Issue 98 tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009-11-10:/journal/issue98/38 2009-12-29T01:08:31Z Spring 2009 Movable Type Pro 4.31-en Introduction: Diaspora and the Localities of Race tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.461 2009-12-29T01:00:24Z 2009-12-29T01:08:31Z This introduction explores the major themes addressed in this special issue, particularly how racial difference both structures the African diaspora and informs how scholars exploring this social formation engage with modes of knowledge production that reshape diaspora. In this way, the introduction considers how the local, the nation, remains an important site for the construction of African diasporic identity and outlines how such nations at times facilitate diasporic imaginaries. Minkah Makalani http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=110 Work theorizing the African diaspora has sought to identify its defining characteristics, map out lines of continuity between its geographic segments, and outline methodological approaches to studying the dispersion of African descended populations. This work has resulted in studies of cultural exchange, migration, the social structure of various Afro-diasporic communities, as well as political activism within those communities. Recent scholarship, however, has devoted greater analytical attention to the question of difference -- how diasporas emerge through "relations of difference," thus opening up the necessary space for thinking about 

difference as a central feature of diaspora rather than a problem one must solve. Difference draws attention to how diaspora, as a social formation, is simultaneously framed by relationships of domination and is itself a structured hierarchy. Thus, the claim by Kachig Tölölyan that the African diaspora is exceptional precisely because of the history of racialization in this particular formation suggests the need for more work on racial difference in diaspora. What stands out most about the African diaspora is not merely that the process of racialization was central to and concomitant with dispersion, but that dispersion involved multiple racial formations that rendered large segments of African-descended populations in places like the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Lusophone Africa, and Europe something other than black. The unique racial formations within which these populations exist complicate thinking about diaspora as a community and call into question the assumption of a correspondence between African diaspora and blackness. Indeed, work on the dissimilarities between the blackness of Africans, African Caribbeans, and African Americans has alluded to the need for a serious examination of this question. Given the connections between blackness, racial identity, racial ideology, and racial hierarchies in what philosopher Charles W. Mills calls "global white supremacy," attention to intradiasporic racial difference offers to open new realms of inquiry into diaspora as a transnational social formation by focusing on the inability of race to translate easily across historical and national contexts. 


]]> The Racial State of the Everyday and the Making of Ethnic Statistics in Britain tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.460 2009-12-29T00:49:58Z 2009-12-29T01:00:14Z This article critically examines a common premise of racial discourse in contemporary multiracial societies: that ethnic data collection, in the form of population statistics, is necessary for the apprehension and eradication of discrimination. Drawing on ethnographic data from the conduct of the 1991 National Census of the United Kingdom--the first ever to include a direct question on ethnicity--I analyze the myriad dimensions of racialized power and subjectivity at work in demographic knowledge production. In the process, I suggest that the 1991 census reveals less about people's racial or ethnic identity, per se, than it does about the contradictory racial identities of the British state itself. These become visible both in terms of state practices with regard to race and in terms of the myriad ways that black people represent the state, appeal to it, resist it, or embody it. Jacqueline Nassy Brown http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=109 Dateline Paris. 18 November 2005. The biggest explosion of street violence in France since the late 1960s has jolted the country into confronting its failure to include its 7 million residents of Arab and African origin in the national mainstream. Some experts believe the crux of the problem lies with France's integration policy. Government bodies and private companies are barred from gathering data based on ethnicity or religion -- which are deemed potentially divisive. France has always deemed its model superior to the Anglo-Saxon approach of diversity, which has enabled ethnic minorities to retain strong bonds in cultural and religious communities. France calls this "comunitarism" and says that it promotes ghettos, exclusion, poverty, race riots, and religious extremism that can ultimately lead to actions such as the London bombings. French Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag has urged the government to overturn the ban on collecting such data, telling Le Figaro newspaper that it was important to assess the presence of minorities in various professions. Job discrimination was a key complaint voiced by many youths who rioted in immigrant suburbs in recent weeks. "We need to see France's true colours," Mr. Begag said. 

