Africana Folklore: History and Challenges

When I agreed to edit this special issue of JAF dedicated to Africana folklore, I did so with a commitment to certain ideals: primarily, that no other body of material has had more impact on the development of cultures in the western hemisphere than Africana folk traditions and, consequently, that this should lead to a highly developed field of study that complements other conventional academic areas. Africana folklore should be a component of departments and programs in the humanities, whether as a part of folklore studies, anthropology, English, history, black studies, or other canonical fields. As others have argued, music, dance, language, religions, and other forms of Africana traditions play a much more central role in western identity than do many of the core texts in English, philosophy, and religious studies departments. Ironically, however, the canon in the western university and educational system at every level has more to do with the strong hold maintained by an imperialist agenda and a power structure steeped in colonial attitudes than it does with the actual relevance of so many texts and authors to understanding life in modern America.

Challenges to the emergence of this area as a field are immense. Despite the long history of scholarship in this area, for example, there is still a dearth of organizations or societies devoted to Africana folklore—no annual or semiannual conferences, or even an active section within the American Folklore Society. Whereas journals focusing on Africana folk traditions and culture exist in small countries such as Jamaica, there are none in the United States. Departmental, racial, and class politics have rendered it difficult for such developments to emerge. Without the sense of there being a field of study, individual studies in this area are likely to seem random rather than in conversation with others—hence, fewer debates to advance our thinking.

One of the most difficult aspects of editing this special issue has been the decision about what to call it. The idea was originally proposed as a special issue in African-American folklore, but almost immediately it became apparent that the term "African American" was problematic, as it has come to refer exclusively to descendants of the first African slaves now living within the United States. Following the categories observed by federal agencies, scholars often purposely or inadvertently deny the status of "African American" to black immigrants or their children who arrived or were born in the United States after slavery and have since become citizens. But the profound connections in folklore among people of African descent dispersed throughout the New World argue for a more inclusive, organic rubric under which to be studied and appreciated. "African American," then, is far too limiting. But what term would be most accurate, least laden with problems of one kind or another? I considered many terms debated by those in humanity programs around the country: "African Diaspora," "Black Diaspora," "Africana," "New World African," and "Afro-[fill in the nationality]." I finally decided on the term "Africana" because it suggests a transnational focus and might be the simplest way to evoke, in one word, the diverse traditions of the New World shared by people of African descent.

Historical Overview

More than any other issue, Africana folklore studies from the nineteenth through the early twenty-first century has been consumed with the problem of identity. Whether as an overriding subtext—shadowing the text that is rhetorically announced as the main focus—or as an overt subject of examination, the topic of identity has been a consistent thread. Because the politics of race characterizes every society in which Africana people find themselves, issues of identity have usually been positioned in respect to race. A close analysis of Uncle Remus, for example, reveals the extent to which this text primarily is engaged with multiple levels of racial identity. First, Joel Chandler Harris's creation of Uncle Remus ([1880] 1982) reflects the white, postbellum, southern preoccupation with the unsettling mystery of black identity. In a fashion similar to the strategy of minstrelsy, Harris and others who drew portraits of Africana people relied on...