The treatment of racism in the works of Ayi Kwei Armah

Abstract

The question of race remains as sensitive as it is topical. Racism can be discerned from our earliest recorded history, and permeates the social, economic and political spheres of our daily lives.

This dissertation is concerned with how Ayi Kwei Armah handles racism in his literary works. Arguments and discourse with a bearing on 'Armah's fiction specifically as concerns his treatment of racism is discussed in the Introduction, which also provides justification for the research and charts a concrete course for investigation. The first chapter in turn traces the origins of racism and supplies a working definition of the term based on Frantz Fanon's theory in "Racism and Culture".

Ayi Kwei Armah in dealing with the problems of post-colonial Ghana in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is forced to reckon with the persistent intrusion of "the gleam". This becomes a recurrent theme to the poinb where it attains radiant brilliance (Fragments) in a symbolic escalation that finds its culmination in whiteness. This manner in which racism manifests itself in Armah's fictive world is the subject of Chapter Two, as it becomes incontrovertibly evident that there is a problem other than nepotism and corruption plaguing neo-colonial African nations. The chapter goes on to trace the impetus governing racism, and the betrayal of a complementarity in human relationships as for example, in the affairs between Aimee and Modin, Sylvia and Solo in Why Are We So Bl~st? Their liaisons serve as microcosms of a larger problem.

Two Thousand Seasons consequently assumes the task of mapping the beginnings and development of this problem. In this work and in The Healers, the creation of a regenerative mythology for purposes of the reaffirmation of black self-hood is apotheosized in a return to "the way". Only on attainment of this state of self-apprehension is a confluence of peoples of even greater magnitude not only desirable, but also possible.

Racism has been, and continues to be the subject of scholarly dissertations and debate. The third chapter closely refers to dialectic developed in other works, for example Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and Cabral's Unity and Struggle, which provide corroborative tracts that serve to clarify and consolidate arguments artistically explored by Armah in Chapter Two.

There is no scientific foundation to support the discrimination against the darker races; neither is there an inherent superiority in the lighter races that sanctions their assumption of a position of privilege. Language assumes importance as it becomes evident that it is empowered only by its application and interpretation - and "the chosen tongue" in its deceptive universality has ordered the world such that the owners, of the tongue exercise a certain control over its users. Armah eschews this tenuous mode and demonstrates a creative, unfettered independence. Ultimately, Armahs handling of so repulsive a condition as racism emerges as both educated and constructive