Vice President Kamala Harris not too long ago made her first official journey to the African continent. Harris traveled to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia for a weeklong go to. Through the White Home’s African Leaders Summit in December 2022, the Biden administration promised to make a number of high-level journeys to Africa. First Girl Dr. Jill Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) traveled to completely different African nations this yr. Vice President Harris is the highest-ranking Biden administration official to journey to Africa to this point, and President Biden plans to make a go to later this yr.
Harris’s cease in Ghana was essentially the most in depth of her journey, and it illuminated Ghana’s historic ties to the African Diaspora. Diaspora means dispersal and might apply to completely different world communities. In that vein, African diaspora consists of folks of African descent on the African continent, within the Americas, and across the globe. Right here, I spotlight some historic and up to date connections between members of the Diaspora in West Africa and within the Americas.
Harris is of mixed-race heritage, with a mom from India and a father from Jamaica. Jamaica performed an element within the trans-Atlantic slave commerce, with Ghana (previously the Gold Coast), fueling among the enslavement of these offered into the trans-Atlantic slave commerce. After a number of high-profile occasions and dinners, Harris, her crew, and a few U.S. journalists and Ghanaian photographers visited Cape Coast Fortress. In what was a closely armed fortress, newly captured Africans have been held in in depth underground dungeons till they have been loaded onto the ships certain for the Americas.
My analysis and scholarship focus largely on Africa and the African Diaspora, and I grew up in Texas. I’ve visited slave plantations, slave castles, and slave homes all through the US and West Africa. Nonetheless, I by no means skilled the horror and despair present in Cape Coast Fortress elsewhere. The dungeons are dank, damp, and foreboding. Think about somebody who lived alongside the sunny, humid West African coast or just a few hundred miles into the inside, who was all of a sudden captured, moved, and held in such circumstances.
Not being free is stark, however not understanding when, if, or the way you may regain your freedom is unimaginable. Captured Africans forcibly traversed the Center Passage throughout the Atlantic and have been enslaved within the Americas. Most had no concept why they have been captured, the place they have been going, and the way lengthy they’d be held. Kunta Kinte, whose life offered the premise for the principle character in Alex Haley’s Roots, was virtually 20 when he was captured within the Gambia. He was shipped to Annapolis, Maryland, and enslaved on a plantation in Virginia. Kunta sought his freedom for years and ran away a number of occasions till his foot was severed, disabling him and limiting his mobility. His expertise embodies the seek for the liberty of African People within the New World.
Vice President Harris was affected by her go to to Cape Coast Fortress, and the gravity of the go to is clear in images. She was visibly upset when she spoke after her go to; her husband, Doug Emhoff, wiped away her tears. Harris is the highest-ranking U.S. authorities official of African descent with ties to slavery ever to go to the Cape Coast Fortress. Whereas President Barack Obama visited the fort in 2009, he has no ancestral ties to those that had been enslaved within the Atlantic Slave Commerce. On the fort, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper requested Obama what the journey meant to him in addition to his spouse Michelle and their daughters Sasha and Malia. Obama responded that the opposite three members of his household had completely different ties to the African continent than he—the kid of a Kenyan father and white American mom—did.
After I visited Cape Coast, I traveled there from Accra, Ghana, the place I used to be based mostly for a number of weeks. I traveled to Cape Coast to attend a Juneteenth celebration. Sarcastically, a spot with such sturdy historic ties to the trans-Atlantic slave commerce acknowledged and even imported some semblance of the vacation created by freed Black Texans. Whereas the celebration seemed fairly completely different from what I had skilled rising up, I used the chance to spend time in the neighborhood with native Ghanaians and Black People who made the sojourn to Cape Coast to honor their ancestors.
At Cape Coast Fortress, Vice President Harris mentioned, “However but, they survived. And so they inform one other historical past—a historical past of endurance, a historical past of religion, a historical past in believing what is feasible, a historical past not solely that tells concerning the capability that every particular person has to outlive, however to thrive.” With these becoming remarks, Harris spoke to the Diaspora within the Americas; however her phrases additionally apply to U.S. authorities coverage in Africa. Everybody ought to have the ability to survive, thrive, and interact on the most equitable start line potential.
In Ghana, the Vice President introduced U.S. and companion authorities pledges for monetary and technical help for regional safety (West Africa and the Sahel). Vice President Harris additionally pledged $1 billion for ladies’s financial empowerment that may assist allow extra ladies obtain financial independence. From a coverage perspective, extra substantial engagement in ladies’s financial exercise is effectively overdue. In my very own analysis in Senegal, Ghana, and elsewhere on the continent, I’ve chronicled among the disparities in ladies’s entry to formal lending constructions as an illustration. In some instances, as the ladies pharmacy house owners that I chronicle in Pharmacy in Senegal: Gender, Therapeutic and Entrepreneurship, ladies have been capable of transcend among the boundaries. Nonetheless, that is largely tied to academic rank, class, and different components of privilege. It’s crucial that the U.S. authorities not solely goal ladies in high-level, “white collar,” and main tech entrepreneurs however those that interact in additional modest financial actions. Ladies of decrease socio-economic strata typically want the help essentially the most.
Although the first goal of the Vice President’s journey to Ghana was a part of the White Home’s bigger plan to resume U.S.-Africa overseas coverage engagement, Harris’s Cape Coast Fortress go to fulfilled a bigger mission. It illuminated the ties to African-descended folks in Africa and the Americas and better potentialities for future engagements between these teams. In December, President Biden introduced the creation of an advisory council on African Diaspora engagement. Ideally, this committee might be considered one of many initiatives to have interaction Africa and its Diaspora. Members of the Diaspora with data of the continent and concepts for sustained engagement ought to be key drivers on this initiative. Ideally, this committee will embody numerous illustration kind myriad elements of the diaspora, notably regional illustration of current African immigrant communities to the US in addition to Black People with lengthy ancestral ties to the US.
The Diaspora—from these whose ancestors have been dispersed by way of the trans-Atlantic commerce, to these born in the US of African immigrants, and people who not too long ago emigrated from the continent—are watching as the US continues to advance its engagement with the continent.
Dr. Donna A. Patterson is Professor & Chair of the Division of Historical past, Political Science, and Philosophy at Delaware State College. She is the creator of Pharmacy in Senegal: Gender Therapeutic and Entrepreneurship. She holds a PhD in African historical past.
Photograph Credit score: Vice President Kamala Harris visits the Cape Coast paramount chief and the historic Cape Coast Fortress by the U.S. Embassy Ghana by way of Flickr. (License)
The opinions expressed on this weblog are solely these of the authors. They don’t mirror the views of the Wilson Middle or these of Carnegie Company of New York. The Wilson Middle’s Africa Program offers a protected area for varied views to be shared and mentioned on essential problems with significance to each Africa and the US.
