To Be African or Not to Be:    
The Question of Identity or Authenticity - Some Preliminary Thoughts1

by
Wade W. Nobles, Ph.D.2

A B S T R A C T


The ideas offered here are simply thoughts designed to suggest that our “theoretical” understanding of what it means to be African (Black) in a non-African (White supremacist) society requires “deep thought” about the psychology of African people. It is in the tradition of “thinking deeply” about what it means to be African that I propose that the real understanding of Black identity and our resolute response to living in an anti-African society will be attainable. It is only when we first think deeply about what it means to be a human being and subsequently, therein, how that meaning shapes our responses and reactions to living, will we learn or know anything of value. Hence, I think the notion of “human authenticity” and its expression as the “person” are the constructs that could offer a new research agenda in which to explore the frontiers of “African theory development.”

“Where theory is founded on analogy between puzzling observations and familiar phenomena, it is generally only a limited aspect of such phenomena that is incorporated into the resulting model”3

During the 1995 Association of African Psychologists’ annual convention’s pre-conference African Psychology Institute, Dr. Asa Hilliard was invited to address the issue of African Psychology. In the context of his remarks, Dr. Hilliard attempted to paraphrase Shakespeare’s often quoted, phrase, “To be or not to be, that is the question”. In restating Shakespeare, Dr. Hilliard’s intention, I think, was to say, “To be African or not to be African, that is the question.” However, in attempting to restate the phrase, I believe Dr. Hilliard’s tongue was captured by the ancestral spirits of Africa and what came forward was a divinely fundamental and spiritually essential question. Asa Hilliard stated, “To be African or not to Be, that is the Question.” In making that simple pronouncement, the level of discourse was fundamentally clarified and simultaneously shifted.  next page

1 Accepted for publication in Jones, Reginald (Ed), African American Identity Development: Theory, Research and Intervention. 1997
2 Wade W. Nobles, Ph.D. is a full tenured professor in the Black Studies Department, the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, San Francisco California
3 Horton, Robin, African Traditional Thought and Western Science, Africa, Vol 37(1) Jan, 1967, p. 65