Issue 98: Spring 2009

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Beyond Heritage Tourism: Race and the Politics of African-Diasporic Interactions

By Jemima Pierre on December 28, 2009
Abstract: This article engages the scholarly discussion of the booming heritage tourism industry in Ghana to explore the dynamics and politics of historical and contemporary African-diasporic interactions and provoke a critical revision of diaspora theory. I argue that Ghanaian-diaspora interactions in Ghana occur within a broader sociopolitical and cultural terrain that is not limited to heritage tourism. This terrain is configured through Ghana's own historical trajectory and narratives around slavery and race which, in turn, are informed and renegotiated by the country's relationship with diaspora history and community over time. Black diaspora and other African visitors, expatriates, and professionals converge in Ghana's cosmopolitan centers and confront a local landscape that is at once familiar and jarring because it has distinct and similar articulations of race and Blackness. My argument forces an explicit recognition of local processes of racialization in Ghana and calls for an approach to Ghanaian-diasporic interactions that juxtaposes Ghanaian racial subjectivity to that of diaspora bBlacks. By framing the heritage tourism discussion in this way, I hope to demonstrate that, contrary to conventional treatment of Africa within diaspora theory, transnational interactions between Africa and its diaspora are both historical and contemporary and, more importantly, are marked by the integument of race.
The dialogue between Africans and African Americans has not always 
produced the harmony and unity dreamed of by Pan-Africanists, but it 
has produced significant transformations of political identity, religious 
practice, and culture generally in both Africa and its diaspora. 
 -- J. Lorand Matory, "Afro-Atlantic Culture: On the Live Dialogue 
between Africa and the Americas" 


It is early Friday evening, and I have just entered the lobby of the Golden Tulip Hotel on my way to First Fridays Accra. The Golden Tulip is a four-star, first-class hotel known for its sophistication, particularly its beautiful décor of local artwork. It is also much more than a hotel. It is the place that holds numerous social events where, for example, a middle-class local family can splurge on a lazy Sunday afternoon by the pool, joining members of the expatriate community and other tourists; it is also where young partygoers may meet up for drinks before heading out to the nightclubs or where business associates gather for happy hour or late-night revelry. This hotel, 

then, is the perfect site for First Fridays Accra, an "after-work network and socializing affair." The hallway near the entrance to the event is lively, abuzz with conversations among young men and women either waiting for other friends to arrive or taking a break from the hectic scene inside. I greet a few friends, jot down my contact information, pay my entry fee to one of the three young Ghanaian women stationed at the welcoming table, pin the provided name-tag to my dress, and enter. 


 

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