
methodology of this study.
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CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY
This dissertation uses a three-part methodology to explore the intersection of
U.S. immigration policy and the diminishment of Black Africa and Africanisms and
U.S. immigration policy. First, it explores the “negative cultural romanticism” that
is reflected in racial assumptions associated with the selection and exclusion of
African immigrants. Second, it extensively examines how In Re Fauziya Kasinga
relied on the operation of “negative cultural romanticism” that in part, shapes U.S.
immigration policy. Third, it solicits and probes both the attitudes of African
nationals in the United States and African Americans toward Africa and Africanisms
and toward In Re Fauziya Kasinga.
In this chapter, there are three sources of data to be analyzed in one or more
of these parts: (1) relevant literature; (2) experientially based knowledge of the
African and African American experience; and (3) empirical data gathered in
telephone and face-to-face interviews with the key actors in the Kassindja case, and
face-to face surveys and focused interviews with African nationals and African
Americans.
REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE
An historical review of U.S. Immigration and the problem of culture and race
would not be adequate without considering the historical and theoretical works of the
following scholars. A review of these works reveals a great deal about the power
relationships between states and immigration issues of selection and exclusion. For
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example, Guy Lawrence Brown’s (1969) particularly fertile analysis in this classic
work Immigration: Cultural Conflicts and Social Adjustments, links immigration
cultural clashes to the American cultural complex. Still the only comprehensive
work to date on this subject, it remains invaluable. Brown offers an exceptionally
analytically viable explanation of ethnocentric conduct as being practiced by both the
immigrant and the native-born American with no one group or nationality, having a
monopoly on ethnocentrism. He enhances this study by helping to explain why most
individuals or groups are unable to dissociate themselves from their own cultural
character. He also goes far in pin-pointing why immigrants have historically adopted
the same stereotypes and racial assumptions toward African Americans as European
Americans do, resulting in a distinct cultural lag (Brown 1969).2 0
Melville Herskovits The Myth o f the Negro Past (1941), Joseph E. Holloway
Africanisms in American Culture (1990); Judith Carney Black Rice: The African
Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (2000); Jan N. Pierterse White
Black: Images o f Africa and Blacks In Western Popular Culture (2000); also filled a
tremendous vacuum in the cultural related research of this period.
The most exhaustive and comprehensive historical attempt at documenting the
experience of the enslaved Africans, and their forced migration to the Americas, are
Ira Berlin’s, Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries o f Freedom: A History
20 Brown’s work is highly unusual because most scholars tend to portray the immigrant solely as
the victim of ethnocentric behavior by Americans. Brown argues that all cultures exhibit ethnocentric
behavior and foreign nationals and immigrants who seek U.S. entry are no different. See Guy
Lawrence Brown, Immigration: Cultural Conflicts and Social Adjustments (New York: Arno
Press, 1969). This subject will be discussed further in chapter 5.
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o f Negro Americans (1998); Peter M. Bergman and Mort N. Bergman, The
Chronological History of the Negro in America (1969); John Hope Franklin, From
Slavery to Freedom (1969); Silvia M. Jacobs’s, The African Nexus: Black American
Perspectives on the European Partitioning o f Africa 1880-1920 (1981).
The concern with African behavioral definitions and cultural customs, still
occupies a significant place in present day academic research, particularly the
behavioral sciences. During the research for this study, this writer came across a
multitude of scholastic works, both national and international, that focused primarily
on the sexual ethos and other presumed realities of the Black African and the African
descendant, compared with other racial and ethnic groups (Panayi 1993). My
research showed that regarding the Black African and African American, scholastic
efforts appear to be prioritized in favor of: (a) sexual ethos, (b) tribal and or ethnic
conflict, (c) attitudes toward Europeans, (d) basic temperament, and (e) religion. The
scholarship on other “out” cultures focus much less on these issues than on
behavioral ones that primarily address: (a) religion, (b) ethnic conflict, (c) treatment
of women, (d) language, and (e) political equality.
An abundance of scholastic research has focused primarily on the customs and
traditions that specifically concern morality-based differences between the Continent
Africans, African Americans, and European Americans. In addition, a wealth of
research and newspaper articles also emphasizes the sexual ethos of the African
female and male as a primary topic. I did not find a comparable concern in literature
dealing with cultural groups in other regions of the world, for example, with Asia
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and the Middle East. In sociological literature, certain scholarship has
endeavored, with much criticism, to compare African sexuality with Western
models, e.g., patterns of extramarital relations, attitudes toward commercial and
casual sex, sexual abstinence, and patterns of kinship, family, and marriage.2 1
An analysis of the attitudes of the African American population toward
African immigration issues is mostly limited to a very few academic journals.
Scholarly research on the subject in book form remains extremely sparse and is
usually aired in one or two chapters about the economic impact of immigration on
the African American.
In summary, this literature assisted in establishing a theoretical framework
for analyzing whether the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service’s
cultural asylum policy is an appropriate vehicle to address the legitimacy of African
tribal customs. Furthermore, this literature also helped to define the problem
represented by U.S. selection and exclusion of the Black African from a perspective
based on the morality of African customs, a continuing theme throughout this study.
EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
Qualitative research methods in the social sciences has evolved from its
earliest period near the beginning of the 1900’s until World War 2 when qualitative
2 1 For example, at the University of Douala in Cameroon, there has been attempts to examine
how anthropologists contrast Western and African models of sexuality. Savage and Tchombe argue
that attempts by western scholars to construct a general cultural model of Black Africa is fruitless
because the diversity of social and cultural structures are too immense. See Olayinka M. Njiham
Savage and Theresa M. Tchombe, “Anthropological Perspectives on Sexual Behavior in Africa,”
Annual Review o f Sex Research £1994).
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researchers wrote “objective” accounts of field experiences out of a Logical-
Positive research paradigm. They most recently abandoned any notion of a distanced,
value-free researcher. The researcher is located in history, both guiding and
constraining the research process.2 2 The use of “experiential knowledge” as a
resource provides for the generation of ideas and alternate interpretations of data.
For instance, this author grew up in upstate New York in an integrated middle-class
neighborhood and school system in which racism was subtle, but nonetheless brutal.
Subsequently, I attended a Black private boarding school in the Deep South and
became deeply entrenched in the more overt machinery of racism. It is this
experience, however, that informed me of the proud history of my African ancestry
of which I was not previously aware. Why I asked, did Blacks in the north view
racism differently than Blacks from the south? Why for instance, did southern
Blacks appear more dedicated to keeping their African heritage alive, while some
northern Blacks worked so hard at distancing themselves from Africa, Africans,
southern Blacks and “Africanisms”? Why did ethnic European Americans, e.g., my
neighbors, Italians, Irish and Germans, constantly inform Black Americans that they
should go back to Africa, but seemingly lose tract of their own negative immigrant
history? The following extended case-method technique helped to explain this
phenomenon.
2 2 “. ...research begins and ends with the biography and the self o f the researcher. The events
and troubles that are written about are ones that the writer has already experienced and witnessed
firsthand. The task is to produce ‘richly detailed inscriptions and accounts of such experiences”. See
Normak K.Denzin, “The Art and Politics of interpretation, “ in Norman k. Denzin and Yvonne S.
Lincoln (eds.) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials Thousand Oaks, California. Sage
Publications, 1998,.335.
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EXTENDED CASE-METHOD
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The extended case-method was developed in the field of Anthropology by the
late British Anthropologist Max Gluckman, and expanded by his former student
J. Van Velsen.2 3 This approach is distinguished by its aversion to using practices
merely to illustrate abstract theoretical or cultural ideas. In a particular case, for
example, data-gatherers might employ a series of specific incidents affecting the
same persons or groups over a period of time in order to illustrate how these
incidents are related to the development and changes of socialization. Moreover,
persons and groups acting within the framework of their social system and customs
show that culture is not static and bounded, that the cultural community should be
viewed as boundaries that are in constant flux and forever infringed upon
(VanVelsen 1967).
The extended-case- method was useful in the preparation for both survey
instruments for this study. It was incorporated into the survey design by constructing
a series of follow-up open-ended interview questions over a period of two years; for
the express purpose of this research however, these surveys did not include income,
and marital status as significant variables.
2 3 Max Gluckman idea was to impress upon his students that the discipline of anthropology and
ethnographic data gathering should be able to make contributions to the sciences and to the
humanities. He emphasized systematic analysis, and his staunch position as an anti-subjectivist
scientist is controversial. Later on, he believed more strongly in the concept of “custom” rather than
“culture.” His student Van Velsen later developed this idea. Gluckman and Van Velsen both advance
the idea of rigorous and generalist anthropology; well grounded empirically, and tied to a scrutinizing
observation of lived human practices. See Max Gluckma, ’’Ethnographic Data in British Social
Anthropology,” Social Science Review 19, no. 5, (1961); Jan Van Velsen, “The Extended-Case
Method and Situational Analysis.” Social Anthropology, A. L. Epstein (ed.), (1967): 129-149.
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Two problems to note in using these survey questionnaires are that (a)
correlation is not necessarily causation: respondents of both groups could
conceivably assume a greater interest in African concerns if properly galvanized; and
(b) the pressure to give socially acceptable answers may artificially distort their
responses. I hope that anonymity has minimized this effect.
RESPONDENT IDENTITY DATA
A total of 360 respondents participated in the respective surveys, with each
instrument’s totaling 180 individuals. The majority of the African National
respondents identified Ethiopia and Eritrea as their home country, although, there
were participants from Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana. The majority of the
Ethiopian and Eritrea interviewees were not members of the academic community
and participated in restaurant settings. These patrons were for the most part
comprised of those from the working-class occupations, e.g., cab drivers, restaurant
workers, general service employees, and parking lot attendants. Some members of
this group, however, were recent immigrants of the professional class, e.g.,
physicians, and professors trained either in their home state or abroad, but who
lacked the proper certification or license to work in the U.S. The African students
from other African states were made up of graduate students.
By contrast, the African American participants in the restaurant setting came
from a variety of working-class backgrounds to the very professional classes, e.g.,
maintenance employment, hair salon operators, restaurant personnel, real estate
brokers, public school teachers, television news personalities, and computer
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technicians. The African American student respondents were comprised of
students from two high schools and of undergraduate and graduate University
students from four Universities.
In general, the respondents identified themselves according to their race and
nationality, e.g., African American, or “African”. For example, with the exception
of Ethiopians and Eritreans, African nationals always identified themselves as
“African” first, and nation-state second. Ethiopians and Eritreans, preferred to
introduce themselves as being from their respective nation states rather than from the
African Continent as a whole. The African American respondents varied as to how
they wished to be identified. Older participants in this group preferred the term
“Black” to “African American. The reasons varied: some were uneasy with an
African identity; others were more comfortable with the term “ Black” because of its
association with the civil rights movement.
THE RECRUITMENT OF RESPONDENTS
Originally, the selection of respondents was to occur during an earlier
academic exercise for a class project. Because the opportunity presented itself, key
persons were recruited in areas where African Americans and African nationals
congregated either socially, or at academic institutions, e.g., restaurants, high
Schools, and Universities. Thus, a two-stage course of action was planned for the
recruitment process. The aim was to select respondents at random so that they would
represent a diverse demographic. First, this investigator distributed questionnaires
at the above sites, and most respondents were surprisingly very eager to participate,
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particularly, African Americans, most of whom were male respondents. African
foreign nationals were somewhat dubious about the interview, and after some
discussion this investigator was asked to explain in more detail the relevance of the
survey. Most agreed that the survey was important and it would give them a voice.
Secondly, on average, the majority of the participants completed the questionnaires
within 10-15 minutes, with some respondents offering suggestions about other types
of questions they would prefer. For example, bi-racial African American
respondents felt that the question of a Black African identity and kinship did not
address their particular circumstances. This investigator thus suggested that, in the
follow-up interviews, one or two of the focus questions might address more
particular issues of identity.
CULTURAL IDENTITY QUESTIONNAIRE
The first questionnaire distributed was the March 1998 Cultural Identity Survey.
It was developed to determine the attitudes of African Americans toward their
African ancestry and toward the cultural and political goals associated with Africa
and Black Africans. It consisted of 10 open-ended questions including 5 questions
that solicited demographic information such as ethnicity, home state, age, etc. In
each case, this investigator utilized the “extended-case-method” approach that
involved focus group follow-up questions. Individual interviews were arranged with
the owner or manager’s permission when the site was a restaurant; when it was a
campus eatery, the site was located on a high school or University campus. In an
academic setting, if an individual could not make the group interview, this
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investigator was permitted to interview him or her individually. The majority of
respondents meeting under these circumstances would not agree to a one-on-one tape
recording of the interview. In this forum, one hour was the maximum time
scheduled. By contrast, focus group interviewees were agreeable to tape recorded
sessions as long as they remained anonymous. The respondents were told that this
investigator was interested in the operational capability of African Americans to
transnationalize their African ancestry. This investigator distributed questionnaires
in 1998 to students on four college campuses (N=100); two high school campuses in
South central Los Angeles (N=50); and to customers in two African American
restaurants in South central Los Angeles (N=30). On the college campuses, three
sites: classrooms, student eateries, and the campus at large— served as areas in which
to recruit students. The ages of the college students averaged between 20-45 years of
age (56%) (including graduate students), and took place at the University of
Evansville, Evansville Indiana, University of California at Berkeley, University of
California at Los Angeles, California, and Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, California. The students were told that the questionnaires were intended
for dissertation research.
In the high schools, the Women’s Educational Equity Act sponsored a
government-mentoring program for students “at risk” of not completing secondary
education. This investigator was allowed to use this opportunity to distribute the
“Cultural Identity” questionnaire. These students were told that the intention of the
survey was to test how African Americans expressed their African ethnicity. The
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total size of this accidental sample was 180. The sample was predominantly male
(87%) and female respondents (13%). The ages of the high school respondents
varied from 16-18 (27%). In the restaurants, the ages of the diners were between 41-
50 (17%). No respondent in the survey was younger than 16 or older than 50.
ASYLUM SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
Approximately one year later in March 1999, this investigator in the same
locations, dispensed the Asylum Survey Questionnaire. It was designed to determine
the role that a perceived kinship might play in the nature of the relationship between
African Americans and African nationals, particularly as the relationship influenced
their attitudes toward U.S. immigration and Naturalization cultural asylum policy in
general, and the Kassindja case in particular. The number of respondents in this
sample totaled 180 and did not include high school students. On the college
campuses this investigator distributed questionnaires to (N=100) students. There
were two Ethiopian restaurants located in the Mid-Wilshire district, most of who
were comprised of community residents (N=48). The patrons in the two African
Americans restaurants totaled (N= 32), with most being residents of nearby
communities. The participants were told that the questionnaire was designed to
solicit their opinion on the lack of a group social relationship between both African
Americans and African nationals. In particular, they were asked about their reaction
to the outcome of the Fauziya Kassindja case. Participants were given a leaflet that
described in some detail the Kassindja case history and its outcome. The majority of
African nationals were aware of the case from their friends or colleagues, whereas
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the African American respondents remembered the case from the Oprah Winfrey
show, news outlets, and family members. The participants willingly took between 10
to 12 minutes to read the information, although, the majority of African nationals and
African Americans were highly critical of Kassindja prior to answering the survey
instrument. The ages of the college students ranged from 20-40 (54%), while those
of the restaurant community participants ranged from 25-35 (46%). No respondent
in this survey was younger than 20 or older than 40.
FOCUS INTERVIEW SETTING
After the questionnaires were completed in both surveys, the follow-up
interviews were arranged. They were either tape recorded with the permission of the
participants or recorded in longhand by this investigator. Most follow-up sessions in
both surveys and in all locations were completed in two to three hours. Here, this
investigator sought to allow the respondents to elaborate on the “Cultural Identity”
questionnaire. The goal was to encourage participants to voice their opinions of the
efforts of Continent Africans and African Americans to operationalize their cultural
and political ties to the African Continent. The “Cultural Asylum” questionnaire
follow-up responses were designed to solicit more detailed opinions regarding the
outcome of the Kassindja case and to further test the role of kinship between both the
Continent African and the African American.
ADVANTAGE / DISADVANTAGE TO RESPONDENTS
Most of the focus group respondents in both the 1998 and 1999 questionnaires
agreed to meet during a designated time set by this investigator, usually, after five
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o’clock in the afternoon. Even though the time frame was planned to last 2 to 3
hours, there were occasions on which, because of the subject matter, this format
exceeded 30 minutes. Thus, depending on the subject, the time period was not as
rigid as it could have been.
At any given time, there were a total of 8-10 persons participating in 4 group
settings for both questionnaires. From the participants’ point-of-view, the direct
benefit was the opportunity permitted to elaborate on their responses in the survey,
as well as to meet other Blacks in settings in which they otherwise could not. The
real motivation for their participation may have been part social and part altruistic.
In both interview settings, only first names were used and tape-recorded. These
sessions provided the chance for this investigator to supplement my notes in
longhand. The one problem I experienced in this type of interview setting was that
the respondents (usually male) insisted upon interjecting their own opinions about
how the moderator should conduct the interview, and/or would not limit their
responses. Instead they pontificated about a question to which they were
emotionally attached. Interruptions like these occurred frequently either because
some members of the focus group felt a particular need to either school African
Americans in their misinterpretations of Africa, or because African American
participants felt a particular need to educate Continent Africans on African American
history or culture.
In general, these focus group settings under the above circumstances, posed no
disadvantage to the respondents. On the contrary, the participants were enthusiastic
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because of the nature of the topics and viewed the setting as a place providing
them with the opportunity to air their opinions.
The responses from the follow-up questions both from the Continent Africans
and from the African Americans indicated that both groups viewed each other with
suspicion and ambivalence. The Continent Africans were confused as to how to
describe African American culture; some argued that even African Americans
appeared at a loss to explain the characteristics of a united black culture other than
that in church, sports, and music. African Americans unanimously agreed that the
Continent Africans perceptions, while understandable, might be due in part to the
lack of social interaction between the two groups. Both groups admitted however,
that there is no real motivation to explore the possibility of strengthening social ties
between them. Interestingly, both groups were in total agreement that a U. S.
cultural asylum policy targeting African social customs is an issue that citizens of
African nation-states must determine without interference from the West.
The participants openly and generously discussed their opinions, despite the
fact that, as previously mentioned, some of the issues prompted emotional responses
that caused certain participants to lose focus and forced this investigator either to
refocus the interview or to stop the recorder in order to listen to discussions not
necessarily directly related to the specific question at hand. Moreover, respondents
usually felt a particular responsibility about how they represented their respective
communities.
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KEY INTERVIEWEES IN THE KASSINDJA CASE
During the course of this study Fauziya Kassindja was interviewed along
with other key actors: (N=5); individual members of the officers asylum corps of
INS (N=8); key staff members of human rights groups (N=5); staffs of other
nongovernmental agencies (N=6); and academic researchers (N=6), one defense
lawyers for African female claimants (N=l). All students and two key actors in the
Kassindja case, as well as most of the members of the INS Asylum Officers Corps
(AOC), and other INS personnel were interviewed in-person at various locations
from Los Angles, California, Anaheim, California, and Berkeley, California, with ten
individuals and organizations interviewed via telephone.
The information obtained through focus settings and individual interviews
was to accomplish the following:
To clarify the results of the survey questions.
To allow participants to develop and expand their questionnaire responses.
To present a forum in which both Continent Africans and African Americans
could express their opinions face-to-face.
To allow African American participants to elaborate on what they meant when
they identify themselves as African American or Black American.
CONCLUSION
The remainder of this dissertation is divided into the following chapters:
Chapter 3, which discusses the underlying racial assumptions associated with the
selection and exclusion of African immigrants throughout American history; Chapter
4, which analyzes how the outcome of In Re Fauziya Kasinga was influenced by the
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myths and symbols of West African social customs; Chapter 5, provides a
discussion of the African national and African American community’s response to
the Kassindja case; Chapter 6, which presents conclusions drawn from my analysis
of the research premise throughout this study. My objective in using the case study
In Re Fauziya Kassindja was to examine the influence of attitudes of “negative
cultural romanticism” on the various outcomes of asylum claims by African females
who sought to enter the United States by claiming tribal persecution because of their
gender.
In the following chapter, I will discuss the operation of “negative cultural
romanticism”, beginning with an historical overview of the selection and exclusion
of the Black African from the 16th to the late 20th centuries, as well as the racial
assumptions and stereotypes that influence the language and tone of cultural asylum
claims.
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CHAPTER 3
THE SELECTION AND EXCLUSION OF THE BLACK AFRICAN:
IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE POWER OF MYTHS,
STEREOTYPES AND IMAGERY
Cultural Romanticism a nd S election a n d Exclusion
In the history of U. S. immigration, American’s deeply rooted xenophobia
and their reverence of origins have been related to how it views the cultural realities
of the immigrant’s home State. Yet in the minds of Americans, no other part of the
world summons as much discourse on the problem of immigration and culture as the
Continent of Black Africa, whether that route is the “exotic’ one attempted by
Fauziya Kassindja; the traditional one; or, as in the case of enslaved Africans, that of
enforced immigration. Any examination of the issue of U. S. immigration and
cultural and racial involvement must therefore take into account the cultural climate
in the United States, both in the early period of immigration and in the succeeding
eras.
A review of relevant literature reveals an ironic interplay between cultural
asylum jurisprudence and African tribal customs that might in no small measure
emanate from “negative cultural romantic” stereotypes of both the African Continent
and the African American. In a broader context, these assumptions constitute shared
racialized ideas about ’’Africanisms” that intersect with American mass culture and
might well assist in successful claim outcomes for African asylees.
In this chapter I will offer a brief historical overview of the selection and
exclusion of Black African migration in general and the forced migration to the U.S.
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of the enslaved African in particular. Second, I will consider American
apprehensions about the African race as far back as the early 17th to 20th centuries
against which some of today’s fear and stereotypical representations are not far
removed. I have established that this negative imagery made its way from the pre
modem to the contemporary world and remains the icon of what the immigrant’s
home country, in this case Africa and African America, symbolizes to the Western
world. I will discuss the persistence of these negative representations in both the old
and present Hollywood system; the fine Arts; the print media; and American politics.
Third, I will examine the African American dimension because the negative and
denigrating images of Africa have been inextricably tied to this group for decades.
