What Is the French Policy of Assimilation About, What Did...

Conflict Management and Resolution PLSC 872 What is the French policy of ASSIMILATION about, what did scholars like Leopold Senghor mean by the term Negritude as a strategy for countering that French policy and what is the place of the two in the methodology of ethnic conflict management? INTRODUCTION The trajectory of this paper is within the purview of Conflict Resolution and Management. However, it traverses a historical path that takes us back to the era of colonialism in Africa, the Afrocentric Movement leading to independent African states and how this all coalesces into a formula of how to (or rather how not to) deal with differences that have the potential to dynamically incinerate conflicts, both ethnical (or racial) and†¦show more content†¦The complacency gradually began to give way to dissatisfaction and to rising discontent and eventually to an ideological retort known as Negritude. NEGRITUDE The term has been described as a revolt against colonialist values, glorification of the African past, nostalgia for the beauty and harmony of traditional African society and, to quote Leopold Sedar Senghor, â€Å"the sum total of the values of the civilization of the African world. Negritude was a significant ideological and literary development that became a formative movement of African literature aimed at breaking down established stereotypes of blacks propagated through centuries of colonialism in Africa. Black intellectuals in the West, especially France, buoyed by the rise of Black Renaissance in America in the 1920s began to reflect upon and express their increasing sense of alienation occasioned by the hypocrisy of assimilation. These writers found solidarity in a common black identity as a rejection of perceived French colonial racism and they believed that their shared black heritage as members of the African diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French polit ical and intellectual hegemony and domination. â€Å"Senghor (1906–2001) promotes a quest for the authentic self, knowledge of self, and a rediscovery of African beliefs, values, institutions, and