textBased primarily on comparative ethnographic research in Accra, Ghana and
Washington, D.C., this dissertation is a multi-sited—textual, sociopolitical, and
historical—investigation of processes of racialization as they construct notions of
“Blackness” for communities in Africa and the African diaspora. I argue that the
sociohistorical processes of racialization are such that they render analogous the
experiences and relationships of continental Africans and those of African descent in
diaspora. I engage both racial formation and African diaspora theorization to stress
the political and intellectual import of understanding Black (racial) identity
construction within a global context, a context that encompasses not only the
“western” communities of the diaspora, but also the realities of peoples residing in the
geopolitical space of the African continent. My objective in this project is to examine
how racialization works to create global Black identities and the ways these identities
are deployed and understood in a transnational context. The dissertation charts an
“ethnography of racialization” and each chapter examines a specific site of racial
identity formation. This project challenges the commonsense intellectual assumption
that Africa and its peoples on the continent do not actively participate (in this
contemporary (post)colonial moment) in the global discourses and practices of racial
identity formation. It also shows that, as a global and hegemonic phenomenon,
racialization significantly links Africa to its diaspora.
This dissertation initiates a dialogue that I hope will help us rethink how we
conceptualize the African diaspora and anthropological/ethnographic practice by
delineating the central place of race in structuring the experiences of all “racializedas-Black”
peoples. Thus, the dissertation is significant for African Studies, African
Diaspora Studies, racial formation theory, transnational migration studies, and, more
generally, anthropological theory and practice. It redirects diaspora theorization to
include identity processes in contemporary Africa and, furthermore, it foregrounds
the practices of race and racialization that, South Africa aside, have received less
attention in the historiography and ethnographic studies of Africa than other
processes of identification.Anthropolog