I will show how American popular culture continues to contain and, at times, to
celebrate a disparaging view of what some Americans erroneously perceive as
authentic forms of “Africanisms.” 2 4
Within the context of immigration policy and cultural involvement, I therefore
specifically intend for the term “romanticism” to mean imagery of other “out”
2 4 The term “Africanisms” is explained as something that establishes a distinct connection
between the culture of African-Americans and their ancestral history from Black Africa. The idea is,
that the influence of pre-American cultural patterns survived the middle passage and is representative
in present African American culture. It is important to note however, that the retention of
Africanisms by African Americans continues to be an arguable one. See Melville J. Herskovits The
Myth of the Negro Past (Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941). Both Herskovits and the late
American Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier entered into a very controversial debate over this issue. Dr.
Frazier vehemently maintained that the American institution of slavery virtually wiped pre-American
patterns of Africanisms and thus, the enslaved and their descendants, organized and developed a
culture distinct to their American surroundings. See E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the
United States (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Melville Herskovits however, offered
a counter argument by focusing his analysis on African survival patterns in the enslaved Africans
maternal family structure by showing a continuity of belief systems that are consistent with their
African past. See also Joseph E. Holloway Africanism in American Culture (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University press, 1990).
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cultures not based on fact, but necessarily real to the believer. For instance,
“negative cultural romantics” view “out” cultures as ungovemed by moral
constraints and devoid of the societal rales readily identified with their notion of
“civilized” societies. Their practice of “cultural romanticism” leads both to a
fanciful inventive indulgence of another culture as “exotic”, and to the degradation
of another culture as “savage” and “uncivilized”.
I suggest that to engage “negatively” in “cultural romantic” thought, means to
derive some emotional or practical benefit from it that assists in the positive
promotion of the presumed superiority of one’s own culture. For example, the
perception is that the “out” culture (in this case African customs) bears no
redemptive qualities and thus those African belief systems are incommensurable,
with those of the West. Remaining faithful to these myths and symbols is all the
more essential. This romantic appeal affords perceivers the opportunity to view
themselves as superior or special. In other words, the romantic exercise is gratifying
to the one who nurtures it. In the Kassindja case, for instance, the practical appeal
for her benefactors was the pleasure they received in viewing themselves as guardian
centers, or, as moral guides. “Negative cultural romantics” view other cultures not
necessarily according to fact, but through a condescension confirming their own
racial and cultural superiority.
“Positive cultural romanticists” also benefit both emotionally and practically
from their stance. In this case, the romantic’s goal is to be perceived as cosmopolitan
in their heroic appreciation of other cultures. “Positive cultural romantics” are
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therefore, fully cognizant of their vast appreciation of other cultures. Their
romantic viewpoint provides a lofty retreat from what is perceived as the “lowly”
and uneducated perspective in order to embrace the more favorable “rational” and
intellectual one. In fact, “positive cultural romantics” might go to great lengths to
portray the “out” culture in a decidedly more positive light. Furthermore, they are
less involved publicly or privately in promoting the superiority of their own customs
lest they also be perceived as narrow in thought, or unworldly.
I do not referring to the term “myth” in the strict anthropological sense, where
powerful traditional beliefs rest at the core of a society’s culture, e.g., the faith in
supreme beings, or in the origins or purpose of society. Here, I specifically allude to
the idea of “myth” advanced by mythologist Roland Barthes who was concerned
with the meanings of the human signs that surround us in our everyday lives, with a
falsehood or an unproven or illusory belief that functions as symbol, or images
(Barthes 1957).2 5
In what follows I show how historically negative images of Africans were
used over time to select or exclude the Black African from fully participating in the
2 5 As a mythologist, the aim in Barthes writings seem to be his attempts to make explicit the
connections between the artificiality of some human events which tend to disguise their historical and
social origins. He also suggests that myths are creations of the right or, the “petit bourgeois.” For
example, Barthes a French intellectual may view visual imagery in an art, photography or the cinema,
as an attempt by the bourgeois class to reinforce an ideology of capitalist society. Thus, myths that
are advanced by this class, according to Barthes, help reinforce the status quo. Barthes seems to be
saying that the point of myth is that their value masquerades as bourgeois or the ruling class
representations as facts. Therefore, it appears that the point in his work is not so much what the
meaning of things are, but rather in the way the meaning of things are advanced. See Roland Barthes.
Mythologies (1958, 1987).
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traditional route to U.S. entry. I contend, that it is these images upon which
Fauziya Kassindja and her supporters relied upon in order to ensure a favorable
claim outcome.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF EARLY U.S. SELECTION
AND EXCLUSION OF BLACK AFRICANS
Ever since the involuntary migration of Africans to American shores,
Americans concern with what racial and ethnic groups to exclude has for the most
part resulted in a continuing fixated fear of those groups whose units of
Culture is deemed incompatible with their own, starting with the involuntary
migration of Africans to American shores. 2 6 The arbitrary and discriminatory
selection and exclusion of Black Africans has been conducted with the approval of
American legislative bodies. Starting with the forced migration of enslaved
Africans, State legislatures, the Congress and the Executive Branch, have enacted
polices limiting the full participation of prospective immigrants from Black Africa
and the Diaspora, from seeking U. S. entry.
In 1619, Black African involuntary migration first took place at Jamestown
Virginia, to which a Dutch sea captain imported twenty Africans. From this period
on, the importation of the Black enslaved did not abate until well into the 19th
century, despite the Foreign Slave Trade Act of 1808 forbidding the importation of
2 6 Guy Lawrence Brown defines units of culture s “habits, attitudes, customs, and traditions”. For
example, religion represents one unit of one’s cultural milieu Brown points out that this unit is crucial
because it is linked to ‘all other aspects of life. Thus the unit of religion serves to influence moral
conduct. See Guy Lawrence Brown, Immigration: Cultural Conflicts and Social adjustments
(1969,p.347). See Fawn Brodie (1974) Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History.
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enslaved Africans (Franklin 1967,71-72). In spite o f this law, it is estimated that
from 1808 to 1860, approximately 2,000,000 enslaved Africans were imported
illegally (Jacobs 1981,41). Most scholars have agreed that enslaved Africans may
have settled on the Western Hemisphere by the time early Spanish explorers reached
the interior of America. What has been firmly established is that Black Africans
came to these shores prior to the Mayflower (Franklin 1967). It is not possible to
give an exact number of how many Africans were captured and brought to America
as slaves. Some scholars have estimated that a minimum of 50 million landed alive.
Others have calculated the number closer to 60 million, or at least at a minimum of
15 million (Bergman and Bergman 1969, 142). We do know that in fewer than four
centuries, the forced selection of millions of Black Africans from their homeland
commenced the journey of involuntary immigration to America for the sole purpose
of enslavement. According to Black Historians, the exclusion and repatriation of the
Black African became an obsession for White Americans (Bennett 2000).27
POST SLAVERY EXCLUSION
In 1912, a bill was proposed in Congress to exclude all Blacks of African
ancestry from U. S. soil indefinitely (Bergman and Bergman 1969). This event was
followed by the defeat of the 1915 proposed legislation that attempted to keep out
2 7 Historian Lerone Bennett argues that Abraham Lincoln from 1852 until his assassination
worked continually in his attempt to deport all African people from America. Bennett points to
Lincolns’ well known “State of the Union” message in which he proposed to Congress, a 15th
Amendment that would allocate funding to deport Black Africans to Africa, in particular, South
Africa, South America, or to the islands of the sea. Lincoln’s reasoning was the same as Thomas
Jefferson’s that Africans and White’s could not live together in equality in America. Thus, solving the
race issue. See Lerone Bennett Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’ s White Dream (Johnson
Publishing Incorporated, 2000).
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literate Blacks from U. S. entry (Bergman and Bergman 1969). This fact is all the
more interesting because of the role the National Association for Colored People
(NAACP) played in defeating this particular bill. The organization made vigorous
efforts to influence Congress to admit the more “acceptable” Black as an exception
to previous anti-African legislative efforts.2 8 In 1919, the Federal Government made
an exception to the exclusionary provision by importing Black immigrants from the
Caribbean to work as construction laborers in the various states. This practice
continued until well into the 1930s (Bergman and Bergman 1969). Therefore, during
the decades following the American Revolution, free Africans in the Northern part of
the United States worked at menial trades like those of longshoremen, white
washes, domestic servants, and boot-Blacks (shoe-shine men) (Fuchs 1990).
In the following years, Black African immigration under voluntary
circumstances was simply not a consideration. As early as 1924, Congress passed the
Johnson and Reed legislation with the intent to prevent major changes in the racial
and ethnic makeup of Americans. Limiting non-westem hemispheric countries was
not the Act’s major goal, but it was an attempt to influence the level of immigrant
composition by designating which sending countries could, or could not, expect to be
included in the immigration process (Yang 1995). Known as the National Origin
Act, this piece of legislation was specifically intended to reduce the number of
2 8 The NAACP deployed legislative agents to keep track of all anti-African bills introduced in
Congress. In the first 3 months of the year, six Jim Crow bills had been introduced. Therefore, it is
enigmatic why this organization chose to employ vigorous efforts to defeat this specific measure as
opposed to other anti-African bills? See Peter M. Bergman, and Mort N. Bergman (1969) The
Chronological History of the Negro in America
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immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe for the sole purpose of maintaining
the White ethnic makeup of Americans who were made up of favored immigrants
from the northern and western European Countries. This act was used extensively to
keep out Blacks of African lineage from U. S. entry (1995).
Ironically, in 1965 and as a result of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, a
liberalization of immigration was intended to end the Northern European bias of the
nativist-inspired national quota system of 1924. This piece of migration law only
served to perpetuate the root bias of the original national origins system by changing
the source of immigration from Northern Europe to Latin America and Asia,
intentionally excluding immigrants from the African Continent (Manning 2000).
RACE AND REFUGEE POLICIES
From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, the other favored set of foreigners
were those admitted under refugee and asylum preferences who accounted for 15%
of all immigrants during the last decade (Yang 1995). Despite the fact that the
majority of the world’s refugees are Black Africans, and are victims of unspeakable
war crimes resulting in the catastrophic loss of lives in the African states of Rwanda,
Somalia, the southern part of the Sudan, and Sierra Leone. Less than 4% of these
displaced Africans were considered for U.S. entry through the traditional asylum
refugee route (Louis 2000) and (Berkeley 2001).2 9
2 9 Louis points out that the international human rights movement is racially biased and their
continual practice of treating Black Africans differently than victims of European wars are negating
the tenets of human rights. See Pierre Antoine Louis,“The Inconsistency and the Tragedy of Africa’s
Neglect,” Human Rights Dialogue, Series 2, No. 5 (Winter, 20001): 18, 21. Also, the Clinton
administration purposely ignored the Rawanda atrocities consistent with the neglect of this Continent
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Therefore, even though the disassembling of the National Origins Act o f
1924 is viewed primarily as a victory for prospective immigrants of color, current
immigration refugee policies continue in reality to exclude more than significant
numbers of refugees from the African continent (Daniszewski 1998). For instance,
the visa eligibility process administered abroad is consistently characterized as
extremely fraudulent and racist (Tempest and McDonnell 1999, A1 & A18).
Administrative practices are characterized as discretionary, broad, and immune from
judicial review, almost totally ignoring the traditional route of entry for the majority
of Black African refugees. These deliberate acts of exclusion can be historically
traced to the early Anglo-Saxon view of Black Africa and Africans.
EARLY ANGLO-CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ON THE BLACK AFRICAN
By the middle of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Anglo-Saxon Christian
encounters with the African Continent and the Black African are recorded as
debilitating experiences. In their encounters with the West African, English
missionaries write that:
[the] typical Negro, unrestrained by moral laws, spends his
days in sloth, his nights in debauchery. He smokes hashish
till he stupefies his senses, or falls into convulsions; he
abuses children; stabs the poor brute of a woman whose
hands keep him from starvation; and makes a trade of his
own offspring. He swallows up his youth in premature vice;
he lingers through a manhood of disease; and his tardy death
is hastened by those who no longer care to find him food
(Panayi 1994,156).
by American foreign policy. See Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (New York: Basic
Books, 2001).
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In this subhuman image of the West African, missionaries intentionally forged a
stark and enduring opposition between the two races. Some scholars note the
devastating and long lasting effects of such images:
The negative connotation’s that the English had long
attached to the color black was to deeply prejudice their
assessment of the West African. If, as the English believed,
that the color Black epitomized sin and evil, then presumably
those same defects must be attach to the Black-skinned
person. (Woods 1997, 23).
In these accounts of Black Africans, English writers took pains to record how
repulsive they found “the African.” They justified these responses by pointing to
Christian theology. They were certain for instance, that the reference to “Adam and
Eve” in Christian theology was unquestionably a description of White persons.
Wood points out the emerging belief were that Africans were not part of the
“common creation,” or were members of a subhuman species (Wood 1997,23).
In 19th and 20th century France, it is not commonly known that African
female sexuality provoked both French scrutiny and scorn. The most notable and
tragic case concerned the 19th century sexual exploitation of a Black South African
“Hottentot” or Khol-San woman Saartjie Baartmann ( as the Afrikaans called her),
who is remembered in the West as Sara Bartmann the “Black Venus”
(Denean Sharpley-Whiting 1999). Under false pretences and with the promise of
large sums of money, an English Navy physician took Saartjie to Great Britain and
France during the early 19th century and involved her in sideshow exhibitions. The
young Saartjie was unknowingly deceived into believing that she would make large
sums of money by displaying her body. The Physician exhibited her young body in
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order to prove that the African female torso (with its supposedly misshapen
buttocks and genitalia) was inherently half-animal and half-human. After being
exhibited without clothing in sideshow cages for several decades, she finally died
poor, and destitute in France at the age of 25 (Denean Sharpley-Whiting 1999).
These depictions of Black Africans evoked only faint suggestions of human
existence, and it is my contention that this group has yet to fully recover from this
deliberate denigration. It is well documented that during colonialism the imposition
of Christian groups in African societies caused havoc for most of Africa
(Kenyatta 1965).3 0 Furthermore, it is partly because of these groups that the social
and economic progress of Africa has eroded; and history continues to show that the
majority of Anglo-Saxon countries still promote the idea that the Christian Bible
supports their interpretation of racial and cultural superiority. White missionaries
disseminating these ideas through their early accounts greatly influenced succeeding
generations of Northwestern Europeans, European Americans, Continent Africans,
and the African American (Emerson 1967). Negative films, travel books, films, and
academic scholarship reinforce these beliefs by consistently presenting distorted
interpretations of the Black race and have played a large role in the operational
3 0 In Kenya the tribal custom of female circumcision as practiced by the Gikuyu tribe, is
referred to as “irua.” As early as 1929, the Church of Scotland’s missionary practices in that country
included vigorous attempts to break down this custom by using blackmail as one of their coercive
tools. For example an order by this missionary group demanded that all followers and those who
wished to attend their missionary schools cease practicing this custom. According to Kenyatta, this
caused tremendous upheaval between missionaries and Africans. See Jomo Kenyatta (1961) Facing
Mt. Kenya: The Tribal Life o f the Kikuyu. As early as the late 1960s’, Rupert Emerson argued that
substantial American missionary activity in Africa was the major contact link between the U.S. and
the African continent. Emerson points out that American missionaries were so numerous in Africa
that their presence represented the majority of Americans taking up residence. This is still the case in
the 1990s. See Rupert Emerson (1967) Africa and United States Policy.
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capability of the “negative romanticism” of Black Africa and its descendants. The
ensuing section more fully suggests how these beliefs are reinforced by academic
race scholarship. As researchers and academics, including those of color, attempt to
explain the origins of "Africanisms”, they continually convey their erroneous
understandings of African cultures and its link to the African American way of life.
ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP ON BLACK AFRICANS
AND THEIR DESCENDANTS
The idea of assigning a normative value to racial characteristics and skin
color emerged as a justification for exclusion primarily during the romantic
movements in England, Germany, and France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
promotion of Aryan superiority greatly influenced negative perceptions of the
“African” in particular, especially among most English “Thinkers” during this period
(Bernal 1987). According to Bemal, the first influential academic study on racial
order was conceived in the 1770s by German scholar Johnann Frederick
Blumenback, of the University of Gottingen in Germany (1987) and placed Anglo-
Saxons at the top of the hierarchical ladder. Professor Blumenback located the Black
African at the bottom of the human order to show that the African’s humanistic
characteristics were dubious. However, Blumenback’s theory was one of several
academic race theories during this period that helped to promote the myth that the
Black African was a member of a sub-human species.
In the 1990’s, attempts by race scholars to explain American racial
assumptions continue to suggest that in the Western World in general, and in the
American context in particular, racist views of humanity are still based on the 18th
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century Aryan doctrine of racial superiority that claimed that the “Caucasoid” race
is naturally superior to the darker peoples of the world (Malcomson 2000).
Malcomson argues that early settlers in the United States perpetuated ideas of
“racial protectionism,” as they encountered Indian and African peoples, and that they
created the White myth of “racial belonging” in order to escape the starkness of their
own “Whiteness” (Malcomson 2000, 35-37). As Malcomson argues:
White Americans necessarily exist as if they were “pastless”,
instead of preserving the past the concentration is on the
“obliteration” of the past or to save selective, sacralized
recreations”, White persons view themselves as more
“valuable” than most (2000, 37).
Professor Alison Renteln’s scholarship on race and eugenics illustrates how the
effective use of false racial superiority theories by White political leaders during
World War II helped to justify the United States internment of Japanese Americans
(Renteln 1995). Employing a psychohistorical approach, her research suggests how
this type of academic extremism favored by Europeans and European Americans
managed to convince the majority of White Americans that racial assumptions
toward non-Whites were valid.3 1
In the 1990s, race scholarship continues to convey erroneous understanding of
African culture and its relationship to the African American way of life.3 2
3 1 Professor Renteln’s research on this subject is particularly useful. Renteln says: “The
Caucasian view of minorities appears to follow a common pattern. Frequently hyper-sexuality is
ascribed to the males o f a ethnic group, just as a high birth rate is attributed to the group as a whole.”
See Alison Dundes Renteln, “A Psychohistorical Analysis of the Japanese American Internment.”
Human Rights Quarterly 17 no. 4 (1995): 618-648. The supposed hyper-sexuality of the African
male is discussed in chapter 3.
3 2 Cultural misinterpretations are not limited to any one particular ethnic or racial group. It is my
contention that intra-group racism exists in academic scholarship and is no less damaging. Popular
African American conservative scholar Thomas Sowell for example, has argued for several decades
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"Depression, culture, and evil," a 1994 French medical-psychological journal
article discusses for example, the relationship between depression and feelings of
guilt from an anthropological perspective. This scholastic effort compares Western
and African cultures, and what the authors describe as the “cultural variations of the
manifestations of suffering between the two cultures.” They examine the role the
Christian concept of internalized evil (i.e., sin) plays in determining the differences
between the Anglo-Saxon Christian, and the Black African experiences of “guilt”
and perceptions of “evil” (Pewzner-Apeloig 1994). From the onset the very choice
of such a topic reveals a presumption that there are moral based differences worthy
of examination. Depending upon who conducts the study, the research outcome is
usually negative, particularly if the researcher is European. In addition, with the
multitude of similar studies available, the justification of such research is never
explained. What are we to discern for instance, from the Black African perceptions
of “Evil” versus the European Christian’s; what does this information really tell us?
Most research on such topics merely informs us of who sponsored the research and
its form of methodology; but the findings neglect to school the reader in why “race”
scholarship of this nature is beneficial or worthy of study.
that the enslavement of African Americans and the ongoing racism toward their descendants, have
little to do with this group’s lack of opportunity or advancement as an underlying cause of upward
mobility; but rather, it is due to African American’s inability to generate what he terms “human
capital,” e.g., “group specific skills, general work habits, saving propensities, attitudes toward
education and entrepreneurship,” answering the question, ’’What is it that allows certain groups to get
ahead?” See Thomas Sowell (1994) Race and Culture: A World Vie (New York: Kirkus Associates,
1994. Sowell’s scholarship is immensely popular among White scholars. He has received over 400
major paper and magazine citations in contrast to more liberal Black intellectuals.
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For example, a 1995 Howard University Psychology scholarship project
argues that:
[a] distinctive Afro-centric female moral system, does exist
in the U. S., and this moral base, is decidedly different from
the Western Christian system, in where absolute corruption,
is associated with human sexuality and social behavior.
(Leslie 1995, 37-52)
Black women's sexual ethos is the primary focus according to Leslie (1995);
their sexual behavior is “situated within their larger African religious-cultural
context.” Leslie attempts to show that there is a significant difference between what
she views as Afro-centric morality and western Christian beliefs. Leslie provides an
example of how both groups view unwed motherhood. The Afro-centric model
portrays this experience as a “mistake,” whereas, the Western Christian model
conveys it as a “sin.” Leslie concludes that according to this perspective, Afro-
centric morality differs from Euro-centric morality in that the Afro-centric model
actually empowers women, whereas the western Christian sexual ethos it describes
remains more oppressive because of its tenet of “absolute corruption”. In a positive
sense, then, there is a religious association of values; and it is not clear what Leslie’s
findings really imply. Are they an explanation that unwed motherhood among
African American women is justifiable because of the retention of pre-American
patterns of moral-based behavior? The “empowerment” of the African American
female of which Leslie speaks remains nebulous. She also implies that the heritage
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of Africanisms embraces a superior ethical position of “forgiveness” in contrast to
the judgmental Christianized position of “sin” assumed by White Americans.3 3
Once again, in order to clarify the effect of “Africanisms” on gender roles in
the African American family, a link to Africa materializes that ventures to explain the
differences between White and Black family structures. Comas-Diaz and Green
maintain:
Gender roles in African American families have been
somewhat more flexible than in those of their White and
many of their ethnic counterparts. This flexibility is
explained in part as a derivative of the value of
interdependence among group members of the more
egalitarian nature of many pre-colonial African tribes
(Comas-Diaz and Green 1994, 397-400).
Similarly, Comas-Diaz and Green hope that by associating various cultural traits
found in the African-American family with those held by unidentifiable African
tribes they might explain African American cultural patterns. Their central thesis
revolves around an attempt to find pre-American patterns of “Africanisms” that
presumes to clarify the origin of the disjointed African American family structure;
their research concludes that the operation of pre-American patterns of Africanisms
among the African American demonstrates that African American familial patterns
33
Although several historians share the notion that pre-American influences (in this case
African tribal customs) have shaped what we know to be African American culture, African
Americans as early as the 1930s and 1940s were not comfortable with this link. In fact, it is
astonishing to note, that several prominent Black scholars of this period, notably scholars E. Franklin
Frazier and W. B. Dubois, attempted to persuade the well know anthropologist Melville Herskovits
(who was a Professor at Columbia at the time) to rethink his theories of African cultural retentions.