]]> Left Out: Afro-Latinos, Black Baseball, and the Revision of Baseball's Racial History tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.459 2009-12-29T00:45:43Z 2009-12-29T00:49:21Z The project of recovering the history of the Negro Leagues, and in so doing establishing a more complete account of U.S. professional baseball's segregated past, is fertile ground for interrogating the possibilities and limitations of diasporic frameworks. This article examines the problem of the color line in baseball and interrogates how the writing of black baseball history--itself a revision of the traditional narrative of U.S. professional baseball--has often obfuscated the place of Afro-Latinos. Rather than examining the history of African Americans and Latinos in baseball as two distinct strands, my approach endeavors to complicate our understanding of racialization, transnational history, and diaspora by focusing on their participation in this circuit where their professional aspirations overlapped and intersected. Specifically, as a means to discuss the place of Afro-Latinos within baseball history then and now, this article revisits the public outrage at the "snubbing" of Buck O'Neil along with the more muted reaction to Afro-Latino Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso not being elected in a special Hall of Fame election in 2006. The varied reactions provide an opportunity to engage popular narratives about black baseball history, the place of Afro-Latinos within baseball history, and the study of the African diaspora within the Americas. The focus on the treatment of Afro-Latinos within these narratives, I argue, illuminates a selective revision of baseball's racial history, one that minimizes the impact on and contributions of Afro-Latinos and also diminishes the international and transnational dimensions to the struggle to overturn racial segregation in U.S. professional baseball. Adrian Burgos, Jr. http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=108 The National Baseball Hall of Fame's special election on the Negro Leagues in 2006 resulted in the induction of seventeen players and executives. Media coverage focused as much on who was excluded as it did on who was included within the Hall's largest entering cohort ever. Among those left out, Buck O'Neil drew the most notice. O'Neil's endearing personality, homespun storytelling style, and tireless work on behalf of the Negro Leagues helped spark a revival of popular interest in black baseball history. His lack of bitterness made him the symbol of the Negro Leagues for countless Americans and assuaged the guilt of many about the national pastime's Jim Crow past.

]]> Beyond Heritage Tourism: Race and the Politics of African-Diasporic Interactions tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.458 2009-12-29T00:32:32Z 2009-12-29T00:45:18Z This article engages the scholarly discussion of the booming heritage tourism industry in Ghana to explore the dynamics and politics of historical and contemporary African-diasporic interactions and provoke a critical revision of diaspora theory. I argue that Ghanaian-diaspora interactions in Ghana occur within a broader sociopolitical and cultural terrain that is not limited to heritage tourism. This terrain is configured through Ghana's own historical trajectory and narratives around slavery and race which, in turn, are informed and renegotiated by the country's relationship with diaspora history and community over time. Black diaspora and other African visitors, expatriates, and professionals converge in Ghana's cosmopolitan centers and confront a local landscape that is at once familiar and jarring because it has distinct and similar articulations of race and Blackness. My argument forces an explicit recognition of local processes of racialization in Ghana and calls for an approach to Ghanaian-diasporic interactions that juxtaposes Ghanaian racial subjectivity to that of diaspora bBlacks. By framing the heritage tourism discussion in this way, I hope to demonstrate that, contrary to conventional treatment of Africa within diaspora theory, transnational interactions between Africa and its diaspora are both historical and contemporary and, more importantly, are marked by the integument of race. Jemima Pierre http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=107
The dialogue between Africans and African Americans has not always 
produced the harmony and unity dreamed of by Pan-Africanists, but it 
has produced significant transformations of political identity, religious 
practice, and culture generally in both Africa and its diaspora. 
 -- J. Lorand Matory, "Afro-Atlantic Culture: On the Live Dialogue 
between Africa and the Americas" 


It is early Friday evening, and I have just entered the lobby of the Golden Tulip Hotel on my way to First Fridays Accra. The Golden Tulip is a four-star, first-class hotel known for its sophistication, particularly its beautiful décor of local artwork. It is also much more than a hotel. It is the place that holds numerous social events where, for example, a middle-class local family can splurge on a lazy Sunday afternoon by the pool, joining members of the expatriate community and other tourists; it is also where young partygoers may meet up for drinks before heading out to the nightclubs or where business associates gather for happy hour or late-night revelry. This hotel, 

then, is the perfect site for First Fridays Accra, an "after-work network and socializing affair." The hallway near the entrance to the event is lively, abuzz with conversations among young men and women either waiting for other friends to arrive or taking a break from the hectic scene inside. I greet a few friends, jot down my contact information, pay my entry fee to one of the three young Ghanaian women stationed at the welcoming table, pin the provided name-tag to my dress, and enter. 


