Prof. Ali Mazrui
Last week in this space I posed a challenge to the United States of America: Will it realise its potential of becoming humankind’s post-racial garden of Eden, completing the odyssey from Africa as the first Garden of Eden? Or will the country waste that opportunity through bigotry, prejudice, and conflict?

This week we raise the question: What are the migrations that initiated the linkage between the first Garden of Eden and the second Garden of Eden? The garden of birth was Africa; the garden of potential post-raciality is the United States. Will the human race need the Edenisation of America towards the post-racial age?

The story of Adam and Eve occurs in three of the great world religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Only two of the three Abrahamic religions have featured prominently in the belief systems of the African peoples – Christianity and Islam. Christianity and Islam have cast a shadow on the migrations of African peoples from the continent of the First Eden to the shores of the Second.

Central to the transfer of the African peoples from Africa to America was of course the role of Europe. If Africa invented the human race, Europe perfected racism. Europeans then inaugurated the most extensive trade in slaves ever attempted in human history. Both European racism and European slave trade helped to set the stage for creating a multi-racial ‘New World.’ The final Eden was slowly in the making.

It is common knowledge that one of the ways by which Europeans legitimised the slave trade was by portraying Africans as heathens and cannibals. What is not often realised is that African resistance to European enslavement was in turn partly inspired by African fears that those white-skinned people were the ones who were cannibals.

As a Dutch contemporary Willem Bosman summed it up, “Sometimes we deal with slaves from deep in the interior, who convince each other that the reason why we buy and transport them is to fatten them and sell them again for an appetising meal.”

What was happening was the forceful transfer of citizens of the world’s first Garden of Eden (Africa) to the shores of what may well turn out to be the world’s final Garden of Eden- the USA. That part of the population of the United States that was of African descent was historically destined to play decisive roles in the evolution of the second Eden towards its historic destiny.

The anti-slavery spirit of resistance among Africans was inspired by many factors, including love for freedom and a determination to remain on the soil of their ancestors. But a perception of the white man as a cannibal, as the ultimate serpent who might eat up the African, aggravated African anxieties.

In 1752 one European captain in the harbour of Paramaribo, Suriname, was worried about whether his enslaved Africans on his ship Prins Willem V would jump overboard because “they feared they would be eaten” on arrival at their destination.

And an 18th century European handbook for slave traders urged the slavers to “assure the slaves, after they have been purchased, that they should not be afraid- that white people were not cannibals…” In our terms, the serpent was historically deadly, but was not a man-eater in the literal sense.

Back in Africa, indigenous rulers differed in their attitude to the slave trade. John Thornton reminds us that Queen Nzinga Nbande of Matamba in Angola tried to mobilise and coordinate opposition to the Portuguese slave traders in the 1630s and 1640s. But the Portuguese fought back and unfortunately got African allies in opposition to Queen Nzinga.

In the 18th century, Tomba, the leader of the Baga on the Guinean Coast, also tried to stop the slave trade but was opposed by resident Europeans, Mulattoes and African collaborators.

Agaji Trudo was one of the greatest kings of Dahomey. He was hostile to the slave trade, and invaded coastal Aja kingdoms partly in a bid to stop the trade. His successes were short lived. Racist Europe persevered.

Our essay here poses the issue of whether there is a secular historical and collective version of the biblical story of Genesis. Should we look at Africa as the first Garden of Eden – the original habitat of the human species, fallible, mortal and therefore profoundly human? Should we look at the United States as potentially the second Eden, the future vanguard of a post-racial world?

In 1978 William Julius Wilson alerted us about The Declining Relevance of Race. Prof Wilson might have been prophetic rather than descriptive.

America as the second Garden of Eden must first get its racial house in order. Between now and the end of the 21st century, America has to learn how to cope with race and ethnicity, with an increasingly aging population, and with the gender gaps of privilege in its population.

America must learn how to accommodate its impatient youth, how to re-define its moral values, and how to become the final burying ground of sectarian hatreds and racial strife on the world scene.

Here is the Tale of Two Edens – Africa where the human species began, and America where the human species stands a chance of attaining its optimum post-racial fulfillment, guided by African Americans as sons and daughters of the first Eden.

That Africa was the first Garden of Eden is a fact of history and paleontology. There was light in the Dark Continent before there was light anywhere else. That America is the second Garden of Eden is still a matter of hope and aspiration. Let there be divine light on America too.

Thus is it written: There was made the first man, the African living soul.

Then, the last ideal, the American life-giving post-racial spirit.

Millennia after Adam there arose an Obama. It is now conceivable, nay credible, that our great grandchildren, of all ethnicities and all faiths, of all colours and all national origins, may witness such a miracle of a post-racial dawn before the end of this century.