Herskovits challenged the notion by these scholars that for African Americans the ordeal of slavery
wiped out pre-American patterns of Africanisms. These scholars feared that theories of Africanisms
as practiced by the descendants of the enslaved African, would be used to counteract the barbarism of
African slavery. See Elliott Skinner, “History and Content: Africa and Afro-Americans.” The Black
Scholar 30, no.34 (1999).
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are gender-neutral and that the primarily female-headed African American family
can best be explained by the retention of African tribalism. The problem here is that
no attempts are made to determine how these pre-American patterns managed to be
retained, or how it was concluded that these case studies could be ancestrally linked
to particular West African tribes. It is precisely this kind of unsupportable scholarship
that serves to effectively reinforce racist stereotypes about African tribalism,
Continent Africans, and African Americans in general.
Modem race scholar James D. Watson argues that persons of African lineage
are genetically predisposed to ‘laziness”, “obesity”, and possess more active sex
drives than do whites (Watson 2000). Garrett Harden, a Professor Emeritus at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, has consistently proposed strict limits on
non-European immigration due to what he perceives as the cultural and racial
inferiority of these groups (Hardin 1997). Hardin maintains that sending food relief
to the African state of Ethiopia is unwise and harmful because it only encourages
population growth. African American scholar Orlando Patterson advances the
argument that American slavery conferred on succeeding generations of African
males several social dysfunctions, most of which continues in present-day society.
Patterson posits that African American males abide by an entrenched belief system
that is pathological in nature and harbors “irresponsible and immature attitudes
toward sexual reproduction, and black macho sexual dalliances”(Patterson 1998,34).
However, there are some recent scholars who note that there is an increase in
responsible academic reporting on the cultural contributions to America of enslaved
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Africans. For example, Judith Carney’s excellent book, Black Rice: The African
Origins o f Rice Cultivation in the Americas, argues that the agricultural expertise of
the enslaved African in crop development was without question a significant
contribution to American culture (Carney 2001). She rejects the long- standing
arguments waged by earlier academics that enslaved Africans were unable to make
significant donations to American technological advancement. As its central focus,
the book examines the origins of African rice brought to America by African slaves.
More importantly, Carney shows how English colonists exploited slaves for their
agricultural know-how in the cultivation of rice crops. In a recent interview in The
Los Angeles Times, Carney emphatically explains: “Cotton and slaves everyone
knows about, everybody’s seen Gone With the Wind, and their image of slavery stops
there” (Jalon 2001, El & 4). These stereotypes can in part be explained by the
following scholarship on the human characteristics of stereotyping.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF STEREOTYPING
In explaining stereotypical behavior by racial and ethnic groups, researchers
have come to various conclusions. Some argue, “social, ethnic, and racial
stereotypes, are the pictures in the head that members of one group form of other
groups“(Siegleman and Tuch 1997). They further contend that:
[s] tereotypes are often uncomplimentary, in addition to their
purely cognitive function; they are motivated by an
ethnocentric bias to enhance one’s own group and to
disparage out-groups (1997,43).
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Others argue that stereotyping pertains to “self-image maintenance
processes.” For instance, they point out that most studies on the characteristics of
stereotyping have largely demonstrated that when individuals have a positive
self-image they are less likely to evaluate persons, or groups negatively (Fein and
Spencer 1997, 31-44). Hence, stereotyping and prejudice might commonly provide
the futile means of maintaining a notion of the “self’.
Recently, several studies have demonstrated that stereotypes implicitly
influence inferences made about others. For instance, the central research
emphasizes how individuals formulate stereotypes based on unspecified details and
ambiguities of social behavior, e.g., what stimulus the individual reacted to, what
caused the individual to act. They find that inferences occur when individuals
encode the relevant information (Dunning and Sherman 1997).
However, the discussion of the individual’s response to particular persons or
groups, while interesting, does not explain the influence of the group on individual
behavior. In order to explain this phenomenon, some scholars argue that stereotypes
are strongly influenced by the “perceivers group”, e.g., by inter-group perception.
They suggest that stereotypes are multidimensional with traits ascribed to the target
group being only one dimension” (Worchel and Rothgerber 1997). Their research
expands the definition of stereotyping to embrace other components, the roots of
stereotypes as well as the crucial role culture plays in stereotyping. Thus, to support
this thesis, is to lend credence to the very stereotypical and mythical symbols
undergirding “negative cultural romantized“ behavior. For some White Americans
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this mythology is not only real; it provides the necessary elements in maintaining
power and status and operates to the severe detriment of the Continent African and
the African American communities. According to recent research, this type of White
prejudice behavior toward Black Africans and African Americans has not
significantly abated since World War II.
For instance, a recent study by Florida Atlantic University examined whether
the tendency for recent cohorts of White American adults to be less prejudiced
toward African Americans than their elders has continued. The study indicated that
overall, current White American adults tend to be just as prejudiced as their
forbearers with a slight variation. The primary concern of this research was to
determine whether this tendency extends toward other ethnic groups. Using data
from a national sample of White adults, Wilson focuses on stereotypes and social
distance attitudes in regard to African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews. The
samples ranged in size from 1,011 respondents in the analysis of social distance from
African Americans to the 860 respondents in the analysis of anti-Asian and Jewish
stereotypes. Results of the study showed that cohorts bom just after World War II
tend to be less prejudiced than prewar cohorts toward each of the four minority
groups, but that the most recent body of White Americans is not less prejudiced than
their immediate predecessors bom since World War II. In fact, this study indicated
that the most-recent cohorts residing outside of the South tend to be more prejudice
than their elders (Wilson 1996). The following discussion on Media stereotypes
illustrates this point.
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THE PRINT MEDIA AND AFRICANISMS
As I discussed in chapter 1, by capitalizing on what has been characterized as
the “barbaric” nature of the Tchamba tribe’s sexual customs and “uncivilized” home
environment, major newspapers played a huge part in the success of the Kassindja
case. In newspapers with international coverage, feature stories on African customs
often monopolize the front page, while critical issues like warfare and ethnic conflict
usually receive little or no notice. For example, the African States of Ethiopia and
Eritrea are engaged in an ongoing violent ethnic conflict over a borderland dispute.
Most Americans, however, were not sufficiently aware of the conflict and it went
unnoticed that in 1999, both sides in the conflict experienced the loss of thousands of
soldiers and civilians. (Rivera 1999).
More enigmatic is the sparse print coverage given to the violent conflicts in
the Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the extremely brutal war in Rwanda, where thousands
of Rwandans were massacred and displaced. By contrast, the ethnic warfare in the
former Soviet Republics transfixed the world and resulted in the U. S. commitment
to take in over 300,000 refugees, received continual front-page attention (Kempster
1999, Louis 2001).
From August 1998 to September 1999, The Los Angeles Times covered the
following stories on Africa on either the front page or in the front section. All of
these stories were concerned with morality-based issues. For instance, “ Africa’ s
Silent Shame, Rape, is Spreading AIDS to Young Children: The Trend is Fueled by
Unscrupulous Healers who Suggest that Having Sex with a Virgin Can Cure the
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Disease” (Murphy 1998, A l, A2); or, Where Fat is a Mark o f Beauty: In a Rite of
Passage, Some Nigerian Girls Spend Months Gaining Weight and Learning Customs
in a Special room. To be Called a “ Slim Princess, ” is an abuse says a defender of
the practice'’ (Simmons 1998, Al); Wife o f the God’ s Stirs Up Ghana. “To ward off
evil, animists send adolescence girls to shrines, where human rights activists say
they are sexually enslaved by priests. Those who defend the practice declare they
are upholding tradition and resisting Western ways” (Simmons 1999, Al); “Groups
Seek to Aid Women Sent to Ghana’ s Witch Camps ’’(Simmons, 1999, A l, A10). The
main focus of the story was on the town of Gnani, Ghana and village women
suspected of practicing sorcery. “Rights activists”, Simmons assures her readers, are
attempting to wipe out the “age-old practice of banning women who are accused of
such practices and are suspected of being witches: “Fetish Priest Shei Tindman who
has been in dusty, fly infested Gnani for 3 years, claims to have cured scores of
women (witches) in this fashion”(Simmons 1999, A9). Simmons accentuates certain
described barbaric elements by informing the reader of Tindman’s solution for these
women: “a chicken is slaughtered and its blood is mixed with dirt and water. The
priest prays over the potion to summon ancestral gods, and the woman must drink
the concoction” (A9). Some researchers have responded to these negative images of
African tribal customs by arguing that the irresponsible coverage of Black Africa is
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damaging to all concerned and derive from a consistent practice of cultural
misinterpretation (Hepner 1998).3 4
The news coverage on African-inspired hair arrangements by African
American women is still considered newsworthy. For example, The Los Angeles
Times reported that there is a perennial debate in some sections of the African
American community over the biases against African American females who choose
to wear African inspired hairstyles. This article maintains that this debate is
particularly prevalent among older middle-class American women and among
women who participate in the Black college sorority system (Fulwood 1998). A
significant number of young sorority women are now wearing dreadlocks, a style
that has been harshly criticized and vigorously rejected by some national Black
sorority chapters, as well as by some of the more conservative members of the
African American community. Some allege that the strong reaction to this type of
ethnic hairstyle is unacceptable because of the association of these styles with Black
Africa (Fulwood 1998, B 1). Although there may be other more important
3 4 Hepner further maintains, “Publications with claims to international coverage, have a serious
responsibility to enter into a new area of reporting on Africa. One which takes into accounts, the
often complex and contradictory political, cultural and social milieu in which current events take
place.” See Tracy Hepner, The Los Angeles Times (June 24, 1998), Section B, p.l. This author has
chosen The Los Angeles Times in particular because research results showed that (with the exception
of The New York Times) the front page stories of other well known newspapers e.g., Washington Post,
and The Chicago Tribune, The Sacramento Bee, and The Washington Times, to name a few, did not
place negative front page stories on African cultures to the extreme at the exclusion of critical events
(For example, the Ethiopian and Eritrea crisis) as The Los Angeles Times, has. When I inquired in
February of 2000 for an explanation of why no other cultures were featured by reporter Simmons
(who I was told was actually based in Nairobi Kenya), was not reporting on more salient issues in
Africa, the story editor did not return my calls. Interestingly, several months later the conflict
concerning Ethiopia and Eritrea made the front page of the Times instead of the customary emphasis
on uncivilized African Cultures. See John-Thor Dahlburg, “Ethiopia and Eritrea Agree to Cease-Fire”
The Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2000, pp. A1&A6.
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associations, this particular style is sometimes viewed as untidy and unclean. In
African American culture, one’s personal appearance is the mark of respectability to
elders, and to the community in general. One dishonors the richness of African
American culture by disrespecting its values; certain members of the community
associate refinement in particular hairstyles. Yet there are exceptions: some
members of these groups wear closely cropped “natural hair styles - a kind of
“power cut” which symbolically suggests a repudiation of the mainstream’s concept
of beauty, and reaffirms their Afro-centric authenticity. In other words, these women
attempt to show that in spite of their professional success, they have not
psychologically, left their Afro-centric roots behind.
The problem with this attitude is that there is a tendency to alienate those
African American women who choose not to associate with the cultural symbolism
this hairstyle supports. Just as the above case demonstrates that some members of
female sororities frowned upon dreadlocks, so the opposite kind of disapproval can
occur. Instead of buttressing culturally accepted norms for one’s personal
appearance, the closely cropped natural hair style invites another species of group
criticism from those preferring more conventional methods and styles, such as
perms, hair straightening etc., which often inspire charges of intra-group stereotypes
of “wanting to be White,” or, of “not identifying.” This particular kind of affected
behavior has prompted a great deal of criticism aimed at the traditionally Black
sorority and fraternity system. Some African Americans even describe them as out-
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dated and pretentious;3 5 they criticized them because their origins emanate from
the traditionally historic Black colleges, which, according to some critics, remain
philosophically elitist in structure, a throwback to the Jim Crow Era (Graham 1999).
Having shown how negative imagery about Continent Africans and African
Americans are expressed in the print media. I now turn to a consideration of
“negative cultural romanticism” in the Hollywood system.
AMERICAN APPREHENIONS OF AFRICANISMS
AND POPULAR CULTURE
The H ollywood System
Symbols associated with stereotypes can also be applied to the romantic
reaction in the modem world in response to an increasingly industrial age. The
crucial elements associated with "negative cultural romanticism", is the role of myth
making and those symbols and images that serve them. For example, in the 1940s
and 1950s, the powerful Hollywood system’s contribution to the devices of romantic
3 5 These charges are primarily regionally based assumptions. For example, my Congressional
fellowship in Washington D.C., allotted me the opportunity to be in the company of graduates from
predominately Black colleges and Universities, most of whom, are members of the Black sorority
system. In this region, members were overwhelmingly involved in community-orientated activities
such as education scholarships and fundraising activities that assisted the economically
disadvantaged. They also teamed up with Black male fraternities to host debutante balls, reading
programs, and college preparatory events. Although there was the age-old sorority competition among
them, I found sororities in this region, extremely conscious of their responsibility to the African
American community as a whole. However, in the California chapters, I find that the Southern
California branches are more community oriented than for example the northern California region.
This area tended to be more elitist in scope, and perhaps, operates more exclusively. In Southern
California, the Delta and the Alpha Kappa Alphas’ chapters tend to work with male sororities more
closely to achieve community objectives. Also, some of these male fraternities formed additional
charitable organizations to benefit young Black men and women, for example UCLA’s One Hundred
Black Men. See Paula Giddings (1994) In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge
of the Black Sorority MovementJsee Lawrence Ottis Graham (1999) Our Kind o f People.
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enchantment and myth-making, resulted in escapist genre of films: Metro
Goldwyn Mayer’s (MGM), June* Moon, and Spoon era, involved heavily romantic
films of the 1940s and 1950s, Debby Reynolds and Gene Kelly’s Singing in the
Rain, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland’s Easter Parade, and Anne Miller and Fred
Astaire’s Bandwagon, Doris Day’s Moonlight Bay, Romance on the High Seas, or
Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor’s A Date with Judy, Judy Garland and Mickey
Rooney’s Strike Up the Band, and Garland’s highly romantic ‘ ‘ 'Meet Me in St.Louis",
all influenced how Americans perceived courtship, and romantic involvement. All
of these early films deliberately excluded descendants of Africa in fantasy romance
since much of the story telling, involved female purity, male heroism, and for the
most part, the glorification of man’s natural goodness. This was an obvious appeal
to the primarily European American audience, and represented a reflection of a “race
and “ethnic” conscious society.
Film scholars point out that “The fact that the audience is not just passively
consuming pictures and sound but is also actively participating in the narrative
process by contributing missing links, emphasizes the strong suggestive and
manipulative power of film” (Henry 2001,4). They further argue that:
This power to manipulate emotions, and thus also the
audience’s identification with a character or a group of
characters and certain attitudes, epitomizes the force of the
medium, it is in this sense, that the narrative film can be as
potent a form of social control and propaganda as the most
biased documentary (2001,45).
This kind of manipulative power can be seen in American film when early on,
the persistent denigrating portrayal of Black Africa and Africans, reflect a race
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consciousness society. For both the Continent African and African American,
there is no escaping these negative romantic film images in American filmmaking.
As Kevin Dunn observes:
Building on centuries of odiously constructed images of
Africa and Africans, the growing film industries of the
1930s, and subsequent years, contributed further to their
viewing audiences’ misperceptions of Africa and Africans,
and helped to perpetuate and reinforce, extremist modes of
thinking (Dunn 1996,169).
Dunn maintains that the denigrating portrayal of Africa and Africans in American
film helps to strengthen the notion that Africans tend to be dishonest and lazy and
therefore reinforces the barbaric culture thesis:
Africa, is a place of extreme danger, it is the dream
/nightmare’ characterization. Which is on one hand, a
portrayal of Africa as a place of wildlife, beauty and mystery
peaceful and beckoning, and on the other hand, the portrayal
of Africa as inhospitable to Europeans, and rife with native
savagery and barbaric customs, the nightmare imagery (158).
Using films like “Tarzan and the Ape Man” and “Stanley and Livingston” as
examples, Dunn contends that these films, more than others, perpetuated the myths
about Africa. Images of the Black African in these films maintains Dunn, are
influential precisely because their central purpose is to illustrate the “cultural
superiority of Anglo Saxons” (158). He strongly emphasizes that Black Africans are
presented in an exotic manner that attempts to “exaggerate, emphasize and belittle
their environment in the eye of the European” (157). Thus, these stereotypical
imageries are set in stark opposition to the perceived positive Anglo-Saxon
characteristics, through which filmmakers define as White American values.
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What Dunn leaves out in his analysis is the relevance of these films to the
African American, and the devastating impact these “negative romantic” films exert
on the African American population in the United States. It could be argued that the
force of Tarzan films (particularly in the 1950s) served not only to reinforce
European American myths of Africa, but also to affect and sway African Americans
of Continent Africans.3 6 This, predicament was worsened by a pre-existing African
American ambivalence toward Africa.
Sylvia Jacobs argues that Africa is an ongoing problem for African Americans.
She refers to Edwin Redkey’s early work The Meaning of Africa to Afro-Americans
(1972). Redkey explains the relationship between Continent Africans and African
Americans as historically problematic. He notes:
Afro-Americans view Africa with both pride and
humiliation, attraction, and repulsion, hope and fear. It
would appear that on one hand, for Afro-Americans to reject
the African, would have been to reject themselves and their
own self-worth. On the other hand, to accept Africa, was to
accept the prevailing views of barbarism, heathenism, and
savagery. This ambivalence is most important in
understanding the different reactions to and attitudes toward
Africa from the different classes of Afro-Americans. The
masses of lower class Black people, are not always aware of
the negative propaganda circulated about Africa, held out the
greatest hope for Africa and its future. Middle-class Blacks,
their leaders and spokesmen were consistently anti-
3 6 African filmmakers recently expressed concern that the Hollywood system is still constructing
superficial and degrading images of Black people reminiscent of the old Tarzan films. They urge
Black Africans to counter these negative imageries by speaking out more, and create their own films
about Africa. See N. Frank Ukadike, “African Film s: A Retrospective and a Vision for the Future.”
Critical Arts Journal 1: 60-82. Center for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban,
South Africa and tradition.
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emigrationist and instead suggested missionary activity and
developmental project activity as their contribution to the
Continent (Jacobs 1981, 6,7).
This argument is interesting for several reasons. First, Redkey’s contrast
between the lower economic class of African Americans and those of the middle
class’s in relation to their exposure to negative propaganda is not accurate. It is
important to note that negative propaganda about Africa certainly found its way to
the lower economic classes of African Americans through the arts, literature, and
popular culture generally. To suggest that impoverished African Americans are not
in a position to perceive how mainstream Americans negatively view Black Africa is
hardly realistic. On the contrary, it is the poorer African American who had less
opportunity economically and psychologically, to find relief from negative myths
and images; unlike the middle class or wealthy African Americans, who to some
degree, are positioned to shield themselves from the “go back to Africa” theme by
White Americans. Poorer African Americans are subjected by European Americans
to the same fiercely derogatory and fictionalized accounts of Africa. For both the
African American middle and wealthy classes however, some relief is economically,
and psychologically available. It is thus impossible to discuss the myths, imagery
and symbolism of the Continent African, without linking these elements to the
African American community in general. These racist assumptions about
“Africanisms” in the Hollywood system have been played and replayed in movies,
television shows, and other vehicles entrenched into American society.
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In cowboy films, the American “cowboy” was portrayed as a romantic
rugged heroic loner cowboy. For the most part, he was romanticized and revered as
a tough, honorable and resourceful individual. The stereotypes of the white cowboy
remained relatively straightforward: macho, hard-drinking, hard fighting,
individualistic. A great lover, and a romantic drop-dead villain gunslinger, this
mythical hero still occupy a laudable place in American culture, and in certain parts
of Europe. (Leninhan 1980).
By contrast, the African American cowboy in both literature and film is
absent from this myth, despite the historical fact that the Black cowboy’s
participation in the drama of the Western experience was quite significant. In some
regions, he made up a large part of the working cowboy population. Moreover,
researchers have estimated that the Black cowboy accounted for 20% to 25% of
those employed in the Texas cattle industry, and were quite resourceful in civic and
business matters (Porter 1969). Such research reinforces the sense that the
deliberate omission of the Black cowboy’s contribution to the “great western
experience,” is a serious one
The characterization of Indians as monolithic in speech and noble in their
savagery” was just as humiliating. Most cowboy films (particularly in the 1950’s)
were presented as “B” films, and most African American adults of this era remember
well the insults from the audience aimed at the actors portraying native peoples.
Consequently, in some strange way, the “negative romantic” distortion of these
Native Indian images was more painful and traumatic to some moviegoers, than was
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the degradation of African Americans, although some African Americans
“negatively romanticized” the American cowboy and Native American in films jus as
did European Americans.
This evidence implies that the positive array of myths and symbols surrounding
the White cowboy bravery and resourcefulness stand in opposition to the negative
images of cowardliness, laziness, and dishonesty attached to the Black Cowboy.
These negative portrayals of the Black race have remained consistent in American
films. The following discussion shows how the profit making ventures of these
images continue to give validity to the same stereotypes and myths.
