Black Power

by Richard Wright

  Such a “desk” must have given a child a great deal of discomfort. The remainder of the seating accommodations was comprised of chairs, but chairs not as we know them. The seats were about nine inches from the floor and the backs were so sloping that they could give little or no support to the back of any child optimistic enough to expect it. These chairs were miniature in every respect, and just how the children managed to adapt their limbs to the whims of these desks and chairs is difficult to imagine.

  Hovering over this evil-looking litter of a schoolroom was a swarm of slow-moving flies….

  At the head of the classroom was an altar set upon a dais and rising above this was a heavy, gilded cross…. I saw no books, no evidence of this being an educational institution other than a soiled sheet hanging on a wall with a few clippings from illustrated journals pinned to it. Under these clippings was a timetable that showed that the children received one-half hour of religious instruction each day.

  Outside of the school building, about a hundred yards away, a group of about thirty children sat in rows upon benches. Their average age seemed to be about six years. I stood discreetly to one side while an African man conducted the class; with a pointer he indicated the following words which were chalked in white upon a blackboard:

  I go

  I go up

  I go so

  I no go

  Beside each expression was the vernacular equivalent. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was.

  This, of all things, was a church mission and, as such, I wondered just what the mission thought it was doing…. Saving the heathen? In my opinion it would have been far better to have left those children alone; either one gave them a decent education or none at all. I would have preferred to have seen them retain their tribal heritage intact than to have had drilled into them this travesty of a Western education. These children, when they grew up—if they could possibly survive amidst this appalling filth—would come in time to hate what had happened to them, especially if they turned out to be intelligent and had the capacity to reflect.

  It was, of course, the European traders who first brought the missionaries to the Gold Coast and helped to establish these churches; those traders were the Portuguese, the French, the English, the Dutch, the Swiss, and the Germans, in short, most of western Europe. From about 1687 to 1820, companies ruled the colony and had the final and decisive say in everything, including the education of the natives. In 1843, with the aid of some West Indians, the missions became firmly established and began to work closely with the government, and, by 1848, a girls’ school had been established. At Akropong, in the same year, a seminary was set up for catechists.

  In 1876 the Methodists opened a high school for boys in Cape Coast; this was followed by the establishment, in 1909, of Mfantsipim Secondary School, which was a union of the Wesleyan Collegiate School and the Fanti Public School. In 1880 the Roman Catholics began religious teaching at Elmina, and by 1900 the Catholics had opened six or seven schools…. The government aided these schools somewhat, but it must be remembered that it was not until 1900 that fighting between Britain and Ashanti ceased and allowed some steady and continuous progress to be made in educational work.

  In 1924 the Methodists opened a college at Kumasi and thereafter the government became active in opening trade schools for artisans; but it was only in 1930 that “national” schools came into existence. These schools represented the efforts of native rulers, chiefs, etc., and were administered by Africans. In 1924 the government established Achimota College…. Education in the Gold Coast has been a slow, torturous business. Indeed, “business” itself—gold, diamonds, timber—fared far better than education, and, though businessmen exploited the Africans, I believe that their impact, in the final analysis, was far less detrimental to the personalities of the Africans than that of the religious teachings of the missionaries.

  The conducting of mines and timber camps brought the African into contact with the most progressive and dynamic aspects of the Western world and, though it cheated him, at the same time it roused his sense of achievement, challenged him to emulate the undertakings of white men and free himself. Those African leaders who today fight courageously and without stint for their country are those who have been impressed by the techniques of Western exploitation, by the manner in which the West produced. It was not what Nkrumah learned about God in his Catholic mission school that urged him to struggle for the liberation of his country, but his grasp of the role played by economic forces in the modern world that launched him on his path to grapple with the British, and when he did come to grips with them, he knew the exact spot where they were most vulnerable; that is, he knew how to paralyze the economic life of the colony. It was an economic vision rather than a metaphysical one that had organized the personalities of the young men I met in the Convention People’s Party.

  On the other hand, the religious teachings of the mission schools, though it did impart the three R’s to a few hundred thousand in a hundred years, tended to develop quietism in the African personality. More detrimental to the personality of the African than the religious instruction per se, perhaps, was the strange, neurotic temperament of the missionary—kind but impersonal, near but aloof, anxious but superior; in brief, it was a relationship calculated unconsciously to arouse hatred and jealousy. Few or no really independent African personalities emerged from the nervous ministrations of these missionaries who, because of racial feelings which even religion could not help them to overcome, could never actually identify themselves completely with the people.

  It seems that the world cannot leave Africa alone. All of Europe is represented here in Africa, to kill or save Africa. The businessman, the missionary, and the soldier are here, and each of them looks at the question of the meaning of human life on this earth when he looks at Africa. The businessman wants to get rich, which means that African suffering to him is an opportunity. The soldier wants to kill—for the African is “different” and is, therefore, an enemy. The missionary yearns to “save,” that is, to remake his own image; but it is not the African that he is trying to save; it is himself, his sense of not belonging to the world in which he was born…. (No one should be allowed voluntarily to enter Africa; one should be sentenced there to service….)

