Appiah argues that at the core of Crummell's vision of Africa is the single guiding concept of race (5). He notes that Crummell was one of the first people to speak as a Negro in Africa, and his writing effectively inaugurated the discourse of Pan-Africanism (Appiah 5). Appiah states that Crummell views "Africa" as the motherland of the Negro race and his right to act in it, to speak for it, and to plot its future are derived from the fact that he too was a Negro. Moreover, he argues, Crummell also believed that the people of Africa shared a common destiny, not because they faced a common threat from imperial Europe but because they belonged to this single unifying race (Appiah 5).
The concept of race as a unifying factor among people is not an incomprehensible concept. However, neither it is entirely defensible. Appiah states that ethnocentrism, however much it distresses us, can no longer surprise us. He believes that those African-Americans like Crummell, who initiated the nationalist discourse on Africa in Africa, inher
...