Anti-Colonial Media: The Continuing Impact of Robert L. Allen's Black Awakening in Capitalist America (Critical Essay)

IT IS TO BE HOPED that April 10, 2009 will come to represent another radical turning point in the academic study of, and political organizing around, the conditions of African and Latin communities in the Americas. On that date scholars from around the globe gathered in Berkeley, California to pay tribute to the fortieth anniversary of Robert L. Allen's Black Awakening in Capitalist America. The conference demonstrated the varied and continuing relevancy of that work's central thesis: that African America exists more as an internal colony than a free and equal citizenry and that approaching it as such is likely to yield more appropriate analyses and responses than more conventional and popular methods of study. From perspectives as wide-ranging as the presenters' points of origin, Internal Colonialism Theory (Pinderhughes, 2008) was demonstrated anew to be a theoretical approach deserving of wide-ranging discussion. Central to the discussion was Allen's seminal Black Awakening, which remains an often neglected, yet unfortunately all-too timely, work in addressing twenty-first century concerns. Presenters were asked to discuss the ways in which Allen's work prompted, sustained, justified or even gave support to their own. For me all that came in the form of supporting an attempt at reapplying a theory of colonialism to Black America, so as to explain a small localized journalism project. That project or concept of "mixtape radio" where the tradition of the rap music mixtape is fashioned to the continued need for what Hemant Shah has called "Emancipatory Journalism" (1996) required explaining why an anti-colonial form of media was indeed relevant for a twenty-first century black American population. Emancipatory Journalism, as a concept mostly applied to more "traditionally-held" colonies, is rarely considered in journalism (academically or in terms of practice) primarily because of powerful popular myths of "democracy," "progress," "post-colonial," "post-Civil Rights," "post-racial," and "pluralism" all which accept baseline notions of general equality. However, by definition, those held as colonies (internal, domestic, semi or neo) cannot be defined as experiencing such societal notions.