 This is not the place to consider in detail the threshold questions of Africanaity. Luckily it is a fairly intuitive concept, rooted in widely—if often dimly—understood facts about the social and political history of Africa and its peoples over the last several centuries. One can debate the precise meaning of these facts or the limits of the intuition underwriting the Africana idea. But the basic intuition, even for critics of its extended application in, say, a Pan-African politics, is provisionally useful as what Lucius T. Outlaw Jr. calls a “gathering notion,” used to capture the same insight that underwrites locutions like “of African descent,” and to prepare that insight for extension, critique, and elaboration (Outlaw 2004, 90).