Characteristics Of African Diaspora

In the final section of the course we continued to theorize what African Diaspora is. The authors tackle the question of race and racism, what characteristic makes someone part of the African Diaspora, the importance of the idea of a homeland, and finally the nature of dispersal. Throughout the readings we are given many points of view. Combing every section of this course this information has impacted the way I view certain communities. For example, we cannot just assume that everyone’s story is the same or that “blackness” and “African” mean one single thing for everyone. When it comes to social science we must look at things through many lenses in order to understand how other people think and view certain things, in this case African Diaspora. …show more content…
According to many scholars one characteristic that represents the African Diaspora is that the movement was involuntary. For example, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade many African were forces to leave the homeland therefore were involuntary dispersed. Yet as I mentioned before many scholars are deviating from these specific boundaries. A concern that was always raised during lecture was the problem of weaken the field by our wide definition of African Diaspora. The example we always went to is the one about Ghana and the Ghanaians that would travel to the United States and would come back looking very “diasporic”. These Africans are voluntary leaving the homeland and yet they come back and are seen as part of the African Diaspora. These are many reason the African Diaspora is so complex. We have to measure the importance of questions about the homeland, race, and dispersal in order to create an idea of what it really mean to be part of the Diaspora. Although the scholars come up with useful definitions and explanations, debate arise within the field. The three debates I will briefly mentions are, the debate of hegemonic culture within African Diaspora, the debate of being part of the African Diaspora but also of other communities, and finally whether or not blackness and African culture mean the same …show more content…
The two example I will provide is the Black community in Nicaragua and the Africans in Swedish. Bluefield, Nicaragua is a predominate black, Afro-Caribbean community. Although their color is black they all connect their ancestors to the Caribbean or Africa. Gordon and Anderson in their article “Toward an Ethnography of Diasporic Identification” start off by asking the question of who is black and uses the example of the Black in Bluefield. Then we have the Africans that deny their African roots yet inevitably are still part of the African Diaspora. The question that arises is whether or not should they still be considered and what is the importance of considering them part of the