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By Ali Mazrui

Prof. Ali Mazrui
Barack Obama, the US Democratic presidential aspirant, has philosophised about a new post-racial America. In his campaign, he has emphasised not merely Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality, but a more advanced dream of post-raciality.

If Obama were elected the first Black President of the United States, that would of course not be the end of race-consciousness in America, let alone the end of racism. But it would be a major step towards a future post-racial America.

Africa gave birth to the human race; Europe cultivated racism millennia later. What has now arisen is whether America will be the final resting place of racism and race-consciousness. If Africa was the garden of Eden that gave birth to the human race, will America be the garden of Eden that inaugurates a world beyond racism?

In tracing the transition from that first African Eden cradling homo sapiens to the last American Eden cradling the post-racial age, let us briefly stop at the well-trodden path of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history.

Fukuyama saw the end of history in ideological terms. He characterised liberal capitalism as the climax of the ideological biography of homo sapiens. He regarded political culture as being at its most triumphant when in pursuit of life, liberty and profit.

Our thesis here is a different kind of ‘end of history.’ We are seeking to trace, not the end of ideological history, but the end of racial history; not soon but hopefully before the end of this 21st century. Perhaps this is what Senator Barack Obama had in mind when he started dreaming about a post-racial America.

Ethnicity in its ‘tribal forms’ started where the human species originated: that is, in Africa. Indeed, Africa invented the human family and therefore the human clan as a unit of biological kinship. But if Africa was the cradle of the human race, the human family and the human clan, Europe eventually perfected colour-prejudice and elaborate racial discrimination.

Is the United States, under the egalitarian leadership of Americans of colour? Is the United States destined to become the final resting place of ethno-racial stratifications?

Francis Fukuyama is almost definitely wrong about the end of ideological history worldwide. But is there better evidence for the proposition that the end of racial history is on the horizon – and its final culmination will occur in the United States of America, led by the struggle of African-Americans?

The United States is still one of the most racist societies in the world. Four policemen can shoot an innocent black man 41 times in front of his own house and be acquitted of all charges.

It is inconceivable that if the policemen had shot a white man 41 times they would have gotten off scot-free. Subsequently in 2007, a black man was shot 50 times on his wedding day by three New York policemen. The victim was unarmed. The policemen have also been acquitted of all charges.

But although the United States is still so steeped in racism, most indications seem to single out this country as the most promising theatre for a racial and ethnic compromise before the end of the 21st century. This is so provided that all Americans join hands and are converted to the dream of a post-racial age.

We might call this entire odyssey from the birth of the clan in Africa to the end of racial history in the United States ‘A Tale of Two Edens’-the African Eden of human genesis, on one side, and the American Eden of human egalitarian dispersal, on the other.

Historical times

There is a sense in which all Americans, of any race, are part of the African Diaspora — since their ancestors all originated in Africa. But there is the other sense of ‘African Diaspora’ when the Diaspora refers to people of colour whose ancestors came from the African continent in more clearly defined historical times.

The generic African Diaspora is the one which makes Bill Clinton an ‘African President’ of the United States. The specific African Diaspora is the one which makes Martin Kilson, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., African-Americans.

Africa is where the human species began. A persistent question in world history is whether the United States will become the final post-racial Garden of Eden before the end of the 21st century. Will it evolve into the nearest approximation of a genuine post-ethnic role model for the world? It will need African-Americans to achieve such a moral stature.

The Christian doctrine has had two Adams: the Adam who fathered the human species and the Adam who finally saved the human species. In the words of the 15th chapter of the First Corinthians: “Thus it is written: There was made the first man, Adam, living soul, the last Adam life-giving Spirit.”

In our more secular imagery, the first Adam was Africa-the cradle of human kind. Will the last Adam be the United States, a potential secular savior of the human race? We need to see the Edenisation of the United States as the beginning of post-raciality.

At the moment the United States is far from being a collective secular savior of the human race!

On the contrary, there are times when the United States displays the symptoms of evolving into a collective anti-Christ. Is that what Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, meant when he said “God damn America”?

But, in reality, the twenty-first century brings the United States to the critical crossroads. Will this country evolve into a collective savior (the second Adam) or a collective anti-Christ? Will the United States realize its potential of becoming humankind’s post-racial Garden of Eden, completing the odyssey from Africa as the first Garden of Eden? Or will this country waste that opportunity through bigotry, prejudice, and conflict?

Our children and grandchildren as homo sapiens are burdened by the gravity of that responsibility, by the weight of that momentous choice.

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