]]> Family Matters: Diaspora, Difference, and the Visual Archive tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.457 2009-12-29T00:29:46Z 2009-12-29T00:32:21Z When and where do we "see" the emergence of a black German subject? Where do we encounter a visual instantiation of a black subject who is internal to German society and partakes of a relationship to this society that is neither transplanted, transitional, nor transitory, but instead firmly grounded within it? In early-twentieth-century Germany, one important site where this subject emerges is through the medium of photography--specifically, black German family photography. Often considered one of the most mundane forms of photographic imaging, family photos function as a complex site of black European diasporic formation. This essay analyzes a series of images that register blacks as Europeans, yet framed through the lens of national and familial idioms that presents them as undeniable members of German society. In so doing, the article highlights both the tensions of diasporic formation, as well as the coconstitution of racial and gendered subjects therein. Tina M. Campt http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=106 How should we understand the relationship between the family, the photograph, and the African diaspora? As one of the most accessible objects through which complicated processes of projection, desire, and identification come into view, the photograph frames the family in ways that affirm its apparent self-evidence and, at the same time, render it open to interrogation. Photographs, and family photographs in particular, provide a unique vantage point from which to consider some of the dynamics of race in the African diaspora -- dynamics of difference, specificity, relationality, and belonging that reveal our deep investment in seeing both the family and diaspora as spaces of belonging that often paper over less hospitable issues of difference and divergence within and among black communities transnationally.

]]> Feeling Diaspora in Harlem and Havana tag:www.socialtextjournal.org,2009:/journal/issue98//38.456 2009-12-29T00:25:56Z 2009-12-29T00:29:33Z This essay examines how diasporic commonalities are experienced in the midst of cultural and linguistic difference by highlighting the making of Afro-diasporic linkages by participants in the Harlem Renaissance and the Afro-Cubanism (afrocubanismo) movement. The essay interprets the traffic between the cultural movements in Harlem and Havana as evidence of diasporization, rather than as mere background information for two distinct national movements. In the 1920s and 1930s, the boundary-crossing activity of African American and Afro-Cuban writers and musicians, such as Langston Hughes and Mario Bauzá, and the reception by their audiences produced new hierarchal and relational understandings of Afro-diasporic cultures in both countries. Cubans celebrated Hughes as a representative of the most advanced sector of the global "colored race." At the same time, Hughes played a decisive role in the construction of Afro-Cuban culture as more authentically "African." Although these views were suffused with projections, they illustrate some of the ways African-descended writers, musicians, and their audiences in Cuba and the United States articulated a shared diasporic imagination. Moreover, the essay highlights audience reaction to the music and literature produced by the movements and argues that expressions of affect or feelings were powerful ways that Afro-diasporic linkages were established across cultural difference. Frank Guridy http://www.socialtextjournal.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=38&id=105 On April 22, 1930, Lalita Zamora, an Afro-Cuban woman in Havana, wrote a letter to Langston Hughes, the famous "Blues Poet" of the Harlem Renaissance, to thank him for sending her copies of his poetry books. Zamora had met Hughes during his recent stay in Cuba. Her letter, which was written in English a few weeks after he left Cuba, expressed her admiration for the way Hughes's writing style effectively conveyed "the sensation and feelings of the desires, hopes, love and ambitions of our race." A few months later, she sent the poet another letter, written in Spanish, after 

reading Hughes's Not without Laughter, his recently published novel about a black family's struggles in Kansas. She informed Hughes that she was especially taken by the female characters in the story, particularly Aunt Hager, whom she described as a "good mother type," and Harriet as a "type of modern young black woman." Zamora seemed genuinely moved by his novel, claiming: "I do not have the words to express my joy in the great step forward that you have just provided. It is with great pride that 

the negro race can count on you as one of its poets and writers."

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