THE PERSISTENCE OF NEGATIVE IMAGES OF AFRICANISMS
IN THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM
Some film critics point out that the operation of negative representation of the
African American is still present in film making today. Kevin Thomas movie critic
of The Los Angeles Times, in reviewing the 1998 film Krippendorf's Tribe, found
that the old traditional stereotypes about Africa are still being dramatized in the
Hollywood system:
[If] you thought that Black face went out with A 1 Jolson,
you’re wrong. If you thought ‘ jungle bunny’ humor of tales
set up in ‘darkest Africa’ or way up the Amazon went out
with serials, ‘B’ pictures and Tarzan, you’re wrong,
Krippendorf’s Tribe revives all those demeaning racist
stereotypes in the most horrible ways. (Thomas 1998, F4)
The film’s plot centers on the central character Krippendorf, an anthropologist
with three small children. Confronted with the death of his wife, who was also an
anthropologist, Krippendorf, finds himself emotionally overwhelmed by grief, so
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much so, that he has neglected his business, and missed an academic grant both he
and his wife were awarded. Their research focused on a lost New Guinea tribe that
his late wife was certain existed. However, after her death, Krippendorfs motivation
to work on the study disappears. In order to check out his wife's hypothesis,
Krippendorf makes the decision to falsify his research paper and accordingly, the
data. He uses his home surroundings, (specifically, the backyard) to shoot bogus
jungle footage, and attempts to pad it with actual data shot in New Guinea by his late
wife. In an attempt to achieve authenticity, Krippendorf adds fake documentation by
blackening the faces of both his children and an anthropologist friend. The idea is to
simulate the mating practices of the native Guineans. Of the film’s central thesis,
Thomas says: “Its sensibilities are so appallingly out of touch that they harken back
to those innocent old Osa and Martin Johnson travelogues in which Pygmies danced
to the Johnson’s Victrola” (F4). The more interesting aspect of this film is that the
film’s producers were aware of the perception that the negative caricature of Black
Africans is still marketable and would appeal to a significant segment of the
American population.
There are other film scholars, however, who analyze such stereotypes films as
appropriate. Recently, well-known film critic Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles
Times, reviewed a documentary film entitled, A Return to One Man’ s Heart of
Darkness, a New York artist who once lived among the cannibals goes back to
confront his ghosts (Turan 2001, F5). The film which takes place in the Amazon
basin of Peru and in New Guinea, records the sentimental romantic journey of 78-
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year-old Tobias Schneebaum, a White male cultural anthropologist who some
years earlier (1955), fulfilled a lifelong passion to live with an African tribe
(the Amarakaire), and participate in cannibalism and homosexuality. After living
with these tribes for 7 months (he apparently found it impossible to participate in
anymore of the tribe’s death raids), he returned to the United States and wrote a book
titled They Didn’ t Eat Him But They Loved Him (1956). However, he felt compelled
to confront his 45-year-old romantic past and in particular, the death raids he
participated in that resulted in several murders (Turan 2001, F.6). According to
Turan’s review A Return to One M an’ s Heart o f Darkness, Schneebaum’s film is
both “fascinating and worthwhile” (F6).
In addition, the marketing of Black American stereotypes in present day
filmmaking is also a reality. Tania Modleski, Professor of English at the University
of Southern California, argues that not only are stereotypical portrayals of African
Americans in film still marketable; and actors who choose to play these roles, can be
rewarded with an “Oscar” nomination. She points to the example of actor Michael
Clark Duncan who portrayed the protagonist in the 1999 film “The Green Mile”
winning an Academy Award nomination for his performance. Clark’s character
death- row prison inmate John Coffey, is reminiscent of the early denigration of the
Black male in film:
Let us for once speak plainly about the troubling
psychosexual dynamics of the race relations depicted in The
Green Mile, a film in which the main Black character is so
passive and saintly that he makes Uncle Tom look like
Stokely Carmichael. John Coffey— who will turn out to be
innocent of any crime is brought to death row to meet his
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jailer, the kindly executioner Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), the
camera works hard to rouse our awe at the man’s stature and
strength. A flashback explains what Coffey is doing in
prison: White men with hounds running through fields come
upon a wailing Black man. It is Coffey who is sitting by the
river cradling the limp bodies of not one, but two little dead
White girls, their blonde hair flowing down his powerful
Black arms. The lurid image of the monstrous Black ravager
of White feminity that apparently still looms large in the
White American psyche, is invoked again in a scene in which
Coffey, who has been shown to possess a mystical gift for
literally drawing evil and sickness out of people by taking
those ills into his own body, willingly risks being transported
to the home of a dying White woman, the warden’s wife.
(What won’t these Black guys do to help out their jailers?)
(Modleski 2000 B 9)
Modleski emphasizes the praise the film received from film critics and the general
public: I have heard White people praise The Green Mile for being uplifting and for
offering hope.” Modleski inquires, “Hope for whom? And asserts that “Films like
this one enable White people to indulge their most prurient and fearful imaginings
about African Americans and have their dread symbolically exorcised (2000, B10).
Modleski’s remarks are useful because they direct our attention yet again to the
relentless operation of racial symbolism in filmmaking.
Some historians characterize these negative images of Black Africans and
African Americans in the Hollywood system as pivotal (Bogle 1988). They see the
history of Blacks in film as “simply a study in stereotypes a crew of gentle Tom’s
doomed mulattos, comic coons, overstuffed mammies, and mean, menacing, violent
Black bucks” (23). For example, the negative romantic portrayal of the “unflagging
loyal African servant” can be seen in the creation of the African female slave
archetype “Mammy” throughout Hollywood filmmaking. This appealing character
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becomes even more popular as David O. Selznick’s film Gone With the Wind is re-
released every 4 years. Actress Hattie McDaniel portrayed the seemingly strong
supporting character “Mammy” as a stoic, no-nonsense African slave, undeniably
loyal to her master to a fault. “Mammy” as portrayed by McDaniel, had more
common sense and a stronger intrepid moral base than anyone in the O’Hara
household, as Thomas Cripps argues, she was “The good-nigger-in-chief \ “the great
mother of us all” (Cripps 1977, 94).
During the recent re-release of Gone With the Wind, film historians again
lamented the inaccuracy of the portrayal of African slaves in the film. They argued
that these slave portrayals still represent for Americans, a consistent form of
“romanticized racism” in American film (Seiler 1998,2E). In the same article,
college educated African American woman in spite of the negative romantic images
of African slaves in the film, said they enjoyed the Mammy character. They
perceived McDaniel’s attempt to play against the character of Mammy a positive
event. That is, Daniels was perceived as able to transcend the racial stereotype of the
African slave by playing the role with dignity. They maintained that not only did
they enjoy the film immensely; but found the portrayal of Mammy inspirational”
simply because she was shown to be the real person in charge. The character
Mammy, then, became for these women the true heroine simply because the White
character of Scarlett “obeyed” her, These patrons, however, missed the point; it is my
view, that in Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of her, Scarlett reacts to Mammy not out of an
inclination to “obey”. If one has read Margaret Mitchell1 s work carefully, the
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character of “Scarlett” was more than cognizant of Mammy’s real place in the
southern world.
We should not fail to also notice that Selznick’s film contributed to the
“negative romantic” stereotype of the Anglo-Saxon southern female. She was
consistently portrayed as cunning, frivolous, deceitful, and empty headed. Ironically,
for the White southern male, these traits of the White female are made romantic and
alluring. The point of view emerges because subordination to a strong virile male
type character was considered part of the American romantic lure. The white
moviegoer (particularly during the romantic periods of the 1940s' and 1950s) viewed
this fantasy as a positive one.
During these periods, these kinds of reactions to a subordination to a strong
virile male character is considered part of the necessary romantic operation of
courtship, and hence, a positive romantic event. Consider the well-known scene in
which the lead character Rhett Butler, sexually overpowered (to her delight) the
fearless, cunning, and deceitful Scarlett O’Hara whose outspoken, self-assertive
ways clashed with the demure, submissive behavior of the so-called southern belle,
in this case the character of Melanie as played by Olivia de Haviland. This event,
(considered one of the most popular scenes in the film), can be viewed as a favorable
contribution to the notion of “romantic” love as perceived by European Americans.
This demonstrates, that even though “romanticism” can be operationalized
negatively, it can also be perceived as a “positive” event.
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Deborah White’s research portrays how White America was heavily
steeped in the enslaved character of “Mammy” image as asexual, unfeminine and
non-threatening. White’s work also suggests the insatiable need of European
Americans, to “negatively romanticize” beyond the bounds of reason. This
“negative romantic” involvement by White filmmakers, served as a strong
impediment to the post-slavery African female’s inability to wrestle free from the
stereotypes and symbolism that clustered around this mythical character.
Explaining one of the perceptions of African enslavement that the “Mammy
character exemplified, White argues that:
[In] the pictures painted by Americans, Mammy towered
behind every orange blossom, mint julep, erring White child
and gracious Southern lady. She was so immortalized in W.
Griffith’s anti-Black film “Birth of a Nation (White 1985,40)
As White also notes:
In the 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood film producers and New
York advertising agencies, build their own monu-ments to
Mammy. ‘With their films, their pancake boxes, and their
syrup bottles,’ White argues, ‘they imprinted their image of
Mammy on the American psyche more indelibly perhaps
than ever before. ‘Mammy,’ White maintains, was of special
importance to southerners for she reflected the tradition
perceived as ‘positive’ by Southerners that of the ‘idealized’
slave. ‘Mammy was the woman who could do anything, and
do it better than anyone else. Because of her expertise in all
domestic matters she was the premier house servant (40).
It is important to discern here how the African female archetype became
immortalized. In the 1940s, the move to preserve the “Mammy’s image was initiated
by the “Daughters of the American Revolution,” who vigorously petitioned Congress
to establish a granite monument in “Mammy’s” image in Washington, D.C. The
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notion was that Americans could pay tribute to what she symbolized (White, 40).
Although the “romantic homage” to which White refers did not materialize, the idea
that the fictional character of “Mammy” be immortalized is indicative of the efforts
of White Southern Americans to establish that the enslaved African and their
descendants flourished in an environment of sublime benevolence.
Loretta Green argues that even as Americans approached the new millennium
middle-aged and older European Americans negatively romanticized the “Mammy”
persona. Frequently sharing with Green how they too had a “Mammy” who
personally cared for them, they assured her that their African American servant did
not mind being called “Mammy,” that, she was just like a member of the family and
indeed appeared “happy” with this characterization (Green 1998). Green suggests
that dreaming about Mammy, is similar to dreaming about the “good old days,” when
Blacks were primarily domestic servants, to lamenting, that somehow its not the
same anymore:
Well-meaning people who ought to know better often related
other similarly demeaning experiences to me and add, ‘we
thought nothing of it,’ or ‘we meant nothing by it. (1998,
B2).
The interesting aspect of Green’s account is what she leaves out. Today, the
slave character of “Mammy” might be portrayed in film as no less stereotypical. In
fact, she might even be depicted as negatively romanticizing the loss of the days,
when in her view, even under an oppressive system, she reined supreme— when she
was the confidante to a mistress (who in her view, had no “common sense”) and was
given the major responsibility, as an all-knowing but loving African slave, of
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nurturing the mistress’s children (who were “just like my own”). Screenwriters
still wish to portray a sacrificing enslaved African who viewed the White man’s
children as more important than their own family. By playing their roles too well,
Black actors who have interpreted the character of “Mammy” might well have
unknowingly, assisted in the negative adulation of a de-feminized sub-human
African slave in dire need of protection by the white female mistress. Having shown
how negative images function in the Hollywood system, I now turn to a
consideration of "negative cultural romanticism" in the fine arts.
EARLY NEGATIVE ROMANTICISM IN THE FINE ARTS
In the art world the essential element is the addition of “exoticism” to beauty
that constitutes romanticism. For instance, Paul Gauge’s 1892 painting “ Para Na te
Varua ino" (Words of the devil) (See Figure 1) which portrays subjects of color
(in this case Tahitians), was typical of how white European males viewed women of
color in a fanciful negative light. Having left his French wife and children for what
he believed was a strange, unspoiled and primitive culture, Gaugin was influenced
by “negative romantic” accounts of the native folklore of earlier European observers
of African cultures, who depicted the non-European female as exotic, uncivilized,
and sexually available. Here, Gaugin’s lack of cultural fluency allowed him to
fantasize his own place in this primitive life-world as that of the “all knowing” figure
of a superior European culture (Thames and Hudson 1992, 200-201). His depiction
of the standing nude, for example, derived from a medieval statue of the
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Figure 1 Para na te Varua ino. Paul Gaugiun (1848-1903)
Source: National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C.
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biblical Eve and the more distant Venus Pudica of classical sculpture, allusions
combining Gaugin’s interest in “original sin” and the loss of virginity (201).
By contrast, the White Anglo-Saxon female was also not exempt from
negative imagery and romantic symbolisms on canvas. In the early 20th century,
John Sargent’s 1911 painting Repose (See Figure 2), like the majority of painters
during this period, experimented with the “Romantic Idealism” of White female
purity which ran counter to Gaugin’s crude depiction of the brown Polynesian
female. Sargent’s work assisted in promoting the myth that the White Anglo-Saxon
female, unlike her Black female counterpart, was preoccupied with a comfortable life
and total preoccupation with luxury, elegant surroundings, and little else. Sargent
shows a languid, almost lackadaisical woman seemingly absorbed in what is
described as an atmosphere of “romantic elegiac calm” (1992,248). Sargent is
described as documenting an “end of an era of lingering aura of White refinement
and respectability, of elegance, sexuality, vanity, and indulgence.
Attempts to experiment with gender imagery on canvas, also, occurred in the
case of the Black male. George Bellows (1992, 246) early 19th century painting
“Both Members of the Club” (See Figure 3), typifies how most American artists
depicted Black males and remained faithful to the romantic myth that the African
male’s physical prowess derived from subhuman attributes. Bellows shows two
boxers, one White, one Black, engaged in a savage boxing event during a time when
boxing was illegal. Bellows depicts the victorious Black subject as wild and
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primate-like. His magnificent form seems almost subhuman against the nearly
pathetic form of the conquered White male (1992, 30). It almost appears as though
the scene’s immediacy is enhanced by the portrayal of the bloodhound twisted faces
of the audience members, who it seems, so ready to assume that victory of the
African over the White boxer can be explained. The scene almost takes on the
atmosphere of a cockfight, one radiating the prevalent English perception that there
is indeed a biological explanation that explains the African male’s physical
superiority. On the other hand, some Artists made conscious efforts to dispel
negative images of Black womanhood on canvas. American artist Winslow Homer
produced a group of controversial paintings of post-slavery African Americans in the
1870s that consistently portrayed Blacks without the prevailing attitudes of
condescension and sentimentality.
For instance, Homer’s portrait of two Black women picking cotton for
instance, (See Figure 4) is sympathetic and positive, and shows he was resisted any
attempt to “negatively romanticize” them as heathen or lowly (32). Homer’s late
19th century portrayal of the two women (unlike those in the works by other artists
during this period) depicts Black women subjects not bent over, withered, fatigued,
and de-feminized; instead they stand erect and beautiful, their youthful bodies
“monumentalized” against the sky. It almost appears as though the woman on the
woman on the right looks far into the distance, dreaming of a better future, dispelling
the traditional romantic notion that Blacks accepted their lot quite happily.
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Homer’s portrait of these women and his other works, can be interpreted as
unfaithful to the “negative romantic” myth that the African female is unattractive,
and able to tolerate an unusual amount of misery and distasteful work
(Los Angeles County Museum, Homer Winslow Exhibit 1998).
Similarly, French artist Frederic Bazille’s 19th century impressionist painting of
the “Negro Girl with Peonies” (Thames and Hudson, National Gallery of Art
1992,188) (See Figure 5) reflects the tendency of some French artists in late 19th
century to portray African women without relying on stereotypical imagery. The
subject could conceivably have been any female prior to the outbreak of the Franco-
Prussian War attempting to make a living (1992, 56). Unlike the negatively
symbolic painting of Black female subjects during this period, Bazille’s subject is the
antithesis of the Black American “Mammy” imagery. His subject’s weariness evokes
hard times, causing the same fears and insecurities as any other women. The Peonies
symbolize the sense of freedom and beauty in which she is surrounded. The
immaculate White pique dress and colorful headscarf symbolize femininity and a
silent strength so unlike the servile attentiveness of the “Mammy “symbol of
asexuality and domesticity, whose headscarf symbolized bondage and servitude
(1992,188).
The symbolism and bondage of asexuality ascribed to the African female was
not always attributed to the female mulatto slave, although, her bondage was no less
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humiliating and painful. Therefore, I will thus now turn to American politics and the
enslaved African, by focusing on the controversial relationship between Thomas
Jefferson and his “child” African slave, Sally Hemings. I suggest that the early and
recent historical treatment of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings constitutes a good example of “negative cultural romanticism”.
EARLY AMERICAN POLITICS AND NEGATIVE ROMANTICISM
In early American politics, the ongoing controversy of whether Thomas
Jefferson sired several children by his mulatto African enslaved-child Sally Hemings
has ignited much debate, and scholars are still exploring the true nature of their
relationship. Andrea Dworkin is convinced a forced personal relationship between
Jefferson and Hemings’ not only existed, but she stops short of characterizing
Jefferson as a child molester (Dworkin 1997). Dworkin is vehement that Jefferson
should be viewed as a “rapist” because of his relationship with Hemings. She argues
that:
. . . Romantics and patriots, and “ woman ‘haters of both
persuasions, insist in portraying Jefferson as guiltless, and
the slave Sally, as disinterested in obtaining her freedom
from him. They want to believe that she would have chosen
him if she could have’ (190).
A fictionalized account of the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings
occurred in the 1995 Merchant-Ivory film Jefferson in Paris. On screen, the child
slave Sally is depicted as the “Jezebel” archetype, while Jefferson is portrayed as the
benevolent slave Master weakened by her sexual powers. Thus, the filmmakers
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portray him as a highly romantic individual. Dworkin takes issue with what she
views as these mythical images: “The Merchant-Ivory film continues a fictional
tradition in which an adolescent Sally sets her sights on the Master and virtually
invades his chaste bed” (190). For the most part, the film implies that Hemings” at
14 was so romantically involved with Jefferson, that her freedom was of little
consequence to her. “Epistemologies of desire aside,” notes Dworkin, “the culture
works hard to make Sally responsible and Jefferson blameless.” This need for some
historians to romanticize Jefferson’s role in this event is critical because, according
to Dworkin, it is “rude and hyperbolic” to view Jefferson from a negative
vantage-point. Dworkin’s analysis of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings could be
characterized as that of a “positive cultural romantic’. In viewing this relationship
from a feminist perspective, she in essence, deconstructs Jefferson’s image from an
early political saint, to that of Jefferson the male chauvinist and abuser of child
slaves.
In spite of the multitude of writings about Jefferson and by Jefferson himself,
his thoughts on paper really reveal more about Jefferson the “political” man and very
little of Jefferson the private “love” man. His enigmatic status therefore, allows us
the luxury to romanticize either “positively” or “negatively”, the Jefferson we wish
to know. Perhaps this was Jefferson’s purpose. According to historian Fawn Brodie,
we do know that Jefferson was in fact, preoccupied about his place in history
(Brodie 1974). Jefferson would have been exceedingly sensitive about committing
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on paper much about his romantic notions regarding any female, much less an
African slave.3 7
However, it is noteworthy that Jefferson was quite committed to expressing
his views on paper about the romantic characteristics of the African. In a remarkably
frank discussion on the inferiority of the African enslaved, Jefferson, in his “ Notes
on the State o f Virginia, ” is convinced that among the Black Africans romance is
“inherently fleeting”: “Their love is ardent, but kindles the senses only, not the
imagination” (Koch 1944, 348).3 S Consequently, one could argue that Jefferson’s
place in romantic history, however paradoxical, leaves us little choice but to
“romanticize” an alleged relationship.
Historian Dumas Malone notes that nothing about Jefferson’s romantic liaisons
with slave women can be conclusively documented no matter how compelling the
circumstances (Malone 1977), and, like Malone’s, the prevailing view of most
37 Sally Hemings was born one year after Jefferson and his wife Martha Wayles Skelton’s
wedding. Sally is the daughter of the mulatto slave Elizabeth Hemings, who was owned by Martha
Jefferson’s father John Wayles. Sally is technically the half sister of Martha because it is alleged, that
Mr. Wayles is the father of Sally. After the death of Martha’s father, Jefferson inherited all of his
father-in-law’s slaves (135), including young Sally and 11,000 acres of land. Sally Hemings joined
the Jefferson household at the age of 2 years and started working for Jefferson at the age of 6.
According to the memoirs of his former slave Issac Jefferson, “Sally Hemings’ mother Betty was a
bright mulatto woman and Sally “mighty near White.” See Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An
Intimate History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1969). See Madison Hemings, “The
Memoirs of a Monticello Slave,” as dictated to Charles Campbell. Courtesy of Tracy W. Me Gregor,
Library of American History, Special Collections, Department. University of Virginia Library, 1847
Jefferson and Hemings Sources.
3 8 Written while he was the Governor of Virginia between 1781-1782 and published in 1787.
Most of the queries were written to describe the State of Virginia’s physical terrain. However, he
devoted one section entirely to what he termed his own observations about the intelligence, character,
and physical qualities (or the lack of) of the African. See Adrienne Koch and William Peden_(1994)
The Life and Selected Writings o f Thomas Jefferson (New York: Random House).
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historians is that Jefferson was profoundly dedicated to the memory of his
deceased wife Martha, and remained a “benevolent” Master of slaves.
This romantic idea of an unblemished Jefferson was challenged in November
1998. The molecular basis for testing hereditary cell nuclei (DNA) performed on
descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, may indicate that Jefferson
fathered at least, one of Hemings’ seven children, specifically her youngest son Eston
(Foster 1999, 1-32). This recent controversy has left scholars to continue this debate
on Jefferson with a slightly different twist: rather than portray Jefferson as a
predatory slave master, the debate is focused on the possibility that a romantic
exception between master and slave, might have occurred (Gordon-Reed 1999).3 9
Annette Gordon-Reed’s legal analysis of a possibly “true” romantic
relationship between Jefferson and Hemings is speculative and is in some ways
racist. The idea that an African slave in bondage could have entertained romantic
thoughts of her slave master might be viewed as insulting to African Americans.
There is no real evidence to support such an opinion because there is very little
information about the true nature of the relationship from Heming’s vantage point.4 0
3 9 It should be noted that Dumas Malone’s research on Thomas Jefferson was written before the
revelation that DNA science might show that Jefferson was culpable in sexually abusing Sally
Hemings. Dumas Malone was a fierce defender of Jefferson, and I rather doubt this new evidence
would convince him that Jefferson would harbor any such notion.
