By Guest Blogger
Afro Futurism… what is it? More than anything it seems to sound like a genre that could be used in movies or novels. Truthfully, it actually is. But in more of a detailed context, its an idea that’s been trending lately with the intent of giving the concept of the integration of technology into the African diaspora. Looking at the history of Africa in one huge nugget, Africa is the richest land with the richest amount of history, culture, and peoples and that goes without debate. The history within has literally paved the way in which the world has benefited from. Through the negative effects of colonialism on the self image and history of Africa, The ‘Afro Futuristic Future of Africa’ is the idea existing within black African American pop culture as the idea that will bring back the very identity that the African continent and people lost during the dark ages. It basically allows for the past to be revisited… and proposes what can be. The integration of Africa’s beautifully diverse cultures and traditions and the rapidly life changing advancements of technology, therefore creating a “brand new” Africa of sorts…recreating it and re-emerging the glory it once had as a continent housing the biggest and wealthiest empires of the pre-colonial world.
Looking in the film industry, the emergence of the black African American image undeniably seen, from Marvel’s blockbuster fantasy film, Black Panther, which is one of the perfect examples of the vision of Afro Futurism, which envisions an Africa that is united, rich in resources and technological capabilities to even music, where African American artists, producers and song writers now embrace the black African skin through their artistic gestures and aesthetic, to even tracing back their origins to Africa…being a result of the slave trade that happened centuries ago. This also serves a cry for the re-write of the African history, a history of pain and “white supremacy” to a new and improved history, where Africa finally embraces its people, its culture and harnesses its power and become a newly reformed historical “superpower” if you will.
The effects of Africa’s past bled out to the present generations. The “white washing” of the African history has propelled Africans residing in Africa as well as those residing in other continents to re-evaluate, with the little information they have acquired about their history, past and power, to re-create and re-write the destiny of Africa. Since we see Afro Futurism and what its about? Where to from here? It is something we as Africans should fully embrace?
If you’ve been keeping up with The House of Nzinga, you’ll know that it is an online archive which attempts to showcase Africa’s true greatness and potential so here we like to keep it blunt and raw. In my opinion, Afro Futurism is something us Africans should see the possibility of but not get too immersed into the idea. Our land, being extremely rich of resources and minerals, sooner or later will awaken to the power and worth we have always had as Africa but have been blinded because the tragic past we’ve had must definitely give birth to something greater…something powerful…and Afro Futurism looks like something that has great potential to become a reality. In the crux of it all, we must be aware that the African culture is one that cannot be matched throughout the world and that should not be drowned in our resolve to redeem ourselves but should be used as the very “spear and shield” to fully overcome the effects of the past and to embrace the future.
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