This past Saturday, noirpress launched our first Monthly Town Hall! We designed the Town Halls to create space for thinkers, scholars and changemakers in our community across the global Black intelligentsia, to have an open dialogue about critical issues affecting the Black Diaspora.
The theme of this livestreamed dialogue–and that of the next two Town Halls–is Bridging the Gap Between Africans, Black Americans, Black Caribbean and all Black People. We are grateful to our invited guests, Uzomaka Obiocha, Demar Lewis, Jean-Louis Reneson, Ifeanyi Okafor, and Lanice Williams for helping us to kick off this dialogue. Through referencing personal experiences and critical studies in popular culture and academia, they helped us examine the idea of global Black unification.
Below are some major takeaways from the conversation. The full dialogue is available beneath these highlights.
Demar Lewis, PhD Student in Sociology & African American Studies, Yale University
The “collective” is not always universal. It’s built on whatever issue people mobilize around. Usually those issues will vary based on our individual values. Black people across the globe have all been raised differently and therefore have differing perspectives, ideas, and values. There are Black Americans who are in favor of Trump, and who want to “make America great again”, then there are Black Americans who want to burn the whole institution to the ground. Demar believes that both groups of people may not be able to be in the same room together unless you are able to find a nexus to begin the conversation. Just the fact that they are Black is not going to be the convening point.
Jean-Louis, Masters student in Social Work, Columbia University
People of African descent have always been building a sense of collectivism, but it has always been disrupted by oppression. “It’s almost in the fabric of blackness to relate”, he states. But unfortunately, we end up building a collective based on the most basic values; things we don’t even think we need to say for others to understand, but they still don’t get it. He explains that you can find black people all over the world fighting for the same basic values of life, food, health, education, and social or political opportunities. These aren’t things that are grandiose, they are very basic. Jean Louis poses the question, how do we build a collective without opposition; without undermining from people who don’t necessarily see the value in our own beings?
Uzomaka, Co-Founder, NOIR Labs
The secret to navigating disruption from outsiders is in the spiritual fight. As melanated beings, we do not have the same capacity for violence as our white counterparts, because our axiology prioritizes interpersonal relationships over the greed that characterizes dominating European philosophies. Building a collective without opposition is more about connecting with our ancestors, connecting with our gods, nature, using spiritual technologies to tap into the power that is in us, instead of going toe-to-toe and returning evil for evil. We have the gifts and tools in our melanin that are attached to the metaphysical things and we must use them everyday, but sometimes we are not as intentional.
“In a Black liberated world, there would be no chains, no walls, no hurdles, no obstacles.”
Jean-Louis Reneson
Ifeanyi, Technology Manager, Amazon
A global coalition would be critical. If we observe examples like the Five Eyes, a global coalition of the “old boys club” of former England (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) we can see that they all provide special privileges to the citizens of the other countries, and share access to certain resources. We, as members of the Diaspora can learn from this. For example high schools in Nigeria and Ghana provide a better STEM education than those of an okay high school in a middle-income area in the United States. If we could provide this kind of global access and share this revelation across African countries and across the Diaspora, anyone of African descent could come to a school in Nigeria or Ghana and pay the local school fee to study and gain the advanced knowledge. This could help alleviate the imbalance of access to education and capital.
Lanice, Advocacy & Partnerships Manager, Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
Since the civil rights era and even before them, the fight has been the same. We will need a foundation to come back to once the systems are broken down. Values also play a role in that. We all have different values but as Black people across the diaspora, we need to come together. Everyone wants the same thing, it might be worded differently or called something else. A lot of it is seeking truth and needing to unlearn some of the problematic things that we once took as truths.
These are just some of the gems from this inaugural dialogue. To learn more about resisting the disruption of racial capitalism and uniting Black people on our nexus of shared values, watch the full episode below!
Do you have thoughts on how the Black Diaspora can forge true intimacy and unification? Drop them in the comments below!
Most importantly, join us for the next Monthly Town Hall on September 5 live on YouTube! Be sure to subscribe to be notified of all our new events and episodes.