40 Annette Gordon-Reed analysis is very interesting from two perspectives. First, Gordon-Reed
is an African American whose point of view in regard to the Jefferson-Hemings relationship
underscores my point that “negative cultural romantic,” thought transcends race and ethnicity. She
rejects the notion that Hemings was merely an object of exploitation by Jefferson. She offers as proof,
Hemings long relationship with Jefferson, and the recent DNA revelation. Also, Sally Heming’s son
Madison offered a personal account of his mother’s relationship with Jefferson in which he
unequivocally stated that after Jefferson and Sally returned from France, she “gave birth to a child of
who Thomas Jefferson was the father.” He further maintained, “It lived but a short time.” “She gave
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Although it is conceivable that from Jefferson’s point-of-view Sally Hemings was
half-white, and technically his sister-in-law; Jefferson may have reasoned that Sally
was not African in the truest sense; thus he might have viewed their relationship as
justifiable. Yet, on the other hand, if this was so, it seems logical that Jefferson
would have freed her from bondage during his lifetime. In “Notes”Jefferson writes
quite eloquently of his disdain for both the African male and female; and goes as far
as paring the African female with the “Orangutan” (Koch and Penden 1994, 241).
In addition, the notion that a young Sally, said to be beautiful in slave
accounts, might have been preoccupied with the romantic adventure of an
unattractive older white male as the very pale Jefferson, negates the possibility that
she might have been utterly repelled by him and presumes that she did not have
(even in fantasy) her own standards of a romantic partner which might have excluded
a white male. It is unconvincing that, like any other young black slave, she did not
also dream of a true love with a handsome Black male her own age who had not been
forbidden to her because of her enslavement. Scholars have also pointed out that in
general African slaves spent a great deal of time either planning or fantasizing, their
escape to freedom and were continually preoccupied either with efforts to free
birth to four others and Jefferson was the father of them all” (1808). Lastly, the documented fact that
Jefferson never formally freed Sally, rather she left in 1826 shortly after his death to live with both
Madison and Eston Hemings. In response to her duties as Jefferson’s slave, Madison tells us that his
mother was “well spent” in the Jefferson household. This statement by Madison Hemings, gives us
some idea of Jefferson’s cryptic notions about Sally. Third, the irony of Gordon-Reed’s analysis is
that she has accused all White scholars of Jefferson, e.g., Dumas Malone in particular, o f selectivism,
racism, and sexism. See Annette Gordon-Reed (1999) Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An
American Controversy Dr. Eugene Foster (1998) “Jefferson Fathered Slave Child’, Nature 396, no.5,
(November). See Madison Hemings (1808) “Life Among the Lowly” (The Pike County Republican,
Pike County Ohio.
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themselves from bondage, or, at the very least, to attempt repeatedly to reunite
with their loved ones held in bondage on other plantations (Berlin 1998). It is logical
to assume that Hemings may also fancied such thoughts.
Therefore, any attempt by scholars to romanticize a master/slave sexual
exploitation as a “true” love connection goes beyond logic. It must be reemphasized
that Sally Hemings entered the Jefferson household at the age of two years, and she
was exposed to no other life until Jefferson sent for her at the age of fourteen to
come to Paris, where it is alleged, a sexual relationship was forced upon her
(Brodie 1974). Dworkin’s contention that some scholars wish to romanticize what
may have been a negative event for the slave Sally, is reinforced by Gordon-Reed’s
(1999) analysis:
Whatever the truth, the story of the liaison between Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings, persist because it humanizes
the eloquent Jefferson, when the alternative is to imagine
him sexless and therefore, less human. As for Hemings, I
think the effort to capture her humanity is actually quite
subtle [,] and an appropriate thing to do.
(Gordon-Reed, 240).
Annette Gordon-Reed’s legal analysis of this new disclosure is not only
empirically deficient, but also mysterious, particularly when she maintains that she
views the fallout of the Jefferson/Hemings controversy as a real attempt to
“humanize” both Hemings and Jefferson. First, any attempt to portray Hemings as a
possible woman in love despite her bondage, is in fact, “negatively romanticizing”
Hemings’ slave status. There is no evidence to argue that Hemings’ slave status was
inconsequential to her. Realistically, Jefferson's refusal to free Hemings from
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bondage during his lifetime tells us that whatever romantic notions scholars
harbor, we are reminded that the enslaved African was considered property. Thus,
self-determination was simply neither a consideration nor a possibility. Second, in
order to imagine Jefferson “sexless,” one must then be reminded of Brodie’s account
of Jefferson’s’ bold attempt to court the very married Maria Cosway, whom he met in
Paris, corresponded with, and with whom he was alleged to have had a romantic
relationship (Brodie 1974).
The most interesting aspect of Gordon-Reeds’ analysis is thus the notion that
a Black African/Anglo-Saxon sexual union would be characterized as a fairy tale
“romance”. If Jefferson did view Sally as an exception of sorts, this did not influence
Jefferson to free her. Moreover, “Note’s” Jefferson again schools us in great detail
with his own observations on the “Love” pursuits of the African. He claims that the
African male and female are not able to comprehend such an event (Notes in Koch
and Penden 1994).1 4 In his own words, then, he informs us, that for the African, such
an event is not only emotionally impossible, but intellectually infeasible as well.
I will now turn to a discussion of “positive cultural romanticism” in modem
politics.
MODERN POLITICS AND POSITIVE ROMANTIC THOUGHT
Earlier, I argued that both “positive and negative romanticism,” involvement
transcends race and ethnicity. This study does not suggest that African Americans or
4 1 My experience in teaching government courses at the University level, in particular courses
on “The American Presidency” , revealed that only 20% of incoming freshman were familiar with
Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia”. Generally, students were surprised that they had
not been exposed to these readings during their government courses in high school.
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other groups are not capable of engaging in “romanticism” that serves to promote
the “self’ or the group; I argue quite the opposite. For example, President Clinton’s
March 1998 trip to Africa (the first U. S. President to visit it), elicited these remarks
during a speech to Ghanaians he made to assure them of the U.S.’s willingness to
assist Africa from a new perspective:
The United States is ready to help you. First, my fellow
Americans must leave behind the stereotypes that have
warped our view and weakened our understanding of Africa.
We need to come to know Africa as a place of new
beginnings and ancient wisdom. (Schogren 1998, A6)
Positive cultural romanticists would thus view the President’s remarks as an
opportunity to promote African civilization as worthy of reverence, both in a
practical sense, and, as a romantic event. For African Americans, particularly those
dignitaries traveling with the President, the attempt to romanticize their trip to the
“motherland” the land of their ancestry was considered a “profound experience”.
For instance, when reliving her moments during the President’s visit to Goree Island
located off Dakar, the capital of Senegal, where it is believed that many Africans
were captured and forced to depart for an “unwilling journey” into slavery, Susan E.
Rice, an African American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, called the
trip an “emotional moment” (Schrogen 1998, A6). Other African Americans, who
traveled with the President, maintained that these powerful images of Africa are
reminiscent of their southern childhood. As one remarked, “I found it striking how
much Ghana and Uganda reminded me of growing up in the rural south”
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(1998, A6). The benefit of these moments, of this involvement, was the
opportunity for President Clinton and his entourage to personally demythologize
Africa and Africans for Americans. For those African Americans traveling with the
President, this was an opportunity to personally romanticize their own sense of
involvement in Black African causes.
For example, those travel members who have long worked in the United
States against the South African system of Apartheid, the trip was also perceived as
emotionally pivotal. Congresswomen Maxine Waters whose 20 years of activism
against the Botha regime in that country, said this in praise of her African experience,
that “This is the culmination of years of work.. .1 worked for many years to end
Apartheid. This closes that chapter of my life for me“ (Schogren 1998, A10). It is
apparent that Walters’ views herself in almost “heroic” dimensions her active
participation in a “great” historic event, and her association with Nelson Mandela’s
freedom, has enabled her to romanticize that her role was directly instrumental in his
release.
Similarly, Randall Robinson, Founder of Trans-Africa, an activist
organization, which also considers itself primarily responsible for raising world
consciousness regarding the plight of Black South Africans, and the system of
Apartheid. Even though, Trans-Africa was one of the many campaigns and
organizations to free Nelson Mandela from long-term imprisonment by the Botha
regime. Yet Robinson seemed to suffer a dramatic emotional shift in how he viewed
Mandela. In a particularly bitter account of his disenchantment with Mandela the
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hero, Robinson, in a recent autobiography, discussed how Mandela, shortly after
his release from Robbin Island, snubbed the $5,000 a- plate-dinner that
Trans-African had arranged during Mandela’s visit to the U. S. Uncomfortable in
attending such an expensive affair, and perhaps the implications of such elitism,
Mandela, to Robinson’s bewilderment, declined to attend (Robinson 1998). In
Robinson’s view Mandela’s presence was the least he could have managed
considering the millions of dollars spent on his cause. Robinson essentially
characterized Mandela as ungrateful and insensitive to Trans-Africa’s long-term
commitment on his behalf (1998). Robinson thus, incorrectly perceived that
Mandela was obligated to assist Trans-Africa in replenishing its coffers.
The problem with Robinson’s sense of betrayal by Mandela is two-fold.
First, Robinson’s romantic view of an African cause, of a heroic figure with himself
[Robinson] in the center, is in my view, politically naive, and is astonishingly
unsophisticated. I suggest that Robinson was imprisoned by the “negative romantic”
myths and imageries of African heroic figures and the influence of these symbols
may have distorted his own perception of Mandela. In addition, Mandela’s notable
imprisonment may have symbolized for Robinson the myth of the physical and
mental superiority of Black endurance. Second, one could posit, that Mandela was
being held hostage to Robinson’s very romantic view of the courageous Black South
African leader. It was this imprisonment that seemed to prevent Robinson from
comprehending Mandela in any way other than as an obligatory figure. Mandela’s
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heroic status thus ultimately became questionable, a dubiousness that in effect
might have negated for Robinson his own heroic place in the struggle against
“Apartheid”.
African American journalist Keith B. Richburg takes issue with those African
Americans who romanticize to a fault, Black Africa. Richburg notes that it is
principally the African American leadership that romanticizes Africa and Africans,
and he puts in perspective what he considers the naivete of this idealism. Richburg,
Washington Post’s Bureau Chief based in Nairobi Kenya from 1991 to 1994, argues
that not only is it unrealistic for African Americans to romanticize Africa and
Africans, but that African Americans should in fact, be pleased that their cultural
roots are distinctly American:
I know that many Black Americans feel a sense of alienation
in the United States and like to look longingly to Africa as a
Mecca of Black empowerment. It’s a seductive image,
almost to good to be true, and an uplifting counter-point to
the feeling of deprivation and discrimination as a minority in
America. But that’s the problem with the image, if it sounds
too good to be true, that’s because it is. It’s a mirage. It’s not
the reality of Africa today (Richburg, 1997, 168).
Richburg is especially critical of what he views as the appalling lack of
knowledge about Africa and African leadership by the African American “elite.” He
essentially characterizes most African Americans who visit the African Continent,
either as a statesman, or as a visitor, incredibly naive and misinformed:
Weird things seem to happen to a lot of American Black
leaders when they venture into Africa. They go through a
bizarre kind of metamorphosis when they set foot on the
continent of their ancestors. Some of the most prominent
veterans of America’s civil rights wars articulate advocates
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for human rights and basic freedoms for Black people in America
seem to enter a kind of moral and intellectual Black box
when they get to Africa. Dictators are hailed as statesmen,
unrepresentative governments are deemed democratic,
corrupt regimes are praised for having fought off colonialism
and brought about development. But when the subject turns
to the lack of democracy in Africa, those same Black
Americans become defensive, nervous, and inarticulate
(127).
Jacob contends that African Americans embrace or own up to the African tie
only under certain circumstances. During periods of solid economic and political
health, African Americans argues Jacobs, reject the African connection
(Jacobs 1981, 5-9). She maintains that African Americans assume a positive or
negative romantic view of Africa according to the temper of the times, and within the
context of the Black experience in America.
In conclusion, Richburg sums up his negative view of Africa, and of those
Black Americans (a term he prefers to African American), who have spent little or no
time on the Continent:
Maybe if I had never set foot here, I could celebrate my own
Blackness, my ‘African-ness.’ Then I might feel a part of this
place, and Africa’s pain might be my own. But while I know
‘Afro-centrism’ has become fashionable for many Black
Americans searching for identity, I know it cannot work for
me. I have been here. I have lived here and seen Africa in all
its horror. I know now that I am a stranger here. I am an
American, a Black American, and I feel no connection to this
strange and violent place (148).
Richburg further argues that it is as if Blacks believe that only Whites
practice the “Repression” of the African and of the African descendant. Richburg ‘s
observations are reflective of Jacob’s view that how African Americans view Africa
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and Africans, primarily depends upon their station in American society during
vital periods of economic and political persecution.
While Richburg’s analysis is provocative and insightful, it can be debated on
several levels. First, it points to the complexity of the Africa and the African
American linkage; thus, Richburg’s analysis can be viewed as somewhat too
simplistic, and Jacob’s observations address this point.4 2 Second, his comments on
the African American leadership’s lack of sophistication about Africa can arguably
be explained as an American cultural flaw more than a distinctive African American
failing. As I have implied in Chapter 1, Americans in general tend to be less
culturally fluent about other cultures, a shortcoming that seems particularly profound
when one considers the multitudes of cultural customs and traditions of Black
Africans on the African continent. Western ethical prescriptions have also influenced
how African Americans perceive Africa and Africans. Thus, the “cultural lag” to
which Lawrence Brown alludes is evident in the American tradition of resisting other
cultures (Brown 1969). Third, it is important to note that in contrast to European
Americans, there are major differences in how African Americans “positively”
romanticize the African experience. For example, most European Americans may
“negatively” romanticize the African experience from a highly dramatic (almost
fantasy-like) perspective. This reaction Dunn argues, is the necessity of viewing
Africa as an exotic, savage place with “mysterious aspirations” (Dunn 1998). I refer
to this kind of romantic involvement as the “Out of Africa” syndrome, or, “Sheena
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White Queen of the Jungle” syndrome; meaning Europeans who migrate to
various African nation states for the primary purpose of dwelling in these states as
superior centers, much as Gaugin imagined a superior presence in Tahiti, or as
Waters and Robinson, romanticized their own role in the dismantling of Apartheid.
In general, African Americans are thought to be not especially concerned
with the notion of Safari hunting or living in the wilds. Some might well naively
view Africa as “going home to the “motherland”. Richburgh emphasized that many
Africans Americans who visit Africa might discover that Black Africans might not
actually consider them “home”.4 2 Richburgh’s own negative African experience may
have in fact caused him to recognize his own fears that the stereotypes and myths
about Africa and Black Africans, to which he was introduced in the United States,
had been realized. Moreover, members of the African American political leadership
elite may experience extreme culture shock in visiting a Continent where the
majority of the inhabitants look like them, and thus, they may tend to ignore the
political and economical realities of most African Nation States.
Martin Kilson points to this predicament. He asserts that African American
elected leadership is appallingly unconcerned with the lack of Democracy in many
African States (Kilson 1992). He focuses on this dilemma in describing the early
debate that took place among Black Congressman during the 1970s when the
atrocities of General Idi Amin of Uganda came to world attention. He observes that
4 2 The myth of kinship between the continent African and the African American will be
discussed in chapter 5.
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African Affairs, found it difficult to face up to the appalling cruelties of the Amin
regime, refusing to criticize or assume a position either way:
This reluctance of Diggs and the pragmatic activist sector of
the Black American intelligencia to face up to the quality of
the Black African rule issue, was a moral limitation shared
with the ethnocentric sector of Black intellectuals.
(Kilson 1992, 368)
Kilson (1992) further describes this reluctance, as an almost romantic
dilemma, the insistence of the Black intellectuals to give laudatory praise to Black
African rule, while ignoring Black despotism: “The authoritarian practices of
independent African States benefited from the Black American intellectual dilemma
of lauding the fact of Black rule while slighting the quality of Black mle”(368).
There are two reasons Kilson see for this lack of candor and sensitivity. First,
when Black Congressmen in particular take specialized trips to the Continent, they
are in fact self-serving. African heads of State tend to heavily wine and dine African
American leaders to an extreme, necessarily creating a falsehood that the two groups
share a commonality, a brotherhood. Thus, there is a significant number of perks in
visiting African States, and through them and unknown to visiting African American
dignitaries, heads of African nation states tend to manipulate African American
naivete. Second, African American elected leadership may be particularly
mesmerized by the power base of Black African rule, regardless of any political
realities, simply because of the peculiarity of the Black American experience. They
tend to overlook consciously, or unconsciously, human rights violations, or other
atrocities by romanticizing an Africa that they wish to exist, in order to justify their
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presence there. In some sense, they might nurture a belief that the disrespect of
Africa by non-Africans might influence how African Americans are viewed by White
Americans. As Jacobs explains:
Regardless of their attitude toward Africa, most Blacks
realized that there was a connection between the image
White Americans held about Africa and Africans and their
image of Black Americans, that perhaps if Africa were
respected, Afro-Americans would be also. (Jacobs 1981,13).
In addition, American Black leadership, might well reason that any perceived
atrocities are untrue or overblown, or that a Western conspiracy might destabilize the
Continent.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have described how “negative cultural romanticism”,
maintained by a stereotypical and mythological base, supports negative images of
Black Africa and its link to “Africanisms”. Second, these images of “Africanisms”
have produced profound social and political consequences for the Black race and for
U. S. immigration policy in general. Third, I suggest that through a theory of
“Negative Cultural Romanticism,” these stereotypes, myths and symbolisms toward
Blacks in general, have historically played a significant role in determining how we
feel about ourselves, how we view others, and the relative contributions that certain
groups have made to American society. Fourth, although it is not be obvious at first
glance why these particular stereotypes have any direct relevance to U. S.
immigration policy and gender-specific asylum per se,. I will describe in the next
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chapter how these images might well have influenced the decision making process
In Re Fauziya Kasinga.
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CHAPTER 4
IN RE: FAUZIYA RASING A: THE MYTHS AND
STEREOTYPES OF AFRICA REVISITED
In Re Fauziya Kasinga v. INS has played a crucial role in asylum
jurisprudence because it affords a valuable insight into the problem of United States
immigration laws and race. At the forefront of her case, stand the unprecedented
nature of its ruling in which unconventional approaches to political asylum work
against the standard definition of “persecution”. This unconventional approach,
allows us to view American race relations through the prism of African immigrants
and to confront the overwhelming blindness to Africa’s cultural complexity.
Therefore, the uniqueness of the Kassindja case lays not in the complex maze
of asylum jurisprudence, but its successful ruling, is a result of Kassindja’s
sophisticated and practical understanding of America’s racial assumptions. She and
her supporters were cognizant of how to exploit America’s racialized beliefs of
Black Africa in order to ensure a positive claim outcome. 4 3
This chapter attempts to show how the theory of “cultural romanticism “ has
played a vital role in U.S. immigration gender-based case law and African Tribal
persecution claims. Although in the last decade African females have filed the
majority of tribal persecution claims, none has been as romanticized by the American
public as In Re Fauziya Kasinga. It is in the very language and tone of the Kassindja
4 3 My interview with Kassindja showed an unusually sophisticated and determined young
woman, who without question, was up to the challenge to fulfill what she maintains were her father’s
particular goals for her; education, and prosperity, as he himself exemplified (Kassindja interview
March 15, 1998).
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case that we can fully discern America’s racial assumptions toward Black Africa
and Africans. This ruling also demonstrates how “negative cultural romanticism”
while traditionally serving to keep out the Black African, can, under a gender-asylum
policy, result in a positive claim outcome. It is clear that when actors representing
the state assume the bold step of acting in the capacity of race informants, they play a
major role in reinforcing the popular image of a barbaric and uncivilized Africa;
wayward and unwilling to conform to European beliefs; and Fauziya Kassindja
benefited immensely from these assumptions.
Finally, this case served to focus attention on the powerful influence of
women’s rights groups and Christian missionary societies whose attempts to assist
the state in the interpretation of African customs is problematic. Their influence
forces us to answer a pressing question: why are American women’s rights groups
and missionary groups both unresponsive to the overall situation of African women
refugees and offer such formidable support when African asylees mount claims of
tribal persecution? The issue appears all the more enigmatic (as the Kassindja case
shows) precisely because these groups play a key role in influencing U.S.
immigration policy. Therefore, before I embark upon a brief overview of the legal
dimensions of the Kassindja case, it is necessary to discuss how tribal female
circumcision and the events that led up to Kassindja’s flight from Togo ran Contrary
to news accounts and court documents.
In general, the Tchamba tribe is described as a proud and hardworking people
who for the most part, live modestly and respectfully, toward one another
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(Nononsaa Togo Embassy Interview 2001). To deny them their customary beliefs
without fair scrutiny would be to paper over the specific effects of tribal persecution
claims. The ensuing analysis illustrates that their practice of circumcision might
perhaps be viewed as one of “sacred” cultural differences rather than cultural
barbarism as characterized by the West.
THE PRACTICE OF “KAKIA” IN TOGO
Throughout Africa, Black Africans have historically characterized the custom
of female circumcision as a revered rite of passage, an unbroken link between the
relationship of youths and adults (Mbiti 1998). Their premise is that the continuity of
this custom benefits the larger community. Contrary to most Western accounts, then,
African observers point out that this ceremony primary symbolizes and dramatizes
separation from childhood”. They explain the ritual symbolically, as “parallel to the
cutting of the umbilical cord when the child is bom”(1988 ,12). Moreover, for
decades, Black Africans have maintained that it is the cultural domination” of Africa
by Christian missionaries that has consistently distorted the sacredness of this
practice (Kenyatta 1965; Mutisya 1996).
There are commonly three distinct types of female circumcision procedures
that are practiced throughout Africa: The “Sunna” which involves the removal of
part or the entire clitoral prepuce and is considered the least surgically aggressive of
the three procedures; the “intermediate” the removal of the clitoris and part, or, all
of the labia minora; and ‘Pharaonic infibulation” the most radical of the three
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procedures. The latter involves the removal of the clitoris and the excision of
both the labia minora and part of the labia majora (Kalla 1992).
In Togo, female circumcision is traditionally rooted in tribal custom, and most
tribes who practice these surgeries are Muslims: The Tchamba, Cotocoli, Peulh,
Mossi, Yanga, Moba, Gourma, and the Ana-ife (U.S. Department of State on Togo
1996). In general, most research studies have concluded that the type of female
circumcision surgeries most commonly practiced by these tribes is the “Sunna”.
