Patriotic Romanticism as a False Route to African Identity

It is appalling that Africa is still bedevilled with identity crisis. That the crisis originated in the cultural shock of Africa’s forced contact with the Western world is hardly excusable. This explains the belief of many African philosophers that the only way of redefining the current false African identity is a backward march into the traditional African society. This is propped on the assumption that the true African identity is in the traditional African society that was so glorious. This is patriotic romanticism, a belief in superiority of one’s traditional beliefs, values and customs and a concrete move towards recapturing them. A thorough logical analysis of qualitative data on the ideology and values of traditional African society carried out in this text punctured this ego and argues that traditional African society was not so beautiful and many of its values ill-fit for contemporary life. Thus any proposal for a return to traditional Africa society is a false route to authentic African identity. The study concluded that authentic African identity lies in refining the good values of the African past to suit contemporary society and recommended conscious adoption of some foreign values where necessary, and passionate protection of the irrational aspects of African culture.