This is how I see America: Maritime, African, Indigenous, and European, with the Greater Caribbean at its heart (h/t to Elizabeth Eaton’s map of the Atlantic arc of colonial British America for bringing this thought to the forefront). Edit: the Google Earth version of the same perspective.
Beyond Vindicationism
Race, ultimately, is a nihilistic non-identity, a solipsistic Manichean construct of categoric antitheses, in which white is everything that is not Black, and Black is everything that is not white. It is also a process of racialization, of ordering social reality in racial terms, and thus must be confronted not with mere conceptual critique, but with action. At present, much…
Africana or African Diaspora?
Personally, I lean toward “African Diaspora” because as fraught as the term “Diaspora” may be (Which diaspora? Whose diaspora?), I still feel that it is a term with more “historicity” if you will. Diaspora implies a going, and a coming, and perhaps a return. It expresses a defining fact of our collective existence in the West. We were brought here,…
Black On Purpose
To ask “If God is for you, who can be against you?” is but half the question. The other half is rhetorical: “If God is for you, must you not be for yourselves?” —Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma So far, one of the most challenging aspects of studying history at an HBCU has been…
Toward a Higher Justice
As I wade through the waters of my second semester of grad school, I’ve grown acutely conscious of the fact that I’m preparing to enter a field where I will be something of a professional and intellectual outsider. For one thing, academia is a second career for me. A good portion of my young adult life, which could be charitably…