Highlighted Session: 7th Annual Henry M. Levin African Diaspora SIG Lecture: Integrated Futures of Solidarity across the African Diaspora featuring Dr. George Dei

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Our 7th Annual Levin African Diaspora SIG Lecture is an opportunity to hear from and engage in dialogue with prolific voices in the field of Africana Studies to highlight issues concerning the global African diaspora. This year's lecture will provide an opportunity for current members whose scholarship engages the work of Dr. George Dei to share their papers in a panel lightning round and receive comments directly from Dr. Dei prior to his lecture on African Diaspora solidarity.

Additionally, we are taking the opportunity to acknowledge the connections between research and place. As this year’s annual meeting will be held in Minnesota, we are glad to present scholars who are focusing on Minnesota which has the largest Somali population outside of Somalia, the largest Oromo population outside of Ethiopia, and is home to a significant number of Liberians, Kenyans, and Sudanese (Ostuni, 2020; Rao, 2020; Ratsabout, 2021). Yet, Minnesota’s welcoming of Black immigrants is in tension with its persistent hostility towards native-born Black Americans embodied in racial covenants, gaping educational disparities, and state-sanctioned murders of Black and Brown bodies.

To move forward, as a community, we must first contend with these questions: Who owns blackness? Who has authority to speak on Blackness in the US? How can we legitimize the dynamic mosaic expressions of black identity? We seek the answers to these questions in the context of education. Our scholarship-in-progress will address how students work through and understand race in educational contexts, explore how educational experiences shape and complicate identities, speak to localized issues in immigrant communities, and examine internalized anti-Blackness and Black nativism across the diasporic landscape.

Sub Unit

• African Diaspora SIG

Chair

• Rhonesha L Blache, Teachers College, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• The Racialization of International Black African Collegians in US Higher Education - Ashley Watson, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

• Lessons from the Diaspora and Possibilities of a Black Future - Kristina Hodelin, Radboud University

• East African immigrants’ internal tensions: Identity and future possibilities - Eskender A Yousuf, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities