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.
