Black Studies in the Heart of the Empire

• In Event: The Global Experience of Matter: Remembering and Living #BLM Movements

Abstract

This presentation explores what it means to practice Black Studies in the heart of the United States empire. In 2023, the world witnessed the reemergence of struggles for national liberation in countries like Niger and Palestine. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council, led by the U.S., approved yet another foreign intervention in Haiti. Countries like Kenya, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Antigua and Barbuda have agreed to send troops into Haiti in order to do the bidding of U.S.-led imperialism. Given these developments, it is necessary to reexamine the role of Black Studies in a global context. As a field born from struggle, Black Studies emerged amidst the Black Power Movement, which had intimate bonds of solidarity with national liberation struggles across the Third World during the 1960s and 1970s. This presentation therefore aims to address the following questions: What is Black Studies’ role in our rapidly changing world of the 2020s? What is our field’s position on imperialism and anti-imperial struggle? How should the field respond to institutional attacks against our students for their courageous organizing and activism? And what are the implications for our field if we remain silent in the face of such attacks? Ultimately, I argue, Black Studies programs across the country must be at the vanguard of the struggle against institutional repression against Black students, staff, and faculty and take a bold position against U.S. imperialism rooted in Pan-Africanism and internationalism. Otherwise, our field will negate its founding tenets and risk fading into obscurity.

Author

• Navid Farnia, Wayne State University