Makini Boothe,
"A Reunion of "Sisters": Personal Reflections on Diaspora and Women in Activist Discourse"
(page 2 of 6)
Defining Our Diaspora
The training institute was phenomenal in that it brought together
women from all over the continent and the diaspora. Geography defined
the parameters of the attendees, and anyone who could trace her lineage
to the African continent was welcome. Instead of broadly employing the
term "Africa" in reference to the Sub-Saharan region, as is popular in
development discourse, the African participants also included those from
the North African nations of Tunisia and Egypt. Through the institute, a
pseudo-diaspora was constructed, with participants ascending from both
inside and outside the continent—Brazil, Jamaica, Surinam, Trinidad, the
United States, and the United Kingdom. Although African participants
were often divided during the workshop into regional and linguistic
groups—North Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Fracophone West and
Central Africa, Anglophone West and Central Africa, Lusophone
Africa—those of us from the diaspora were generally referred to as a
single group. The assumed commonalities of our group were complicated by
the reality of the diversity both between our different nationalities
and within the same nationality. However, such diversity was rarely
discussed, and I often found myself questioning the implications of the
construct of the diaspora within activism.
Academia has discussed and debated the characteristics and definition
of diaspora for decades. Scholars Kim Butler, an Africana studies
professor at Rutgers University, and Robin Kelly, professor of history,
American studies, and ethnicity, explore the characteristics of the
diaspora and question its validity. When discussing popular conceptions
of the diaspora, Butler identifies a "sense of powerlessness, longing,
exile, and displacement" (190), while Kelly highlights characteristics
such as "survival, retention, exchange, transformation, acculturation,
or conversation" (81).
Moreover, in her 2001 article "Defining Diaspora, Refining a
Discourse," Kim Butler, elaborates on the definition of diaspora in a
twenty-first century context. She argues that scholars are embarking on
a new arena of intellectual inquiry that necessitates an agreement about
the parameters and definition of this complex term (190). She goes on to
confirm three relatively undisputed characteristics of diaspora: (1) the
dispersal of people to a minimum of two destinations (2) the existence
of a relationship to an actual or imagined homeland (3) and a
self-awareness of the group's identity (192). According to Butler, those
of us from the "diaspora" affirm our African origins and base our
identity upon this heritage.
Butler complicates the definition by adding another
characteristic—the "temporal-historical dimension," or the existence of
the diaspora over at least two generations. This feature is an important
because it excludes a number of people who often associate themselves
with the diaspora. In the context of the training institute, among those
identified as part of the diaspora were a group of Brazilian nationals,
a woman from Somaliland living in the UK, a young West African woman who
had come to the U.S. to pursue coursework, a refugee who moved to the
U.S. as a young child as a result of the civil war in her native
country, and myself, an African-American born in Jamaica. By Butler's
definition, only the Brazilians, Surinamese, Trinidadian, and I
qualified as members of the diaspora; unlike the others, our dispersion
is multi-generational, and we claim the middle passage as part of our
ancestral legacy.
During the workshops, the implications of failing to investigate the
definition of diaspora became glaringly apparent when an African
participant passed me a note that asked, "Are you really an American, or
are you an African studying in the U.S.?" This question was understandable
when we consider that the two other participants who flew in from the
U.S. had moved there within the past ten years. However, the note
represents a larger issue because it highlights not only the obscure
nature of the diaspora but also the ambiguous definition in activist
discourse.
Identifying the diaspora within the context of activism is further
complicated when we recognize that there are multiple identities within
the African diaspora. For example, although we were all self-identified
"activists," thus conveying our commitment to social justice, those from
the diaspora and those from the continent had different frames of
references for the injustices we were mobilizing against. For example,
despite the diversity of experience, those from the continent largely
articulated the injustices resulting from colonial and neo-colonial
practices, while those from other places focused more on the legacy of
slavery. Such a dichotomy became challenging with discussions of the
different manifestations of these histories throughout the diaspora. For
example, the present-day manifestations of institutionalized racism
figure more prominently in discussions about Brazil or the U.S. than
they do in the Caribbean, as evidenced by unequal educational, housing
and employment opportunities according to race. Although we are all part
of the diaspora, participants from Suriname, Trinidad, and Jamaica did
not articulate the injustices similarly. They were somewhat in the
middle, coming from predominately "black" nations, where their political
leaders are mainly of African-descent and where issues of housing,
education and employment do not have a racial dynamic. However, they are
all still unable to exert full economic autonomy on the global stage
perhaps due to their history of economic exploitation rooted in the
legacy of slavery.
Butler addresses this diversity within the diaspora: "To fix [a]
person's identity as part of an undifferentiated African diaspora does
not allow for the complexity of multiple identities, the salience of any
of which at any given time is conditioned by socio-political exigencies . . ..
Conceptualizations of diaspora must be able to accommodate the reality
of multiple identities . . ." (193). Ignoring multiple identities within an
undifferentiated diaspora created problems that became most evident when
participants were asked to wear a "traditional outfit" during an event.
While many of the African participants came prepared with traditional
outfits, some worried what people would think if they appeared only in
jeans or beach clothes. The reality, however, was such that many of the
participant's history of slavery made defining "traditional"
challenging. A number of us simply did not have a traditional outfit to
wear. The request, in itself, ignored our complicated history and did
not recognize that our relationship with "tradition" was more difficult
to define than for those from the continent. My own experience makes the
case in point: In an effort to do something "African-American," I wore a
black dress and wrapped my hair in a style often referred to as
"Afro-centric." The Brazilian participants faced the same dilemma, with
one wearing an outfit (bought during her trip) made from West African
material, another wearing a tourist shirt from Brazil, and still another
dressed in an outfit worn at carnival. This array of "traditional
outfits" demonstrates both the complicated notion of "traditional" and
the diversities that exist within a particular diaspora. Butler affirms
this complexity when she writes that "even within single diasporas,
simultaneous diasporan identities are possible" (193). The organizers
and facilitators made certain assumptions, it seems, when they expected
all participants to have a simpler understanding of their own
traditions.
In his article "How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of
Diaspora," Robin D.G. Kelly describes how specific assumptions about
diaspora limit the ability to understand the diverse range of political,
cultural, intellectual, and transnational experiences that exist beneath
the umbrella term:
Too frequently we think of identities as cultural
matters, when in fact some of the most dynamic (translational)
identities are created in the realm of politics, in the way people of
African descent [create] alliances and political identifications across
oceans and national boundaries . . . [N]either African nor Pan-Africanism is
necessarily the source of Black transnational political identities;
sometimes they live through and are integrally tied to other kinds of
international movements—Socialism, Communism, Feminism, Surrealism,
religions such as Islam, and so on . . . (43).
I agree with Kelly's point that a cultural basis of organization is
insufficient, especially when faced with multiple identities and
experiences. When this was recognized during the institute, a number of
participants and I felt compelled to question how we could define
ourselves as a coherent group unified around a common goal, despite our
different backgrounds and worldviews. We determined that, apart from an
ethnographic construction, our presence was political in nature, with
the training institute seeking to equip participants with additional
tools for our activist work. As such, it became essential for us to not
only explore the construction of the diaspora but also for those of us
from the diaspora to understand the particular space/role we occupy as
members of our own nations and descendants of Africa. This investigation
has particular implications on activists of the diaspora attempting to
localize their issues within a global context.
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