Most research studies have concluded that the more radical surgical procedure
(Pharaonic Infibulation) is rarely practiced by these groups (4).
According to the Tchamba tribal tradition, girls between the ages of 15-16
were strongly encouraged to participate in the custom of “kakia”, but no evidence
exists that shows that the “Tchamba” strictly enforced this practice with life
threatening penalties. More importantly, research also shows that tribal women over
the age of 40 are more than likely to have undergone female circumcision than those
of the younger generation. The data that has emerged from these demographics
indicates that a woman’s educational level lowers the incidence of this custom by
significant numbers.4 4 For example, for women who had no education the incidence
rate was 15.7 percent; for those with primary education only 6.1 percent of women
4 4 These results are part of a research project at the University of Benin in Togo initiated in
1996 by the United States Information Agency (USAID). The goal of this project was first, to gather
data on the number of women who had already undergone the custom of female circumcision, and to
identify participation by tribal affiliation and religion. See the U.S. Department of State, Country
Report on Togo 1996.
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participate; for those with secondary education or higher, the incident rate is only
4 percent participation. Broken down according to religion, the statistics show that
the Muslim religion does yield a higher percentage— 63.1 percent compared to other
religions. Yet it is important to note educated women generally managed to avoid
tribal female circumcision, regardless of tribal affiliation (State Department Report
1996,5).
The health implications of these surgeries are controversial, and Western
feminist groups often use the medicalization of female circumcision as one of their
reasons for their opposition. In follow-up focus interviews by researchers, most
respondents of the Togo study agreed that the procedure, while not risk free, rarely
resulted in serious complications, e.g., hemorrhage, infections, and/or death (1996).
Fauziya Kassindja reported that she was unfamiliar with the type of procedure
performed on Tchamba girls, only that she was informed by her parents that her
“woman parts would be cut off’(Kassindja 1998, 76-78). She alleged that she was
personally aware of four girls who died because of this procedure, although to what
extent this practiced symbolized a “real” mental and death-threatening event to
Kassindja, is unclear. Furthermore, there are conflicting reports on the type of
circumcision procedure that is practiced by the Tchamba. According to the
Department of State Report on Togo (1996), the Tchamba only practiced the
“Sunna” as opposed to “Pharanoic infibulation” that Kassindja described in her court
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testimony to the BIA.4 6 Therefore, the following account of Kassindja’s flight
from Togo should thus be viewed with some prudence.
KPALIME: A CAUTIONARY TALE
The tale of In Re: Fauziya Kasinga (1996) began in the southern town of
Kpalime in the West African nation of Togo on January 16,1993. Ms. Kassindja and
her family of four sisters and two brothers lived a much of their lives in a southern
suburb called Zango, mostly inhabited by tribes of the Muslim faith. Kassindja’s
tribes, the Tchamba-Koussountu comes from northern Togo where the majority of
the Tchamba-Koussountu members reside.4 7 It was on this date that her father,
Muhammad Kassindja suddenly died from an asthma attack. Fauziya Kassindja
describes her father as a wealthy businessman, very progressive in his outlook
regarding the Tchamba’s tribal beliefs. She points out that her father abhorred the
tribe’s custom of “Kakia” and polygamy and therefore distanced himself from many
4 6 In her appeal to the BIA, Kassindja maintained that the Tchamba practiced the more “extreme
kind” of female circumcision. On one hand she maintains that she is not knowledgeable of the
procedure, and on the other hand, we are informed that she is in fact familiar with the method. I
contend that the characterization of the type o f surgery as the “extreme kind” was used to bolster her
claim. See In Re Fauziya Kasinga A73476696, June 13,1996. In addition, we are not told
specifically why Mohammed Kassindja took issue with these customs. In truth, there may have been
more practical considerations. For example, Mr. Kassindja may have viewed his disallowance of
“kakia” and polygamy as a mechanism of personal control in which these customs may have served as
an impediment. He may also have wanted to instill in his daughters a “special-ness” much like
aristocratic families, particularly, since they were well off in contrast to other tribal members. In her
book account of her home life, the reader is struck by Fauziya Kassindja’s multiple accounts that
describe her home life as economically and educationally superior to the other tribal residents. Thus,
Mohammed Kassindja may have simply viewed some tribal customs as not in their practical interests
rather than for moral considerations.
47 The Tchamba-Koussountu are more often described as one tribe, when in fact, they are two
tribes. Fauziya Kassindja’s father was a product of a Tchamba mother and a Koussountu father, and
preferred identifying himself as such. See Kassindja, Do They Hear You When You Cry? 1998, p.21..
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of the tribal community’s customs with the exception of his strict adherence to
the tribe’s religious beliefs (Kassindja Affidavit 1995).
Kassindja was the youngest of four daughters; and her initial testimony to the
INS repeatedly stated that her father’s wealth and influence protected both her and
her three sisters from the Tchamba tradition of “Kakia” and polygamy. She also
testified that her sisters married outside of the tribe into non-polygamous marriages,
and have' since remained uncircumcised.
Kassindja has portrayed her family and religious life as privileged and serene,
placing a specific emphasis on the special attention that she received, particularly
from her father Muhammad Kassindja. Mr. Kassindja’s admiration for his
daughter’s maturity and intelligence led him to send her to a school in the
neighboring country of Ghana to prepare her for an education worthy of their status
and wealth. She has reiterated that her father had high expectations for her
specifically, because she was his “favorite” child (Kassindja 1998,18-32).
Kassindja’s mother Zuwere Kassindja is a member of the Dendi and Fulani
tribes (her mother was Fulani and her father Dendi) of the neighboring country of
Northern Benin, which borders Togo. Her mother is reportedly not circumcised.
The status of their wealth and their personal lives reportedly changed drastically after
Kassindja’s father’s death, when according to tribal custom her mother was banished
from the home after the allotted 4 months and 10 days after the death of her husband
Muhammad (Kassindja Affidavit 1995). Mrs. Kassindja reportedly lost the benefit
of having contact with her youngest daughter Fauziya, who was then 17-years-old.
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According to tribal custom, these circumstances left Mr. Kassindja’s surviving
sibling Hajia Mamoud (his sister) in charge of the family fortune with an absolute
right to the family residence a predicament leaving Mrs Kassindja with a reported
$3,500. 4 8 In June of 1994, after returning from St. Prosper’s college for secondary
education in Ghana, Fauziya reports that Hajia Mamoud told her that she would now
be expected to adhere to tribal custom and prepare for a polygamous marriage with a
much older man Ibrahim Isaka, reportedly, an influential former assemblyman. More
importantly, Kassindja alleged that her aunt was adamant that she end her
educational life in Ghana and proceed with the custom of “Kakia” prior to her
marriage. 4 9
According to Kassindja, the marriage took place without her having to
undergo “kakia”, and although she remained uncircumcised, she lived in fear of its
imminence and was offered a chance to flee. Kassindja’s memoirs and court
testimony reveals that her older sister Ayisha assisted her in fleeing to nearby Ghana
4 8 This Tchamba custom is explained as a right under Muslim marriage tradition. Upon Mr.
Kassindja’s death, Tchamba tribal members proceeded to take control of his assets. Accordingly, his
assets are divided into three portions: 1/3 is distributed to the surviving wife, another 1/3 for the
children, and the remaining 1/3 for the surviving family members of the father. According to Fauziya,
her father’s sister kept the surviving children’s portion as well as her own (Kassindja Affidavit 1995).
It is important to point out however, that this practice by the Tchamba is in total contravention to
Togolese Law which gives the mother sole parental control upon the death of a spouse (Nonossa Togo
Embassy Interview 2001).
4 9 According to court documents Fauziya indicates that she was married on October 17, 1994
without first undergoing “Kakia,” an obvious attempt to either out-smart Hajia Mamoud, or she was
not under the pressure prior to the marriage as she has indicated. This is one of the most interesting
aspects of this case, and one Judge Ferlise alluded to in his oral decision on August 25, 1995. See
Matter of Kasinga v. INS, 1995. However, this aspect of Fauziya’s testimony was viewed as a non
issue by most women’s rights organizations.
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and ultimately to Germany, with financial assistance from her mother, who
donated a few thousand dollars. 5 0
Upon arrival, Fauziya by happenstance met a female German citizen who
befriended her and offered her refuge in her home where she performed light
housekeeping duties (Kassindja Affidavit 1995). In addition, she also received
advice and assistance from a male Nigerian national referred to as “Charley” whom
she also met by chance at a German shopping Mall. They struck up a platonic
friendship and Kassindja indicates that she enlisted his help by sharing her personal
story of why she fled Togo. She indicated that it was her wish to go the U.S. where
she has relatives in the State of New Jersey and in Virginia. He reportedly advised
her that attempting U.S. entry was not that difficult and offered to sell her his sister’s
passport for $600.00 so that she could enter the U.S. According to Kassindja,
Charley advised her to ask for political asylum immediately upon entry. She
accepted his passport offer and thereafter flew to the U. S. The following brief
account of Fauziya Kassindja’s legal problems is illustrative of how malleable the
system of U.S. asylum jurisprudence is, particular its relation to
In Re Fauziya Kasinga.
IN RE: FAUZIYA KASINGA
On December 17, 1994, Fauziya entered the United States through Newark
International airport in the state of New Jersey. Although she handed the INS agent
5 0 Germany was chosen because it was the first plane out of Ghana with a European
destination. According to Fauziya, they were assisted by someone in airport personnel to whom they
paid “graft’, a common practice in most African countries. See Fauziya Kassindja, Do They Hear You
When You Cry? (pp.119-131).
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the passport she purchased from Charlie, she immediately informed officials that
she wished to apply for political asylum because of a forced polygamous marriage to
a Tchamba tribesman.5 1 She was thereafter detained by the INS under illegal
“inadmissibility through fraud” for intending to immigrate without the proper
entrance visa.5 2 She was arrested and immediately sent to a special INS detention
center at Esmor in New Jersey where she filed her initial petition for asylum.
Fauziya Kassindja’s request for asylum status was heard on August 25,1995
In the Matter o f Fauziya Kasinga v. INS in “Summary Exclusion” proceedings in
Philadelphis, Pennsylvania before immigration Judge Donald V.Ferlise.5 3 Attorney
Eric Bowman and his assistant, law student Layli Miller Bashir represented her,
although, according to Karen Musalo, Bowman’s poor legal handling of Kassindja’s
claim of persecution contributed to a courtroom setting that hardly served
Kassindja’s interest well (Musalo interview 1996).
The fundamental issue before the court was Kassindja’s allegations that, if
she were deported to Togo, she would be forced to undergo the custom of female
circumcision because of her status as a female member of the Tchamba tribe. Judge
5 1 Pursuant to Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. an applicant must
establish a “well-founded fear of persecution.” According to court documents, Fauziya maintains that
she did not indicate to airport officials that tribal female circumcision was the basis for her claim
because of the embarrassment associated with the subject but rather cited her forced polygamous
marriage as the reason for requesting political asylum. See In Re Fauziya Kasinga (1996). It is not
quite accurate as reported, that Kassindja attempted to seek entry without using a false passport. In
fact, Kassindja did attempt such an entry but was thwarted by an INS officer who inquired whether
she had visited the U.S. before? Cassandra answered “no” and was told by the officer that the holder
of the passport is recorded as having been in the U.S. previously. She was thus, taken into immediate
custody. See Do They Hear You When You Cry? (1998,169-172).
5 2 See In The Matter of Fauziya Kasinga A73476695,Section 212 (9) (a) (6) (c) (i) August
25,1995.
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Ferlise denied her claim based on two cmcial issues: (1) As a female member of
the Tchamba tribe, the imposition of “kakia” was not peculiar to her, but rather a
requirement for all female members of the Tchamba, thus, her allegations of
“persecution” did not fit the standard definition of “refugee”; and (2) The Togolese
government was not the body imposing the custom.5 3
Fauziya Kassindja’s subsequent appeal of Ferlise’s ruling to the Board of
Immigration Appeals (BIA) tribunal, relied heavily on the refugee category:
“membership in a particular social group,” in this case, the Tchamba tribe in which
Kassindja is a female member opposed to the custom of kakia. However, in
challenging the definition of refugee through this mechanism, I contend that the real
issue became not the “exotic” plight of Fauziya Kassindja and the controversial issue
of female asylees, but rather, the problem of the state determining the legitimacy of
African tribal customs is the more relevant issue. I would suggest that the basic
difficulty is the insistence of Europeans and European Americans, on recognizing the
significance of African tribal cultures as congealed history, instead of a Continent of
many diverse cultures and traditions. In great part, these difficulties are reflected in
the diversity of approaches by these groups to deny the Black African a rightful
5 3 Judge Ferlise’s concern with the standard definition of refugee is a legitimate one.
Even though he did not read the Department of Justice’s Gender-Specific Guidelines included in the
court brief (he was under the impression that they were mandated for Asylum Officers only) he did
not feel that immigration Judges were bound by them. He was aware however, that female asylees
were challenging the statutory definition of refugee persecution by addressing the flaws in
international refugee law. Thus, he appears to proceed cautiously when adjudicating such claims and
his negative rulings indicate that he may have been philosophically opposed to the legal reasoning of
the non-traditional notion of “refugee” as presented by women’s rights groups. He may also feel that
claims such as Kassindja’s are jeopardizing the true meaning of “persecution” precisely because
adjudicators are attempting to manipulate the categories of persecution in order to include gender as
category. See Fauziya Kassindja Do They Hear You When You Cry ?(1998,376-378).
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cultural place. For example, In Re Fauziya Kasinga, the problem of African
tribalism and asylum relief, characteristically, associates African tribal cultures in
terms of this one cultural group. State actors therefore, schooled by women rights
groups, and Christian missionary societies, tend to view a whole Continent as rule-
defined groups of primordial citizens; instead of understanding Africa as an amalgam
of complex and contradictory expressions of long-held cultural values, norms, and
ideas (Ogbonnaya 1994,Okome 1999). The real danger in the BIA’s mling in this
case was that it forfeited a good deal of conceptual accuracy in essentially
characterizing the Tchamba’s custom of “kakia” as uncivilized on the basis of one
claimant’s charge. It was romantically fitting therefore that after 17 months and 2
weeks in four maximum-security prisons and detention centers, Kassindja’s “exotic”
case came to public attention. She was portrayed thereafter by women’s rights
organizations and numerous articles in the American print media as a defenseless
African girl fighting against a savage African custom. In this role she won the hearts
of many, and her notoriety in America predictably culminated not only in Fauziya
Kassindja’s successful appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), but a
lucrative book offer that resulted in her fame and fortune.
Because the role of women’s rights organizations as the guardian center in
the Kassindja case was pivotal. I will now direct my attention to the formidable
influence of these organizations on Kassindja’s non-traditional route to U.S. entry.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS GROUPS AND THE KASSINDJA CASE
Historically, the mainstream of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. has
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had a troubled relationship with working-class women and women of color
(Okome 1999). Although the first wave of the women’s rights movement grew out
of the interracial abolitionist movement of the middle 19th century, certain dominant
women’s organizations have a history of exploiting Americans’ racist assumptions
about Black Africa and African Americans (1999). This strategy also holds true for
Christian Missionary societies, many of which are headed by White women
missionaries who have a flawed history of practicing racial equality toward persons
of African ancestry (Emerson 1967). For most of these groups, the Kassindja case is
not only a magnificent success; it also helps to reinforce their view that European
culture is superior to that of others.
In arguing for the necessity of the INS to design gender-specific guidelines,
women’s rights groups maintained that the definition of who constitutes a “refugee”
was unworkable. The “Women’s Harvard Refugee Project” in particular lobbied for
special consideration of female refugees and pointed out that the special
circumstances of their plight was tied to gender-related customs and traditions,
peculiar to their home State, thereby, causing them to flee. Kelly writes that the:
key criteria for being a refugee are drawn primarily from the
realm of public sphere activities dominated by men. With
‘regard to private sphere activities where women’s presence is
strongly felt, there is primarily silence. Silence compounded by
an unconscious calculus that assigns the critical quality of
‘political’ to many public activities but few private ones. Thus,
state oppression of a religious minority is political, while gender
oppression at home is not (1993,.6).
Although the problem of U. S. Immigration reform and the issue of cultural
involvement have proved overriding issue for policy makers, attempts to
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theoretically discuss, and empirically document the impact of how we view other
cultures are related for the most part to how we perceive the prospective immigrants
ethnic or racial group. Attention should be given to the harm these perceptions foster
and how they tend to create cultural misunderstandings within the larger society.
The problem in my view is that there are blind spots lurking within the proposal by
women’s rights groups to enlarge the definition of “refugee,” for as some scholars
and creates as some scholars contend, such groups create something of a “conceptual
split” within the way gender-based persecution is perceived
(Foote 1994). On the one hand, it is useful to rely on what some suggest is the
perennial condition of women refugees by acknowledging their gender-status
peculiarities (Macklin 1993). On the other hand, the creation of a special category
for women may, as Foote argues, compromise the intent to “de-marginalize” women
refugees by inadvertently “acknowledging their powerlessness (Foote 1994, 10-11).
These points-of- views merely highlight the political and social complexity of
asylum jurisprudence.
In the case of Fauziya Kassindja, her Africaness presents a more controversial
and pressing problem to her route to U.S. entry— that of white females acting in the
capacity of guardians on behalf of Black African females under sexual threat by the
African male. Their role In Re Fauziya Kassindja only served to legitimize racist
assumptions about the hypersexuality of the African male and female.5 4 For
5 4 Von Ware alludes to this complex and ambiguous relationship between both white and
Black African females by maintaining that the ways in which white females articulate themselves
through racial involvement with the outside “other” (in this case African females) is alarmingly racist
because in Ware’s view, the African female may symbolize for the white female the “degraded “
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example, the depiction of Kassindja’s aunt as the true villain who vigorously and
menacingly participated and advocated a polygymous marriage for Kassindja
implied that Hajia Mamoud supported and participated in the African male’s
purported hypersexual appetite for many females (Kassindja 1998). Thus, the
language and tone of the U.S. guidelines, reinforce negative racist ideas in support of
white superiority, while failing to address the serious ramifications of this policy on
the “other”— in this instance the Continent African community and the African
American
Also, although Judge Ferlise was widely criticized for his reasoning in the
Kassindja case, I found that there were merits in his arguments that reveal his
sensitivity to and respect for tribal customs. Moreover, his reluctance to find
Fauziya Kassindja “credible” suggested a cultural fluency that surpassed that of his
detractors. First, the credibility of women who claim they are fleeing gender-based
customs in their home country has been an ongoing issue and poses a severe judicial
problem; that remains a legitimate concern to immigration Judges in general.
Second, these external influences play a significant role in influencing how
some African claimants feel they should perhaps perceive genital surgeries;
claimants who might seize the opportunity to exploit the West’s opposition and
“negative romantic” views toward the practice, as well as its intense interest in the
value and validity of African cultures. These factors might (and often do) facilitate
woman in need of rescue by the white civilized female. This point of view represents the classic
example of “negative cultural romanticism” in which White female advocates feel a particular moral
burden to save the lowly. See Von Ware (1992), Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and
History.
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the asylum applicant’s ability to construct a winning cultural defense, although,
cultural defenses of this nature often leads to the use of deception as a reliable
defense mechanism, particularly in the case of African asylees because realistically,
the traditional refugee route is simply not available5 5
The public’s fascination with the outcome of the Kassindja case also focuses
attention of the INS’s political complexity, an issue that has regularly been the
subject the American public’s continual criticism. In addition, the poor
implementation of the gender-based guidelines signals a poor organizational
environment, which women’s rights groups and Christian missionary societies can
easily manipulate. I will now turn to a brief explanation of this structure in order to
show the range of the INS’s organizational bureaucracy and the climate in which this
case was litigated.
THE INS ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE:
ITS VAST COMPLEXITY
The INS is headed by a Federal Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner
(Figure 6). There are four Executive Associate Commissioners for: (a) Programs; (b)
Field Operations; (c) Policy and Planning; and (d) Management. There are five
Associate Commissioners for Enforcement: (a) Examinations, (b) Operations, (c)
Policy and Planning, (d) Information Resources Management, and (e) Administrative
Centers. The Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs oversees the
5 5 The aftermath of In Re Fauziya Kassindja produced some interesting and widely publicized
bogus asylum claims by a significant number of African women who attempted U.S. entry by relying
on the gender-specific policy of rescuing women from cultures that are characterized as solecistic. See
Abankwah v. INS, 185 f.3d 18(2d Cir.1999).
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Associate Commissioner of Enforcement and Administers the divisions of
Investigations: (a) Detentions and Deportations; (b) Intelligence, Asset Forfeiture,
Border Patrol, Examinations, Adjudication and Nationality, Inspections; and (c)
Service Center Operations, Records, and Administrative Appeals (INS Fact Book
1997,38).
The Executive Associate Commissioner for Field Operations supervises the
(a) Office of the Associate Commissioner; (b) Regional Director of the Western
Region; (c) Regional Director of the Central Region and its district sectors; (d)
Regional Director of the Eastern and its District sectors; (e) International Affairs and
Foreign Districts, and the Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and
Planning Offices; and (f) Planning and Policy. Lastly, the Executive Associate
Commissioner for Management is responsible for overseeing the Associate
Commissioner of Information Resources Management, which directs the sectors of:
(a) Systems Integration; (b) Data Systems; (c) Associate Commissioner of Human
Resources and Administration; (d) Administration, Human Resources and
Development; (e) Administrative Centers Associate Director; (f) Associate
Commission of Finance; (g) Financial Management; (h) Budget, Security, Files and
Forms Management; and (i) Equal Employment Opportunity.
The Asylum District Divisions are located in eight regions of the United
States: (a) the Los Angeles California district; (b) Chicago, Illinois; (c) Houston,
Texas; (d) Miami, Florida; (e) Newark, New Jersey; (f) New York, New York (the
most recent opened division) and (g) San Francisco, California.
