Dialogues in the Diaspora: Challenges and Possibilities

• In Event: A.I. and Equity: Perspectives on Supporting Black Youth to Thrive in the Digital World

Abstract

Objectives
This qualitative case study (Meriam, 1998) considers the socioeconomic, educational, and geopolitical elements affecting students’ abilities to create real-time digital community with Black youth from Atlanta, Chicago, Johannesburg, and Washington, D.C. The study was based on the implementation of a curriculum project titled Dialogues in the Diaspora (DiD). One primary goal of the curriculum is to help students explore the interrelatedness of local and global struggles for Land. The other aim is to foster dialogue between youth in various locations about similar and different experiences as relates to Land.

I will focus on the second research question below:

How did youth in various locations seek to understand the conflict presented in Sifuna Okwethu regarding opposing claims to the Land (eg, ancestral vs. legal)?
Connect in digital space to discuss the interrelatedness of local and global struggles for Land?

Theoretical perspectives
In the larger study, I draw on decolonial praxes to investigate how the theme of “Land with a capital ‘L’” (Styres, p. 25) can serve as a central theme for Black Diasporic youth to explore issues of coloniality, Land, and dispossession (Smith, Tuck & Yang, 2019). This provides context for my contribution to this Symposium in which I utilize global digital divide theory as a means of finding possibilities for global community building (Ferro, 2010).

Methods and Data Sources
To answer the third research question, I used participant observation in each classroom in all four cities (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2010). I expanded my field jottings into field notes immediately after leaving. I also recorded my impressions, concerns, and explanations. I organized the data from my field notes by creating categories and themes based on elements of global digital divide theory, including socioeconomic, educational, and political factors that influence the digital divide.

Findings
I found that socioeconomic, educational, and geopolitical factors influenced students’ ability to connect with one another between cities. Of the four sites, only the school in Washington D.C. had full and flexible access to high-speed broadband internet. It was the only private school in the study, and it was elite. Although the school in Chicago had access to the internet, their inflexible daily schedule made meeting with others difficult. The schools in Atlanta and Johannesburg did not have reliable access to the internet. I also found that geopolitical and educational factors in South Africa influenced student level of knowledge and higher-order thinking skills positively.

Significance
Access to technology is a fundamental part of the globalized world. However, level of access to the internet does not dictate students' ability to develop the complex thinking skills that are also fundamental to active participation in the globalized world. Findings from this study serve to push back against the deficit assumptions that are widely held throughout Western societies about the level of complex thinking skills that characterize African students.

Author

• Jillian Carter Ford, Kennesaw State University