A Book To Crow About

By Kole  Omotoso

This is a book to crow about. There are many reasons why anyone familiar with the vexed issue of European languages in African lives would crow about this book. European languages came to Africa and stayed on, as a result of colonisation. They have not only stayed on in Africa, but have also virtually replaced African indigenous languages. These African languages have been reduced to vernaculars, whatever that is supposed to mean! These European languages as well as a few other non-European ones, such as Arabic, harbour in their systems, blatant concepts, ideas, expressions and words which are anti-black and so racist against Africans and people of African descent. Of Black Servitude Without Slavery: The Unspoken Politics of Language deals specifically with English. The pre-eminent position of the United States of America in the world today, ably supported by Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada English is any measurement the global language of the human race. It is the first language of millions across the globe and the second language of billions more.

It is simply unacceptable that such a world-wide means of communication should be the carrier of racist sentiments, consciously and unconsciously, on a daily basis, around the globe. That an African should take on the crusade of ridding the English language, as well as the other European and non-European languages, of this blemish is something to crow about.

The author of this book, Agwu Ukiwe Okali, is the Founder-Chairman of the Okali Seminar Ideas Foundation for Africa, OSIFA, a non-profit foundation dedicated to fostering and facilitating a more effective participation of Africa in the world of ideas. Born in Nigeria, Okali holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a Master of Laws and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees from Harvard Law School. Okali had a distinguished career at the United Nations, last serving as Registrar of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, with the rank of United Nations Assistant Secretary-General. His victims-oriented restitutive/restorative justice idea influence key aspects of the set-up of the permanent International Criminal Court in 1998.

Dr. Okali is not the first African to be so concerned about the nature of racism in European languages generally and English specifically to raise the issue in a book form. In the 1960s the octogenarian Sierra Leonean scholar, Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones, had written about the issue in his study of the image of Africans in the England of Shakespeare’s age. African writers, especially Ngugi wa Thiong’O of Kenya, have cried foul against the English language and its persistent racism against the black person. Invariably, these writers have either simply continued to use the language or else, like Ngugi, have suggested abandoning the use of the language in favour of African languages. It is as if they are saying that the problem is that of the European languages, and as long as we can find something else to speak, we do not need to worry.

But, is there any other language to speak today other than English? Even Ngugi, our most vehement critic of the English language, writes in Gikuyu but translates his books into English. Dr. Okali, unlike these speakers of English, has concluded that if we are going to continue to speak this language, we must do something to help purify it so that it does not abuse us, we African speakers of the language. This is the reason for the suggestion that we must crow about this book.

The book divides into three sections of the beginning, the middle and the end, like a classical narrative. The beginning, contained in the first three chapters, deals with the system of thought and mind set in European languages generally and in English specifically. The persistence of these systemic racist thoughts in the English language is commented upon against the recognizably massive achievement of the world in the struggle against racism. After all, Barack Obama was voted president of the United States of America in 2008. Almost a decade earlier the world had fought and defeated the apartheid system in South Africa.

The middle of the narrative deals, in the next three chapters on what can be called “the blackness of bad/badness of black” syndrome. Here, Dr. Okali does not simply present the black person’s unease in the presence of these racist aspects of English but also deals with the unease a white person feels in the ambiance of the opposite when everything white is good and the opposite of everything bad. This is the first inclusion of the white unease in the discussion of the black unease as a result of the racism of aspects of the English language. Of particular interest in the middle narrative of this book is the chapter five that deals with the Blackness of Bad/The Whiteness of Good: Is the English Language “Unconstitutional”? Here, like a good advocate that Dr. Okali is, the English language is hauled before the highest court in the United States of America to decide, given the 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution, if it can continue to bandy around words such as ‘blackheart’, ‘black market’, ‘blackmail’, ‘black sheep’ etc as well as ‘white hope’, ‘white magic’, ‘white knight’ etc.  Although, Dr. Okali presents enough evidence to win his case, he is a thoughtful lawyer enough to know that this idea is almost not justiceable.

As the narrative moves to the end, there is suspense, as if the reader is anxious to know what happens next, what will this bright writer of English recommend to rescue his much loved English from its blemish of racism? Chapters seven and eight bring the book to an end but not the discussion. There is the need for the formation of an organisation to fight the fight against racism in languages to be known as Society For The Elimination Of Racism In All Languages, SERIAL for short. For the purposes of the work of this organisation, it would be necessary to reduce chapter seven to a pamphlet to be distributed worldwide. I can only end this presentation of Of Black Servitude Without Slavery: The Unspoken Politics of Language by asking that the redemptive action begin!