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The line of authority extends from the Commissioner to the District
Director, and finally to lower level agents. The ongoing criticisms of this
bureaucracy continue to focus on the agency’s extreme vulnerability to outside
interest groups and essentially, the ability of these groups to make policy. This maze
is replete with continual philosophical contradictions, low employee morale, and in
some districts, complete distrust exists between upper and lower-level management
Although much of this criticism is warranted, consideration should be given
to the historical factors that have to a significant degree rendered this service
frangible. The service has been manipulated by interest groups, the legislature and
the executive branches of government; and more importantly, by a vacillating and
ambivalent public. The “trendy” political issues surrounding the Kassinda case mean
that politicians will be called upon to intervene on behalf of whatever group or
society, that has a prominent cause. Thus, frequently, there are abrupt policy changes
on any given issue at any given time. For example, as a result of the Kassindja
decision, advocacy groups and human rights organizations in particular, have
wielded significant influence in the hiring of members of the Immigration and
Naturalization Services’Asylum Officer Corps.5 6 The intention of which is to put in
place those Asylum Officers who are sympathetic to their causes. In the aftermath of
the Kassindja decision, pressure from these groups, has resulted in significant
56 Recent interviews with some Members of the Officers Asylum Corps revealed that they
were influenced to apply for these positions by some members of the Harvard Women’s Refugee
Project, and other women’s rights groups (2001). Most of those interviewed, also worked (prior to
becoming members of the AOC) as aid workers for Christian missionary societies (AOC interviews
December 2002).
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changes for the Tchamba tribe. The following discussion illustrates how
formidable this influence is.
AFTERMATH OF THE DECISION
Because of the case’s notoriety, the American Embassy in Lome, the capital of
the region Kassindja resided in, dispatched members of its staff to interview
members of Ms. Kassindja's family and her alleged husband. Diplomatic core
officials were instructed to send Justice Department officials the results of a so-
called new country study (undertaken by researchers at the University of Benin and
coincidentally financed by the United States agency for International Development
(USAID) confirmed that the Kassindja clan had the highest pervasiveness of the
practice of female circumcision in the region. This coupled with the American
Embassy's efforts to solicit the assistance of one Suzanne Abo, Director of Togo's
Office for the “Protection and Promotion of the family in Togo,” who in turn was
advised to contact Ms. Kassindja’s clan, namely an uncle, Mouhamadou Kassindja
(Dugger 1996). Accordingly, Ms. Abo was prompted to convince Mouhamadou to
allow Fauziya to return home with the stipulation that “Kakia” would not be
performed. Mr. Kassindja, it is claimed, refused to agree to such a stipulation on
traditional grounds. It is logic to assume however, that if it were reported that
Mouhamadou agreed to certain conditions to allow Kassindja to come home, her
whole case would lose momentum thus, it is dubious that this account is accurate.
First, is it in the higher national interest of the U. S. to attempt to influence
the direction of gender-based customs of the Tchamba tribe? Prior to the Kassindja
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decision there was no government imposed law in Togo that explicitly forbade
female genital surgeries (U.S. Department of State Report on Togo 1996) The Togo
constitution does ensure however, each individual’s physical integrity, providing a
basis for the government to protect a woman from this tradition. Second, what the
Kassindja case tells us is that the greatest danger to any asylum policy lies in the
ability of any one group or body to influence immigration policy. The crucial
elements of the Kassindja case and others that will follow are that there is a
fundamental flaw in the assessment of foreign customs and traditions when creating
such a policy. Sebastian Poulter argues that there is an implicit hazard in evaluating
other cultures from a western perspective, particular an Anglo-Saxon setting:
Perhaps the greatest danger in assessing the customs of other
peoples lies in the adoption of an ethnocentric approach in
terms of which automatic and thoughtless assumptions are
made about the superiority of one’s own community’s
patterns of behavior, values and beliefs. (Poulter 1988, 218).
The ethnocentric approach to which Poulter refers represents a very real
dilemma. African foreign nationals reflect this problem in the way the negative
responses to the Kassindja case have been manifested. In other words, there is the
familiar danger of using one’s regional experience as told by African claimants as
the basis for generalization about African, and African women in particular. In
short, this lack of cultural fluency by Western cultures perpetuates negative
misinterpretations about Black Africa and tribal customs, leaving those scholars who
are culturally fluent alone. This reality is especially relevant to the cultural defenses
that are brought before the public by women’s rights groups, and Christian
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missionary societies. I will now turn my attention to the African American
dimension of the Kassindja case. I will discuss the scarce attention given to claims
of African tribal persecution by the African-American community along with the
historical implications.
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CHAPTER 5
THE DILEMMA OF CULTURAL IDENTITY: THE AFRICAN
AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN RESPONSE TO KASSINDJA:
THE MYTH OF KINSHIP
During her detention by the INS, Fauziya Kassindja found it both disturbing
and enigmatic that the African Americans with whom she came into contact
exhibited a less than generous attitude to her presence in the U. S. (Kassindja
interview, 1998).5 7 The uneasy response to Kassindja and to other African asylees
reveals what Diamond refers to as “a largely unappreciated complexity in this aspect
of African American history and life” (1998, 451).
This chapter examines these intricacies, along with the common perception,
that an entrenched kinship exists between these two groups. Even though it is
accurate to acknowledge that the African American is preoccupied with the
economic impact of immigration on their communities, few scholars have gone
beyond examining these common complaints. For some members of the African-
American, population, the Kassindja case has shown us that racial assumptions in
regard to African tribal customs are inevitably linked to their community and have
adversely reinforced erroneous perceptions about African Americans and their
ancestral link to Africa.
In the following pages, I shall analyze African Americans’ apprehensions of
Black African kinship and their inability to view African asylee claims of tribal
5 7 When I refer to “some” members of the African-American community, I am speaking of those
African Americans (as explained by Jacobs) that do not necessarily wish to revisit the idea of African
first, and an American second, or that they necessarily embrace the notion of Pan Africanism.
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persecution as anything more than an attempt to exploit America’s racism toward
Black Africa. First, it is important to examine from a historical perspective where
these concerns originated.
Second, in order to understand why the response by some members of the
African American community to Kassindja was not a positive one, it is crucial to
examine the attitudes and fears associated with the difficulty of these descendants of
enslaved Africans, and members of the African foreign community, to make their
cultural and political ties to the African Continent politically and socially effective.
I wish to challenge two interrelated assumptions shared by most White
Americans, and by some segments of the African American population, namely, that
there a natural bond of kinship links the Continent African, the African immigrant
community, and the descendants of the enslaved African American. Instead, I
propose that, on the contrary, no such romantic ideals exist between these two
groups, because more often than not, they adhere to the same myths and stereotypes
of Continent Africans and African Americans that are held by White Americans.
Therefore, when considering the seriousness of the World’s internally
displaced refugees from Africa, it is important to analyze why African Americans
have not made more vigorous efforts to speak out on behalf of Black African
migration to the U.S. via the traditional refugee route. It is within this constmct, that
efforts to transnationalize an African identity in favor of the African female asylee, is
problematic. Kilson (1992) argues: “when linkages between these groups do exist”,
they are “peculiarly fitful” (362).
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It is also important to note that in the follow-up focused interviews conducted
in both the Cultural Asylum and Cultural Identity surveys, both African Americans
and Continent Africans, were amazingly candid in their assessment of each other, as
each group accused the other of ill treatment and disrespect. Black Africans charged
that when African Americans visit the Continent they assume an attitude of
“superiority.” On the other hand, African Americans argue, Black Africans in
general tend to cater to White tourists, and White academics and White missionary
groups purposely ignoring the African American communities. They maintain that
Continent Africans assume the position that whites are a more “valuable” group with
which to interact.
What has emerged during the aftermath of these focus sessions was that the
majority of African nationals who had been in the United States five years or more,
indicated that they do not associate with African Americans because they do not like
them as a group. When this Investigator inquired into the reasons for their attitude,
they cited stereotyped characteristics such as “they are loud”, steal, and other
aberrant types of behavior. Most African nationals felt that African Americans were
morally corrupt—entrenched in the drug business and lacking the family structure
and other identifiable traditions or customs unlike their respective cultures.
Moreover, most agreed that the impoverishment of some African Americans appear
to be self-induced. This general assessment of African Americans by the African
participants not only showed their extreme lack of historical knowledge about
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African Americans; it also shows the formidable influence of stereotypes and
myths that are promoted by White Americans.
This investigator, further exploring this issue with African nationals, inquired
how, if they had little or no relations with African Americans, they still reached such
conclusions? Most of the participants cited four sources; (1) their White American
friends; (2) U.S. nongovernmental Aid workers (before and during their U.S. arrival;
(3) Hollywood films they viewed in their respective countries and the U.S.; and (4)
the television news.
In addition, when the investigator inquired how much of African American
history had they been exposed to the history of racism, civil rights activism, and
the significant contributions African Americans have made to America, most
admitted that they had little or no exposure. More importantly, when asked if they
were aware that as a result of the1995 immigration Act, which (theoretically)
allowing persons like themselves to immigrate to the United States, was a direct
result of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for which so many African Americans and others
fought and died, most nationals expressed extreme ignorance.
Furthermore, unlike the African nationals, African Americans voiced an
interest in associating with other Africans, though reticent to share in what they
believed were their strange beliefs and practices: their food customs, poor dressing
habits, and what they considered their reverence for “white folks”. Most viewed
Africans (particularly Ethiopians) as ignorant and hygienically undesirable. When
asked how they came to their conclusions, they cited four sources; (1) word of mouth
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from other African Americans; (2) television news (particularly those covering
food relief efforts in the African states of Ethiopia, and Somalia specifically); (3)
church events like Christian missionary talks; and (4)their own observations. Thus,
the evidence that this investigator uncovered about the strained relations between the
Continent African and the African American proved troubling and problematic
because both groups exhibited a dislike for each other based on erroneous
misinterpretations of their cultural realities, the same realities voiced by European
and European Americans throughout the Hollywood system, the media, and
American mass culture.
Lastly, as I noted in Chapter 2, the surveys indicate that both groups show no
real inclination to link with one another, that they thus harbor no romantic illusions
of a community of one, in part because African foreign nationals often believe that,
by distancing themselves from African Americans, they will be less associated with
the negative myths, and stereotypes of the African American. And although it is not
commonly known, Christian Missionary societies and other groups, dissuade
Continent Africans from associating with African Americans once they arrive on
American shores. Another perhaps more salient reason offered by both groups for
this divide is the notion that Africa’s complicity in the slave trade is a painful reality
that has contributed negatively to African and African American relations. Professor
Kofi Anydoho of the University of Ghana offers this explanation:
Africans have been hard pressed to confront slavery’s
legacy. It is too painful an experience to keep talking about.
Not only for the victim’s people whose family members
were stolen, but also to members of those communities who
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collaborated with the slave raiders. (Anyidoho, cited in Campbell
1999,12).
Professor Anyidoho’s remarks illustrate the extreme maze of complexities that both
groups must overcome to appreciate African American ambivalence toward
newcomers from African nation states. While there are ongoing efforts by some
Women’s rights groups to seek African American support to denounce some of the
more “exotic” customs of African States, there is understandably a reticence on the
part of African Americans to embrace the denigration of particular African customs
as either primitive or uncivilized. When these customs are specifically linked to the
origins of African American cultural realities, this group shows an apparent need to
distance itself from yet another African custom that is characterized as barbaric.
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTERFACE WITH BLACK
AFRICAN REALITIES
Kilson’s (1992) ongoing work on the issue of African Americans interface
with Continent Africans realities in some instances corroborates my own research for
this study. He notes the “ uncertain character to this relationship”, and his
scholarship also cautions against “romantic notions of affinity”. As he argues,
“There has been an ambivalent element associated with the Black American interface
with African realities” (361). Kilson disagrees, however, with other researchers
about the intensity of this ambivalence. For example, he points to the remarks Martin
Staniland (1970) made which asserted that African American scholarship reflected a
“low-level” of attention to African issues and appeared to have a “particularly
disdainful attitude toward its inhabitants” (362). Staniland argued that “African
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Americans seemed to want to turn their backs on the Continent and anything that
has associated them with it”(362). Staniland’s thesis is particularly insightful
because these attitudes are relevant not only to the 1960s,but also to the 1970’s,
1980s and the 1990s a theme discussed by Herskovits (1973), Jacobs (1981), and
Richburg (1997). Thus, on the one hand, Kilson cautions those Black intellectuals
who harbor fervent romantic notions about Africa to address the reality of kinship
ties, and, on the other, he emphasizes that the African American “disdain” for Africa
is not so intense as Staniland suggests.
Kilson (1992) attempts to distinguish between what he characterizes as those
African American intellectuals that assume a “Black ethnocentric” posture, and those
“pragmatic activistfs]” he seems to favor. For example, he cautions the “Black
ethnocentric” that there:
[is] a fundamental flaw at the core of the Afro-centric
orientation toward the Black American Nexus. The flaw is
the Afro-centric mindset. Some Black intellectuals assume
that there’s is a generic kinship bond among Black American
peoples in general, and between Black Americans and
Africans in particular (1992,452).
Kilson describes the “Black pragmatic activist” as having “assimilist tendencies
(Kilson 1992). For example, he maintains that, like Black ethnocentrics, they never
faced up to the problem of the “quality of Black rule” in African Nation States, as
Black members of Congress had demonstrated during the 1970s crisis in Uganda
under General Idl Amin (453). These examples illustrate the ambivalence and acute
sensitivity of Continent Africans and African Americans realities.
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Finally, the Kassindja case shows that the tendency with which
governmental institutions attempt to interpret African tribal customs as an arm of
immigration policy, becomes problematic for African Americans . In Re: Fauziya
Kasinga .presents a variety of historical implications that offend certain members of
the Africa American community who perceived by that the ultimate outcome of
cases like this will inevitably reinforce the historic notion, no matter how erroneous,
that Continent African customs pertain to the cultural realities of the African
American. To add to this complexity, there is an on-going issue about the African-
American’s inattention to the United States’ rejection of significant numbers of
Black African refugees for entry into the U.S., as compared with other ethnic and
racial groups. According to staff consultants of the Congressional Black Caucus, the
answer has historically existed in its inability to persuade African Americans in
general, to lend a voice to the issue:
Traditionally, the groups that get admitted to the United
States are groups that have strong political voices in the
United States. The State Department is able to ignore
Africans because African Americans are silent on the issue.
(Daniszewski 1998, A6).
What Kassindja and her supporters did not understand was that the lack of
intense interest in her case by most African Americans issued from the fundamental
misunderstanding of the multi-faceted problems impeding any notions of kinship,
The dynamics of which can be found in what Kilson (1992) terms a “special
complexity”:
The special complex of cultural identity and habits we call
ethnicity, has always proven elusive in modem societies.
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This has been devastatingly so for Afro-Americans, ambivalent in
form and precarious in meaning, Black ethnicity must be
perpetually retrieved fought for and fabricated, as it were
from issue to issue, from event to event, and epoch to epoch.
Thus both in America and elsewhere, it is difficult to
translate Black ethnicity into a present day principle of
sacrifice, altruism, and group tenacity in behalf of long-range
goals (434).
Interestingly, the majority opinion by some scholars is that today’s African
American culture, as Jacobs demonstrates, has little to do with Africa and much to
do with slavery and other kinds of subordination Africans experienced upon coming
to the U. S. (Jacobs 1981). Not, as some argue, that slavery destroyed the Black
family but that it lastingly impaired its ability to function. Therefore, their distancing
themselves from the Kassindja case can be explained within this context. As
Middleton and Rassam (1981) argue, although the slave population of the South was
colossal, the slave trade ended in 1807, and the vast majority of slaves were bom into
families already acculturated to U. S. culture. Yet, both Middleton and Rassam
disagree(particularly as some have suggested, by the Middle Passage”) and was not
influential in vital ways:
[it] is a myth that the Black heritage was wiped out by the
Middle Passage. Southern slaveholders were only well
aware of the connection between resistance and their slaves’
alarmingly distinctive usages in religion, magic and music.
Their Christianity took, and still takes, syncretistic forms,
their folklore, games and humor have clear African
antecedents, and their speech has developed distinctive lines.
Not only in special cases like the Gullah dialect of the sea
Islands of South Carolina, but in the speech patterns and
inflections which distinguish modem Black English, Black
family structures and naming patterns may also be
adaptations of African usages. Above all, the descendants of
the slaves have adapted Africa’s musical legacy to give
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America and the Western world the unique musical gift of jazz
(Middleton and Rassam 1981,71).
Middleton and Rassam here emphasizes a crucial issue pertaining to African
cultural retentions by American enslaved Africans and their descendants. The
opportunity to forget the African ancestral link, and to remain indifferent to this
background, thus remains a continuing battle for some African descendants.
To whom, then, are both Staniland and Kilson (1992) referring when they
argue that certain groups of African Americans distance themselves from their
African heritage? In the 1950s Black writer Richard Wright addressed this debate
by crudely suggesting this ambivalence and by showing a disdain for what Africa
represented. Wright severely judged a presumed kinship with Continent Africa and
Africans Americans, in particular, Leopold Senghor's literary efforts to romanticize
Black kinship bonds, and Black African womanhood. During the 1956 “First
Congress of Black Writers and Artists,” as Kilson (1992) as asserts, Wright’s
remarks cautioning Senghor that the kinship bond between Continent Africans and
American “Negroes” were unrealistic:
Brother, I have got to face it. I cannot accept Africa because
of mere blackness or on trust. The ancestor cult religion
with all of its manifold poetic richness self-sufficiency did
not that religion, when the European guns came in act as a
sort of aid to these guns? Did that religion, help the people
to resist fiercely and hardily and hurl the Europeans out? I
have the feeling, uneasy, almost bordering upon dread, that
there was a fateful historic complement between a militant
White (slaving) Christian Europe and ancestral religious cult
religion in Africa. They complimented each other, and the
morally foul relationship remained for more than five
hundred years (Wright, cited in Kilson 1992, 369).
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Although Wright’s remarks may seem particularly heavy handed and archaic,
even for the 1950s, some would argue that they can be applied to some segments of
the African American community today. Richburg’s rejection of the notion of a
supposed kinship illustrates this point.
A climate of ambivalence unmistakably lingers between these two groups. In
their “negative cultural romantic” view of Black Africans, African Americans went
to great lengths to disassociate themselves from the African Continent, particularly
from certain members of the African American community with distinct northern
ties. These African Americans early adopted some of the same stereotypes of Black
Africa as those held by European Americans, who believed that Africans were
tricksters, and opportunists, child-like, insincere and mythical. West Africans were
viewed as particularly problematic and likened to poorer African Americans, while
East Africans were considered hygienically undesirable and quarrelsome, with a
strong propensity to perpetrate some kind of ruse on White Christian missionaries
and vice versa. This assumptions reveals that African Americans and Continent
Africans also participate in stereotypes that are reminiscent of the written perceptions
many slave owners had of the marketability of their African property.
For instance, enslaved Africans represented the whole range of mostly West
African cultures. Plantation owners, aware of this diversity, ascribed different values
and characteristics to various home regions. Middleton and Rassam (1989) point out
the Asantes of Ghana, were considered “quarrelsome”, the Congolese lacking in“
intelligence”, the Yoruba “faithful”, Bantus physically strong (1989,70).
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In the 1980s, and 1990s, some African American scholars elaborated on
what they viewed as a turbulent relationship between Continent Africans and African
Americans. Elliott Skinner (1997) discussed what he saw as the “true” character,
rather than the “idealized” relationship, between African Americans’ and Continent
Africans. He discerned the extreme ambivalence both groups exhibited toward one
another:
Many among the new generation of Africans who had come
to the United States in the 1960s, were unaware of the efforts
on the part of the Afro-American elite to influence United
States Policy toward Africa. The Africans arriving expected
violence and hostility in the city streets and were ready to
defend themselves against racial prejudice. Instead, they
found many American Whites eager to meet them. They
were encouraged to wear their traditional clothes and to
speak their native languages, and they allegedly had no
reason to believe that these requests were not made with the
best of intentions. (Skinner 1997,173)
Skinner also notes the resentment and confusion that African Americans felt because
of the dubious relationship between the European American and the Continent
African. Skinner argues that the African descendant did not trust the intention of the
European American toward the Black African:
They charged the Whites with duplicity and the Africans
with naivete. They refused to believe that Africans, who
wore their traditional clothing and spoke the mother tongue,
did so out of national pride and not to avoid prejudice (74).
Some African Americans argued, however, that Continent Africans were less
naive than presumed and often exploited these occasions with European Americans
at the expense of the African American community, particularly when the African
understood that it was the African American’s link with Africa that was at the heart
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of American racism. This point remains all the more interesting because Skinner
also finds that when the African foreign national did experience racism by European
Americans’, many claimed that their negative treatment was primarily the fault of
African Americans. Skinner alludes to a survey in the 1970s demonstrating that a
significant number of African Student visitors nationwide articulated the deep
conflict existing between themselves and “American Negroes”(174).
For some Continent Africans it was much more difficult to cultivate relations
with “Negroes” than with European Americans (174). This aspect of the question of
kinship discussed in the “Cultural Identity “survey is a critical one, disclosing the
real crux of the issue between the two groups; it further explains why Kassindja was
perplexed by African Americans treatment of her. In this respect, Skinner points out
that those researching African relationships between African Americans, avoided
examining the problem of how European American behavior toward the African
American adversely affected the relationship between African student visitors and
African Americans in general. Skinner ‘s comments remain relevant to the strained
and distant present-day relationships between Africans and African Americans.
CONCLUSION
Concerned that they will somehow be caught in the negative romantic prism
through which European Americans’ viewed African Americans’, the African
foreign visitor and permanent residents are largely preoccupied with keeping an
appreciable distance from African Americans, a stance which complicates an already
complex relationship. The trick is how to be accepted by European Americans
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without appearing purposely remote from the African American. Thus, the
African American response to the Kassindja case understandably indicates the
African American unwillingness to respond sympathetically to her plight. Without
question their responses derive from their unfavorable reactions not only to African
immigrants, but also to immigrants in general. The notion therefore, that there is a
presumed kinship between these two groups should be quickly dispelled. Kilson
(1992), Jacobs (1981), and Herskovits (1973), describe such realities early in their
research. Richburg (1997) asks, “How could I possibly relate to these Africans when
we are separated by such a wide gulf of culture, background, and sensitivity” (146).
More importantly, the African American response to Kassindja clearly indicates that
this intolerance is inextricably linked to the African Americans weak socioeconomic
position of African Americans, which compels them repeatedly to bear the high costs
of liberal or preferential immigration policies. Hence, as the following analysis
reveals, the plight of Kassindja and others that will follow remain low on the
African American social and political agenda.
