AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA: The Black Scholar and Society The essays in this collection seek to project a Pan-African vision aimed at building bridges between Africa and the black diaspora so as to re-discover and re-evaluate the inherent merits and intrinsic values of black life and thought which need reclamation, restitution and rehabilitation following experiences of dislocation, denigration and humiliation shared commonly by Africans and Trans-Africans alike. The African writer, male or female, having inherited Europes hegemonic tool, language, now uses it to re-appropriate lost space, self and voice. Thus the black woman privileges Womanism over Feminism. The problems of Africa and the genesis of racial inequities are traced to desertification, the five-century long Slave Trade, the 1884 arbitrary partitioning of the boundaries of African countries, and the consequent exploitation of Africas material resources at home and human resources abroad to enrich colonial Europe and the Americas of the slave lords. No black person is free until all are free. Therefore, the dignity of black people everywhere is predicated on the total liberation and unification of this Africa that nurtured, with its natural resources and slave labor, the economic boom of the European and American Industrial Revolution. This calls for reparation for the dehumanizing abuses of centuries of slavery and colonialism. These critical issues now challenge the probity, duty and research of the intellectual and call to question the very nature of historiography, literary and philosophical interpretation and beckon the creative courage and research skills of the black scholar to act as a permanent witness and inspiration to the never-ending struggle to free the human spirit. Contributors include: Dr. Rose Ure Mezu, Dr. Emmanuel Obiechina, Dr. Mbare NGom, Dr. J. Hope Franklin, Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu, Dr. Glenn O. Phillips, Ambassador Dudley Thompson and Dr. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn.
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