  One does not react to Africa as Africa is, and this is because so few can react to life as life is. One reacts to Africa as one is, as one lives; one’s reaction to Africa is one’s life, one’s ultimate sense of things. Africa is a vast, dingy mirror and what modern man sees in that mirror he hates and wants to destroy. He thinks, when looking into that mirror, that he is looking at black people who are inferior, but, really, he is looking at himself and, unless he possesses a superb knowledge of himself, his first impulse to vindicate himself is to smash this horrible image of himself which his own soul projects out upon this Africa.

  In the future men will die, as they have died in the past, about the meaning of Africa; the only difference in that future fighting and dying will be that the Africans themselves will be wholeheartedly involved in the fighting and dying from the beginning, for they too have now caught a sense of what their problem is; they too have seen themselves reflected in the mirror of their misery and they are aroused about the meaning of their own lives. The European white man made Africa what he, at bottom, thought of himself; it was the rejected and the self-despised of Europe who conquered and despoiled Africa. But today Africa is not alone in her misery. She is keenly aware that there are others who would solve their problems at the expense of her misery….

  To ask if Africa can be changed is to ask if man can be changed. Africa must and will become a religion, not a religion contained within the four walls of a church, but a religion lived and fought out beneath the glare of a pitiless tropic sun. The fight will be long, new, unheard of, necessitating a weighing of life in terms that modern man has not yet thought of.

  Life in Africa must handle life; life here is just bare, sentient life; life is all that l
ife has in Africa. This might sound strange to Western ears, but here it is so plain and simple and true. No wonder men killed and enslaved others in Africa; no wonder they sacrificed human beings; no wonder they invented fantastic religions—they did these things because they were really reacting to themselves, their sense of themselves.

  Africa, with its high rain forest, with its stifling heat and lush vegetation, might well be mankind’s queerest laboratory. Here instinct ruled and flowered without being concerned with the nature of the physical structure of the world; man lived without too much effort; there was nothing to distract him from concentrating upon the currents and countercurrents of his heart. He was thus free to project out of himself what he thought he was. Man has lived here in a waking dream, and, to some extent, he still lives here in that dream.

  Africa is dangerous, evoking in one a total attitude toward life, calling into question the basic assumptions of existence. Africa is the world of man; if you are wild, Africa’s wild; if you are empty, so’s Africa….

  These were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I bathed and dressed the next morning. I felt tired, as tired as when I had gone to sleep. I was gripped by an enervation that seemed to clog the pores of my skin. I was about to pull on my shoes when I discovered, to my horror, that my clothes were getting mildewed, that my shoes were beginning to turn a yellowish green color. I scraped at it; it was mold. I called the steward and asked him what caused it.

  “That’s the heat and the sea water in the air, Massa.”

  “Well,” I sighed, “try and do something about it.”

  “Yasa, Massa. I put clothes in sun.”

  “Okay.”

  I took a taxi to the Prime Minister’s office to see if I had any mail there. The Prime Minister’s secretary looked at me and asked:

  “How are you getting on?”

  I felt depressed. She knew what was happening and I resented her asking me to tell her what she already knew.

  “I feel like the Africans have put their juju on me,” I muttered, trying obliquely to let her know that I was dissatisfied.

  She whirled in her swivel chair and stared at me.

  “You must be careful of that,” she said in a deadly serious tone.

  “What?” I exclaimed, coming fully aroused now.

  “There’s something to juju,” she said to me sternly.

  I wanted to howl with laughter, but a Prime Minister’s office was not the place to act like that.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  She shook her finger solemnly in my face and said:

  “Watch it!”

  “My God, you don’t believe that,” I said.

  “There’s more to it than you think,” she snapped.

  I sank weakly into a chair and stared at her. I’d met this cool, intelligent, and efficient woman in London and Paris and we’d had long discussions about the state of the world; and I had respected her opinions. And now, here in this heat and humidity, she was hinting to me that juju was real and not just a psychological delusion.

  “What do they do to people down here?” I asked her. I walked slowly out of the office, feeling defeated. Lord, juju…? Let ’em bring on their juju…. If you didn’t believe in it, it could never influence you…. And that juju was real was being hinted to me in the Prime Minister’s office! Oh, no! Oh, no!

  I hailed a taxi and climbed in. Just as the taxi got under way, I saw a tall, well-dressed black girl running wildly toward the car, waving her hand at me.

  “Hold it, driver,” I said.

  The girl came panting to the car window.

  “Say, please…. Give me a ride into town with you?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  She got into the taxi and settled into a seat. She was dressed in stylish European clothes, high-heeled shoes. She was deeply rouged and her hair was piled high on top of her head, like that of a woman who was imitating photographs of European women in fashion magazines.