On the other hand, however, part of this historical ambivalence toward
immigrants and immigration policies pertain to what Kassindja argued was her main
impetus for immigrating to the United States— the belief in American principles of
equality and justice (Kassindja Interview 1998). As I have noted in Chapter 2, on the
heels of the civil rights movement, leaders of the Black elite argued for the
admittance of Indo-Chinese refugees, while acknowledging the ongoing economic
problems that faced the African descendant community, giving as a reason “our
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political straggle for economic and political freedom is linked to their own
straggle” (Fuchs 1990,32). Many African Americans thus subsequently resented
what they viewed as preferential treatment accorded these same immigrants. For
instance, the large sums of refugee resettlement funds allocated to such immigrants
are not in the view of African Americans in keeping with the traditional notion of
immigrant self-help (the Boot Strap theory) and family sponsorship. Thus, it is
believed that this policy undermined the efforts of African Americans to become an
economically viable community.5 8
Kassindja notes that when her story became public, some members of the
African immigrant community in the U. S. essentially took the position that she had
betrayed them. In other words, another African woman has confirmed to the world
yet another horror story about a primitive uncivilized Africa. Thus, the notion that
5 8 Most Americans are unaware that the modern refugee community is allocated significant
relocation resources by the federal government (as in the case of Indo-Chinese refugees). The idea is
that the funds are to be viewed as a loan. However as of 1998, the federal government has not
released any documentation on the pay back rate of these loans. The Government Accounting Office
(GAO) told me repeatedly that data of this kind is not readily available. In addition, many of these
refugees applied for social welfare and participated in special funding programs that were not
available to the average American. For example, during my immigration research as an
undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, I discovered that these refugees were
treated very differently than African American recipients. For example, a work incentive program for
social welfare recipients at the Berkeley office of Social Services, allowed all Asian and African
immigrants (for the most part, Africans recipients were made up of Ethiopian males who requested
financial consideration), to choose where they wished to carry out their work obligations. Most chose
sites where the general public would not see them. I followed one work crew for instance, to the
Oakland Zoo, where they were very much hidden from view. They were allowed to roam incognito
until it was time to cease working. On the other hand, the African American recipients were expected
to work where they were assigned, usually cleaning the public streets and other humiliating tasks.
When I inquired about the inequality of tasks, I was informed that there were cultural considerations.
They maintained that African Americans did not mind assuming the more menial tasks because they
were used to the American system. Asian and Ethiopian male recipients they maintained, both came
from cultures that perceive certain tasks as women’s work. Note: most social service case workers
that handle Asian welfare recipients are Asian. This is also true in U.S. immigration citizenship
offices, for example in El Monte California. The task is to assist these immigrants in language and
examination difficulties.
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African Americans should assume an emotional link on behalf of African asylum
claimants is perhaps an unrealistic one. The efforts to galvanize them into
responsiveness to gender-specific guidelines simply entails a reinforcement of the
myth of Kinship.
In addition, the negative African American response to the Kassindja case
indicates some ambivalence regarding her plight as a whole and was thus taken up
for the most part by European-American women and Christian missionary groups. It
also appears that the unfavorable reaction to Kassindja is tied to the African
American’s notion of how Continent African has historically responded to them.
Their concerns in this regard are legitimate. Take for example Fauziya Kassindja’s
stereotypical description in her memoirs of her African American prison cell-mates
The critical question here is where, and when, did she formulate these negative
characterizations? Kassindja in fact, had no normal contact with the African
American population prior to her release from INS detention. In addition, the
suspicions articulated by both African Americans and African nationals about the
legitimacy of her story can also be traced to the negative romantic imageries of the
Black race espoused by the larger American population.
It is clear that Kassindja’s particular plight and others that will follow are not
high on the African American Agenda and for good reason. Immigration history has
shown African Americans that these same immigrants will one day turn on them and
make them the target of their hatred . Moreover, African refugees that are fortunate
to make it to U.S. shores, are in most cases considered the more assimilable African
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refugees and are thus assisted by Christian Missionary Aid groups (particularly
U.S. Christian colleges) and they deliberately discourage African refugees from
forming relationships with African Americans.5 9 This is particular troubling because
most of these Aid societies use also use African immigrants to discourage new
African immigrants from participating in fraternal relationships with African
descendants.
My research has shown that both groups have distanced themselves because
of pressingly real concerns with the racist ideas and stereotypes impeding their
progress. Richburg maintains for example, that his experience in Kenya caused him
to notice the lack of humanity East Africans in particular demonstrate toward Black
Kenyans. This absence of moral concern, he claims, assured him that he personally
did not come from such a place: “They are particularly insensitive to their own”
(236). In describing how Kenyans in particular respond to rites of passage,
specifically that of male circumcision, he found their responses “less than human”
and warns African Americans not to romanticize Africa and Africans: “Are these
my people, am I truly an African American?” For him “there is no absolute
connection or otherwise”:
And for African Americans, I think the reaffirmation of
some kind of lost African identity is rooted more in
Fantasy than reality. Why would we as Americans want
5 9 A significant number of Asylum Officers are recent graduates of Law School (the INS salary
pay scale for this group is high, this opportunity gives many of these graduates a chance to pay off
their government student loans). Some segment of the AOC, however, are former NGO Aid Workers.
During my interviews with them, they confirmed that during refugee resettlement programs in the
U. S., they witnessed first hand, the orientation of Ethiopian refugees and was astonished to find out
that part of this process strongly encouraged Ethiopian refugees to create distance from the African
American Community (Asylum Officer’s interview, December 2001).
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to embrace a Continent so driven by tribal and ethnic, and
religious hatreds? And besides, how can we sons and
daughters of America soil reaffirm and identity that for us
never existed in the first place? (1998,237).
When African American support is solicited to denounce the customs and
traditions of African states, there is reticence, or, the need to assume a distance from
African customs that are characterized as solecistic. African Americans argues
Kilson (1992):
[have] gained much of their operative cultural definition in
contradistinction to the cultural to the cultural hegemony of
Anglo Christian civilizations. Moreover, African- American
ethnicity is perpetually forever ambiguous in form with each
generation. Primarily because African-American ethnicity is
precarious in content, resulting in a confusion of purpose in
regard to the dynamic operation of African cultural ties (22).
There is also concern that the campaign against the particular custom of female
circumcision, centers on the stereotype of the hypersexual identity of the African
male. One could safely view In Re Fauziya Kasinga as a case that is primarily
concerned with the alleged sexual demands of the Black African male. For example,
although this custom is practiced in some regions in Asia, and in some Islamic
Middle Eastern communities, attention is largely focused on tribal African customs
of female circumcision.
The expectation that African Americans should express an emotional and
psychological connection to the Continent African encompasses many such
complexities and will continue to be a debatable one. Furthermore, any effort to
provoke them to be spontaneously responsive to the issue of African cultural
traditions will undoubtedly remain ,at least for the present, a futile one, whereas in
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139
the 1960s and 1970s, the African American elite and the African American poor,
enjoyed a very brief love affair with their African roots.
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CHAPTER 6
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
140
I began this study with the central argument that the problem of a
gender -related cultural asylum policy, goes beyond the simple agreement on
political forms and contemporary public policy directives. The issue upon which
groups are allowed or denied U. S. entry under a cultural asylum policy, is
influenced by fanciful inventive perceptions of some cultures with little basis in
reality. These perceptions are necessarily reliant on old ethnic and racial stereotypes
that tend to promote both negative and positive assumptions about other “out”
cultures— in this case, Black African customs. I refer to this theory as “Negative
Cultural Romanticism” and have utilized it to demonstrate the link between negative
racial assumptions about Africa and U. S. immigration policy.
From a historical perspective, I applied this theory in examining the past origins
of racial and ethnic mythologies by first tracing the social basis of how and why
these negative symbols and images about Black Africa initially emerged—
particularly, as they pertain to Black Africans and their link to African American
culture. More importantly, I traced how these myths and symbols have come to be
operationalized romantically by both African and European Americans.
I established that there is a convergence between how we operationalize these
images and its direct relevance to how we select and exclude Black Africans from
fully participating in the legal immigration process. In the case African and Black
Africans, these negative myths are still inextricably associated with the cultural
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141
realities of the African American descendant by succeeding generations of
European Americans. I further showed how U. S. immigration and racial exclusion
have historically relied on negative images of particular ethnic and racial groups in
order to deny them U. S. entry. I traced accounts of the formation of the selection
and exclusion process that targeted ethnic and racial groups through legislation and
concluded that these same specific stereotypes and images of Africa and Black
Africans operate negatively by excluding these immigrants; and more importantly,
to admit claimants.
We have seen that Americans continue to be threatened by the immigration
movement to the U. S. and that they are particularly opposed to the idea of Continent
Africans immigrating in significant numbers. We know that resistance to
immigration transcends race and ethnicity, and that this resistance continues to
reinforce a U.S. culture of presumed superiority.
I examined the frail organizational structure of the INS, and attempted to
show how that agency’s dual-mission of both “selection” and “exclusion” has been
consistently problematic and may serve inadvertently to reinforce a hidden agenda of
U.S. immigration policy—the exclusion of a significant number of Black Africans
from the traditional route to U.S. entry. Research shows that leadership at the top
level of the INS is poorly equipped to handle such a formidable immigration task
because of political considerations and powerful outside influences; the mechanics
by which decisions are adjudicated reduce the need for the asylee claimant to
produce viable evidence on her behalf, and the burden of these “exotic” defenses
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142
then falls to the affected communities, namely Continent Africans and African
Americans. In most cases, the claimant’s testimony alone can be grounds to grant
asylum, seriously compromising the total process. Moreover, Members of the
Officer’s Asylum Corps who hear the majority of these cases remain somewhat at
the mercy of the claimant and external actors, including the claimants’ own
translator. The implications are that the interpreter may incorrectly or willfully
translate the claimant’s response.
I attempted to show how the Kassindja case in particular and the custom of
“Kakia,” female genital surgery, as an African rite of passage, clearly feeds a theory
of “Negative Cultural Romanticism”. It was demonstrated how American racist
attitudes and negative images about Black Africa intersect with American popular
culture, and with the Hollywood system in particular. I contend that the stereotypes
of a “barbaric culture thesis” heavily influenced the outcome of her deportation
hearing, because they offered a challenge to West African womanhood and West
African social arrangements. The Western world perceives such arrangements as the
antithesis of a “civilized” society. This view effectively reduced the need for
Fauziya Kassindja to produce reliable data to prove “persecution”. It is my view that
she relied instead on America’s racial assumptions about the Black race in order to
develop her case.
This case also shows how interest group politics and the Kassindja case
specifically not only shape immigration policy, but also interfere with the well-being
of both Continent African and African American communities through a
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143
presumption of race-informing. This concentration of governmental actors, and
nongovernmental agencies, of women’s rights groups and Christian missionary
societies, clearly confirms how these organizations have emerged as a vibrant sector
in wielding their considerable resources in order to influence U. S. immigration
policy.
The state must address the specific circumstances in which African females,
and Black Africans in general are disallowed the traditional refugee means to U.S.
entry. In offering African females cultural asylum as the only sure route to the
United States, the government actually allows these claimants to assume a role as a
co-architect of a race conscious asylum policy. As the Kassindja case suggests, it is
not only a humiliating route to entry; it is also a path that involves a high price for all
those involved, namely the Continent African and African American communities.
Therefore, this research indicates that the role of advocacy forces in this
sphere of influence should not be underestimated. By not accepting a particular
ideological perspective on immigration policy, and on the groups that endorse it, we
can be spared many of the difficult examinations and evaluations needed to make
appropriate political choices. Some scholars warn that this is a very tempting for
citizens in a democracy because, to reject it, even in part, requires our special
attention to sort out our thoughts on the appropriate immigration policies
(Gunning 1998).
There are problems, however, is we succumb too much to this temptation.
Although surrendering some of our political choices to “ideological cue givers”
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144
assist us to sort out some of the complexities of immigration and cultural asylum
issues, we fail to reduce the actual multifaceted problems surrounding the
relationship between government agencies and the interpretation of African customs.
A culturally-inspired immigration policy on gender issues remains complicated and
difficult, and the only solutions presented are often too simple and straightforward as
both the May 1995 Coven “Considerations Memo,” and the July 1995 Rosemary
Melville INS follow-up internal memo suggest. For example, the Melville memo’s
abstract concept of imploring members of the Asylum Officers Corps (AOC) to
assume an introspective role in observing the gender-specific guidelines is one such
illustration. The idea advanced is that AOC members should address their own
personal cultural biases so that they may fairly evaluate asylee claims (Melville
internal memo, 1995). This shows that the abstract concept of addressing one’s own
personal cultural biases in order to render a just evaluation of asylum claims is an
oversimplification and is rather naive. This process of oversimplification might result
in a failure to recognize the true nature of the policy problem we face and the actual,
not ideological, methods we must employ to resolve them
Kassindja benefited immensely from more than just Universalist rhetoric; the
practice of female circumcision by the Tchamba, abhorrent to the Western eyes,
allowed her to take immense advantage of this “trend” of -the-month- defense. We
must examine the empirical validity of ideologically supported programs and
policies. The correctness of an gender-based cultural asylum policy whether
characterized as liberal or conservative cannot simply be asserted on theoretical and
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145
emotional grounds or assumed because alternative polices prove to be flawed.
Racial assumptions and negative depictions of certain racial and ethnic groups, too
often rise to dominance in U. S. politics, it is therefore appropriate to take a hard
look at the merits of these beliefs.
The notions of racial identity we share in the United States reflect the basic
positive and negative emotions we have about our own fundamental values.
Kassindja assures us that the core reason for seeking refuge in the United States was
the premise of “Equality and Justice for all,” yet her own negative assumptions in
regard to the descendants of the enslaved African American did not confirm this
attitude, and was undoubtedly prompted by American popular culture, by her
Christian missionary education in Ghana; and by American human rights activists
who continue to act as race informants of the African tribal system. The gender-
based approach attempts to persuade us that there are clearly superior and inferior
cultural values, that the success or failure of a racial group is inner-controlled, inner-
determined, and the product of uncivilized customs, thus prompting us to ask the
question, is this the business governments should be in?
In the Kassindja case, not only does the claimant endeavor to convince us
that the custom of female circumcision practiced by the Tchamba is culturally
unacceptable, but that her values are Western inspired, not by members of her tribe.
The barbaric culture thesis, and the portrait of the Tchamba are ideologically
pleasing to some human rights groups, often made up of scholarly opponents deeply
invested in the discourse. Such individuals may have university connections, or are
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146
generally affiliated with ideologically-based foundations and publications, they
tend to become public figures and spokespersons for their personal pobtical passions.
Their principal audience is usually not the community of scholars but public
officials, opinion leaders, and the mass audience. Unfortunately, these attitudes
situate us in a deterministic, highly controlled, and predictable world.
The biggest immediate problem for a gender and culture asylum mandate is to
develop policies softening the impact on the racial and ethnic groups of the
claimants’ home state. Policy impacts perception. It is simply unacceptable to
construct only an ideological foundation upon which to adjudicate these claims, to
assert that a particular gender-inspired rite of passage— in this case female
circumcision— should necessarily demand a policy calling for government officials to
determine the validity of a foreign culture, or to take drastic steps in denouncing an
ancient tradition, regardless of the overall consequences. The State should therefore
abdicate the role of race informant. Instead, actors for the State should take into
account the adverse impact these cases have on the Continent African and African
American communities.
More importantly, the Kassindja case and others that have following it also
indicate how some African women claimants are quite sophisticated in making use
of what Brown terms American’s “cultural lag”. The U.S.’s assumptions of a
negative cultural romantic ideas about Africa and Africans work to the claimant’s
advantage, affecting both the African immigrant community, the cultural realities of
African societies, and there linkage to the African descendant community.
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147
I showed that in the 7 years since the gender-based guidelines took effect,
not all responses to the guidelines have been favorable and that criticism of the
potential effect and reach of these cultural defenses is largely viewed as a
continuation of ethnocentrism toward other “out” cultures. All available evidence
indicates that no dialogue between the INS and the affected communities namely, the
Continent African and African American communities has taken place. This aspect
of asylum policy is crucial. The State should take seriously the consideration that a
policy of cultural asylum might in effect create the opposite result of what it is
designed to do, thereby creating new sets of biases. This study can only conclude
that the State should be cautious, lest it play a fundamental role in promoting
persistent negative racial and/or cultural myths about certain ethnic and racial
groups, specifically, Continent Africans and African Americans.
The African American and the Continent African response to the Kassindja
case showed the ambivalence and contradictions they felt in regard to her case
outcome. When African customs and behaviors come to public attention, these
communities, even though they are in agreement on the issue of female circumcision
in particular, tend to distance themselves from each other because they are
influenced by the same stereotypes and myths that the larger society holds. This
study finds that any policy directive that puts into question the issue of which
elements of African cultures and traditions are legitimate and which are not, has
enormous relevance for African Americans and the Black African foreign
communities, that in general, the inability of the African American community to
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148
transnationlize its African identity may have acted as an impediment to
embracing Kassindja’s particular cause. For some African foreign nationals the
Kassindja case illustrates the central core of the negative beliefs about African and
Africans, and they remain unconvinced that her case was anything more than a
“creative” defense to gain U.S. entry, especially since, for most Africans, the normal
route is unavailable.
Finally, although it is true that many historians naively accept mythical
tradition of Africa as historical record, and have contributed greatly to promoting
African stereotypes, this study suggests that Christian missionary influence, both
historically and presently, and, more than that of other religious institutions, is
primarily responsible for the limited or mistaken reporting on African cultural
realities. Bohannan and Curtin (1998) assert that Africa today has a higher rate of
conversion to Christianity than does any other Continent. It is therefore; not
surprising that immigration case law reflects this tradition.
The extreme lack of cultural fluency shown by these groups has to some
degree assisted in the destabilization of the African Continent. Missionary
organizations have historically circulated deliberate distortions about the African
way of life and they greatly assisted in promoting myths and stereotypes not only
about Africa, but also about Continent Africans, specifically Missionary groups
consistently functioning in the capacity of an “interested” party, act as non
governmental agencies; they voluntarily report to Congress on a regular basis, to the
print media, and to the general public about the African way of life from own social,
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149
political and economic vantage point. Christian societies also play a vital role in
Black African refugee determination by advising policymakers which Black Africans
on the continent are worthy of refugee/asylum status, and are thus, assimilable. They
decide which Black Africans are the “saints,” and which the “sinners.” Therefore,
because of the influence of these groups, a barbaric, ignorant, mysterious Africa has
emerged over and over again.
Finally, the Kassindja case shows the elasticity of U. S. refugee law and its
ability to respond repeatedly to the “trendy” asylum issues. The granting of political
asylum to African claimants who enlist tribal cultural defenses reveals an
immigration policy that has lost its core purpose of refugee definition and peddles a
racist policy on behalf of the State. The African claimant is thus put in the position of
promoting racist presumptions not only of Black Africa, but also of African
Americans.
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
AND INTERNATIONAL
INSTRUMENTS
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U.N.T.S. 137, July 28, 1951.
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Session, adopted U. N. Doc./Es/scp/67 (1991).
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Guidelines on the
Protection of Refugee Women. 42n d Session. U. N. Doc. Es/scp/67, 1991.
United Nations International Instruments: Convention on the Elimination of all
forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Adopted in 1979,
entered into force in 1981, and has been ratified by 94 nation states.
United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status o f Refugees. Opened for signature
Jan. 31, 196719 U.S.T 6223, T.I.A.S. No. 6577, 606 U.N.T.S. 267 (entered
into force November 1,1968.
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168
APPENDIX A
RESPONDENTS INTERVIEWED AND THEIR
ASSOCIATIONS
KEY ACTORS IN RE FAUZIYA EASING A
Fauziya Kassindja, Asylee. West African Nation of Togo.
Karen Musalo, Lead Attorney for Fauziya Kassindja. Law Professor, Human Rights
Activist. Berkeley, California.
Merrick Posnansky, Professor of Anthropology, and former Director African Area
Studies, University California Los Angeles (UCLA). One of two “Expert
Witnesses” for the Fauziya Kassindja case. He has taught extensively in the
West African State of Togo.
MEMBERS OF THE ASYLUM OFFICERS CORPS
Henry Curry, Senior Member of the Asylum Officers Corps. (AOC),
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Arlington, Virginia.
Katherine Litwaly, Member of the Asylum Officers Corps (AOC). Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS), Anaheim, California.
Irene Martin, Deputy Director, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
Asylum Division, Anaheim, California.
Caroline Novak, Member of the Asylum Officers Corps (AOC). Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS). Anaheim, California.
Janice Sommer, Member of the Asylum Officers Corps (AOC), and Director of the
Federal Women’s Program. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Harold Sutherland, Member of the Asylum Officers Corps (AOC) Asylum Division.
Anaheim, California.
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169
INS PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER
Rico Cabrera. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Los Angeles, CA.
Division.
STAFF OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
Kati Hope, Contact Person: U.S. Committee for Refugees. Washington, D.C.
Colleen Davis. Contact Person: Amnesty International. San Francisco,
California.
Scipi Garling, Contact Person: Federation for Immigration Reform. Washington,
D.C.
Robert Malloy, Contact Person: Center for Immigration Studies. Washington, D.C.
IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY
Tilman, Hasche, Attorney for Linda Oluloro. Portland, Oregon.
ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS
Nicholas Apponash Ph.D. Ghanian, Fulbright Scholar. Former Student of the
Department of Politics and Economics, Claremont Graduate University.
Martin Kilson, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
George Vemez, Immigration Senior Researcher, and Author. RAND Institute. Santa
Monica, California.
TOGO EMBASSY WASHINGTON.D.C.
Marta Nononsaa Political Officer
UNITED STATES SENATE
Susan Mabry, Assistant to United States Senator Harry Reid (R-Nevada).
OTHER INTERVIEWEES
Soraya Mire, Somalian Immigrant Filmmaker., on the subject of tribal female
circumcision.
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170
African Graduate Students, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont
California; Loyola, Marymount University, Los Angeles, California;
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California; University of
Evansville, Evansville, Indiana.
Continent Africans non-Students. Los Angeles, California.
African-American Students, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
California, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angles, California, Claremont
Graduate University, Claremont, California.
African-American non-students, Los Angeles; California, Berkeley, California.
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Creator Riera-Penney, Sonia (author)

Core Title Cautionary tales, United States immigration and the Fauziya Kassindja case: Toward a theory of cultural romanticism

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