Africa has established a presence on other continents, due in part to the extensive forced migrations associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade that occurred between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The scattering of blacks to the Americas and Europe created an African diaspora whose relevance remains today. To the blacks in the diaspora, Africa remains the “homeland” which has facilitated the construction of the identity of blackness. The chapter examines issues around culture and representation, showing the power of culture to unite, keep alive the notion of “Africaness,” and even create opportunities to challenge negative ideas on race. Thanks to its culture, the “poor” continent is empowered by culture.

The political side of the African diaspora has generated considerable attention. Its ultimate manifestation has been expressed as Pan-Africanism which, during the twentieth century, translated into a series of major congresses and related activities demanding political rights for all blacks. The ideology of Pan-Africanism is socialism. As important as Pan-Africanism and socialism have been, they represent only one aspect of the history of the African diaspora. Various cultural and ideological areas have either been ignored or marginally addressed. Today, the politics of the African diaspora centers around demands for reparations and the scholarship of Afrocentricity. Both continue to generate controversies in some quarters.

But there is also the politics of culture, which generates less controversy and is far less visible—the use of traditions, symbols, religions, and other aspects of culture to build identity, resist dominant cultures, and project hope. In fact, greater success has been recorded in cultural struggles than in economic ones. For more than a hundred years, many have expressed the ambition of turning the diaspora into a great economic advantage, for example, by creating transnational businesses that would empower blacks. For instance, in the nineteenth century, Bishop Henry Turner, the famous minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the most renowned emigrationist of his generation, eagerly spoke of the creation of the “black capitalists” who would promote trade between the United States and Liberia and become millionaires within a few years.