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Out of America
by Keith B. Richburg (Harvest/HBJ, 1998)
Reviewed by Molefi Kete Asante
 The
fact that the white media once again has glorified a book that is
the direct results of the impact of white supremacy on an erstwhile
victim shows the bizarre nature of racism in America. A black journalist,
Keith Richburg, has written a book, Out of America, which is a sad
testimony of an individual who is caught in the spiral of psychic
pain produced by what Frantz Fanon and Robert C. Smith call "internal
inferiorization." Richburg sees Africans as his enemies and
this is the beginning of his problem. From this vantage point there
is nothing good that can be said about Africa or Africans. Reiterating
the same political, social, and economc problems that have been
articulated by many thoughtful commentators on the African scene,
Richburg goes further to make the African condition his personal
responsibility. One only has to think how this would play if the
person who was condemning a society was a German, an Israeli, a
Pole, a Britisher, a Chinese, an Iraqi, or Japanese. Would other
people really be so hard on the continent or people of their origin?
Wouldn't there at least be some sense of historical depth, some
attempt to understand the basis of human actions? I think so but
then the author of this book seeks to have another mission: the
popularizing of the litany of evils in Africa. One could do this
about any continent and indeed any nation, but what is the point?
Richburg who was a correspondent
and Bureau Chief for the Washington Post in Africa for three years
has indicted the entire continent for the bad times he had there.
In fact, his book raises numerous questions about the objectivity
of the despatches he sent to Washington from his post. The book
is a diatribe against Africa and much like the books of the African
American conservatives during the Reagan years attempts to show
that he is big enough to be critical of black people. The only problem
with that is the axe he has to grind has been over used. You cannot
get too much mileage out of such an activity among people who know
Africa. They also know the historical roots of many of the problems
Richburg cites. If there ever was a reason for journalists who report
from Africa or who write of African Americans to take courses in
African American Studies, Richburg has given the best reason. He
has written a superficial headline grabbing attack on the African
continent and many of us who have lived, studied, and travelled
in Africa find his book offensive and obscene.
Richburg has not written a meaningful
book; he has written a book for the white mass market and because
of that he is at once intent on explaining that he is happy to have
had an ancestor on the slave ship. His intellectual position is
duplicitous in that he does not identify with what he saw in Africa
but at the same time calls into question the history made by African
Americans. He neither likes continental Africans nor African Americans
who are happy being of African origins. Indeed, he sought out African
Americans at the Gabon Summit organized by Reverend Leon Sullivan
to criticize-Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and others- in an effort
to ridicule the leadership of the African American delegation. So
if he does not identify with the continental Africans and hates
the historical opposition of Africans in America against white supremacy,
what are we to make of Mr. Richburg?
I imagine the internal inferiorization
that insinuates itself over and over again in the African American
mind and must be expelled by intellectual and psychological exercises
has burden Richburg with second class status. He cannot see the
agency of Africa; he only sees it in the margins. This means that
he cannot appreciate that his views are aberrations of the facts,
illusions of the real, and charades of the thick undercurrents of
African life. But Richburg has neither availed himself of the antidotes
to racial self hatred nor to history which might have saved him
the terror he felt about Africa and his own Africanity.
Richburg's book, coming as it does
on the heels of The End of Racism,The Bell Curve, Not Out of Africa
and of a similar spirit as those works is simply one more attempt
to confuse the white masses and to subdue African American opinion
on matters that affect Africans. The first might be achieved if
one goes by the sales of the book, but the later will not be achieved
because the African American community is thoroughly capable of
seeing through the anti-African rhetoric of this book. But alas,
the book is not written to either educate or impress African Americans.
Richburg is clearly out to salvage Africa by any means necessary.
Keith Richburg makes two specific
errors: Africans do not kill each other and Africans are not susceptible
to political corruption. That is, his arguments tend to turn on
these assumptions although he is clearly convinced that Africans
have killed and have been corrupted to an extraordinary degree.
But his pain, if one can call it that, when he sees the killing
and the corruption is irreal. He denies to Africans what he gives
to white Americans and Europeans: humanity. Why should he expect
that Africans given a set of social and political circumstances
should be different from other humans? Had he beguiled himself in
believing a racist lie that Africans were somehow better than Europeans
or white Americans? The logic of his thinking is racist.
But how can Richburg feel superior
to Africans whom he confronts in the rawness of their ordinariness
when he does not confront the same ordinariness in either white
or black Americans? I mean does Richburg understand anything at
all about the historical events that unfolded right here on this
land? Has he not been taught somewhere of the absolute slaughter
of the indigenous people who fought to defend what was theirs? Does
he know anything about the enslavement and murder of African people
over a 250 year period and has he not learned about the Red Summer
of 1919? Obviously not because had he understood something of the
history of this country he would not have been so happy to declare
that he was grateful that his ancestor was a slave.
Even more, Mr. Richburg only has
to read his own newspaper and others to get a steady diet of African
Americans in the United States killing each other at a phenomenal
rate and often with callousness equal to what he saw among continental
Africans. Yet he does not want to abdicate his position as an American
despite the brutality that has been served up repeatedly on the
richly endowed American table.
This is not a serious book and
it will have a short shelf life because of its negative cast. There
is no attempt in this work to understand Africa, simply a reporter's
notebook of the things he disliked during his "exile"
to the land of his ancestors. Unlike even some white reporters who
have lived and worked in Africa, Richburg sees nothing that grabs
him and all that repels him. Perhaps he will do better with his
book about Hong Kong and the Chinese, but given his record on Africa,
his continent of ancestral origin, I am not holding my breath.
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