African American Redemption in the Pan-African Metropolis: Africanized Identities,Pan-African Lives and the African World Festival in Detroit

Abstract

The article is situated within the conceptual lineage of St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s groundbreaking Black Metropolis model. However, it provides a new way of considering this intellectual heritage. The analysis suggests that African American traditions of Pan-Africanism have not been expansively addressed in their magnitude on Black urban sociology. Drake and Cayton’s theorization is reconfigured as it exists within a Pan-African value system for the contemporary Black (Diasporic) city. The research presents “unsung” Pan-African tropes that are central to the maintenance of the Black city’s identity and psychological cohesion. If the mind is the “primary battlefield” as Garvey insists, then it is important to note the (beneficial) psychological impact that African American redemption and the Pan- African Metropolis can bestow on African Americans. The discussion locates Pan-Africanism as a tangible operating mechanism on African Americans’ lifestyle, mental health, and (Africanized) identities within Detroit’s Black community. Field observations of Detroit’s African World Festival connect these festival spaces as they characterize and drive the city’s identity, psychology, economic considerations, and ultimately, Pan-African groundings. The sustainability of an Afrocentric philosophy and psychology has enhanced the Black city in the manifestation of a distinctive cultural political economy. The Pan African Metropolis emerged during Detroit’s Black Arts Movement (the 1970s of my youth). To this end, the article pushes back against “the lie” which overgeneralizes African Americans in a Black deficit homogeneity, whereas the “alleged Black American monolith” is not connected to any operating African continuum in their daily lives.

Plain language summary

The Pan African Metropolis: Pan African Lives in a Pan African City

All cities have a psychological effect on their inhabitants. How does a Pan-African value system shape the distinctive character and mindset of a city? This article attempts to answer this question. The current research on Detroit’s African World Festival looks at how it connects to a larger Africanized World of Detroit (from the 1970s to the present). It locates and celebrates African Americans in Detroit who live devoted, daily Pan-African lives. It voices how the city has benefited from the norm of its Pan-African leadership. The discussion fills a needed gap as it looks at how contemporary customs of Pan-Africanism have made a positive impact on African Americans’ lifestyle and mental health who live in Detroit, Michigan. The argument presents unique Pan-African values, which are referred to as Pan African tropes. These tropes have uniquely shaped Detroit’s Black community’s psychological makeup and distinctive personality. From this perspective, Pan-Africanism is discussed here from a holistic perspective for African Americans. It is considered deliberately as a mindset-shaping and Black progress philosophy in the foundation of the city. The cultural agency of Detroit has created an unsung tradition of Black placemaking through African heritage connections, celebrations, and preservation. Garvey insists what has made African Americans reject their African heritage is brainwashing from white/European inducement of continued mental slavery, as Bob Marley captures Garvey’s most comprehensive message in Redemption Song, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds”. This is why Garvey tells us the primary battlefield is the mind. Ultimately, the mental health of African Americans is dependent upon the recovery of their historical dignity, and a tranformative Africana Studies education, and thus, more accurate knowledge as it applies to them. Thus, Pan-Africanism has a seriously unrecognized psychological benefit.

Keywords

Black placemaking Pan African Metropolis Pan Africanism African American Redemption Black Diasporic Cities Detroit

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