  “Where would you like to be dropped?” I asked her.

  She looked at me and smiled slowly. I felt juju coming; but it was not that of the Gold Coast or anywhere in Africa. It was as old as mankind; the Africans could not claim it….

  “Where are you going?” she asked me.

  “To my hotel. Why?”

  She still continued to smile at me. The sun flickered through the taxi window as we sped past tall trees and I could see that her hair was soaked in grease. She edged closer to me and I felt her naked arm touching mine. Here it comes, I thought. They have this in Africa too. I sat still and stared determinedly out of the window. Then I glanced at her and she laughed. She grasped my hand. I pulled away from her.

  “Look, what is this?” I asked her.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Are you working for the government?” I asked.

  “No. I’m a social worker,” she said.

  “And are you now performing a part of your duties?”

  She giggled.

  “Do you live in Accra?” I asked her.

  “No. Not now. I was born here. But I’ve been in school in Cape Coast. I’m leaving shortly for England to study.”

  “I see. I doubt if England has anything to teach you,” I told her.

  She took hold of my hand again, holding it tightly now, glancing at me out of the corners of her eyes. I looked full at her and she bent over laughing.

  “Did someone send you to my taxi?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you pick me out to ask for a ride?”

  “I just liked the way you looked,” she said simply.

  The taxi bumped along in the hot sunshine.

  “Where are you going now?” she asked me again.

  “I told you. To my hotel—”

  “Take me there—”

  “I can’t. I’ve an appointment—”

  “Later, then,” she insisted.

  “No. Really, I’m busy today.”

  I wondered how long she had been practicing this kind of approach to men; and, above all, where she had learned it? She could not have been over twenty-one and her English was fluent.

  “Are you a Christian?” I asked her.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Asking a person if he were a Christian or not in Africa does not mean what it does in the West; it is asking if the person belongs to a certain social status. It has little or nothing to do with morals, ethics, or metaphysics.

  “You live with your family?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You like movies, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” I said.

  I could not tell her that she was acting like a very bad movie. Again and again in Africa I found natives trying to imitate American movies, but, having no idea of the distorted context of life in which Hollywood actions take place, they vulgarized those actions, making them even more fantastic, which was no mean accomplishment. She was accepting a shopgirl’s escape dream as a realistic vision of life!

  “You know,” I said seriously, “you are young and you ought to be careful. You’ll get into trouble, maybe, if you do anything like this in London.”

  She was suddenly sober; I had made her a little doubtful, but not for long; she still believed in her goal but was searching for new means. She looked yearningly at me and tried to talk convincingly.

  “I need a friend,” she said. “I’ve never had a friend.”

  “Do you say that to all the men you meet?”

  She laughed, surrendering her tactic. But undismayed, she switched to another one.

  “I’ve spent so much money buying things for my trip,” she explained. “Four days ago I had seventy-five pounds. Today I’ve only three pounds.”

  “What did you do with your money?”

  “I bought a trunk and a winter coat…. They say it’s cold in England…. God! If I had a friend, I could have some money.”

  �
��Do all of your girl friends have friends?”

  “All of them except me.”

  “Where did you get seventy-five pounds?”

  “My family.”

  “And why won’t they give you more?”

  “They haven’t got it. I need forty pounds.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said.

  “Well, twenty pounds, then.”

  “How did you get the idea of asking for money like this?” I asked her. “It was from a movie, wasn’t it?”

  She looked at me and giggled again. And I knew that it was from either a movie or a novel that she had gotten the notion.

  “What school did you go to in Cape Coast?”

  “The Methodist Mission,” she said.

  Well, Christianity had changed her. Before professing Christ, she might have slept with a man for the sheer physical pleasure; now, she still wanted to sleep with a man, but she wanted to be paid, and, moreover, being out of touch with reality, she had placed a fantastic overestimation upon herself.

  “You’re selling and I’m buying, is that it?” I tried to shock her.

  She brushed it off. Her eyes moved frantically as she thought of ways and means.

  “Haven’t you got a friend who’d be nice to me?”

  “I have no friends in Africa,” I told her.

  “Come home with me.”

  “But aren’t you with your family?”

  “My aunt. But she’ll leave if I ask her to.”

  “Listen, this is no way to study social work,” I argued.

  “Can’t you let me have ten pounds?”

  “No.”

  “Five pounds?”

  “No.”

  “Would you take me to the movies tonight?”

  “No, no. This is no way to live, sister.”

  “I’m trying to go to school,” she explained.

  That justified it all. I desisted. I could see nothing in her that I could appeal to. She was using tribal methods in order to latch herself onto the twentieth century…. She was somehow terribly innocent, and, at the same time, hotly and crassly determined to put her life on a cash-and-carry basis to buy an education. Hers was a mixture of Christian and tribal values.