The new “Africa Rising” narrative propagated largely by a globally-connected middle and upper class diaspora, often obscures the grittier stories of the African immigrant experience. This is partly due to an instinct among African immigrants to want to counter the history of one-dimensional and negative portrayals of both Africa and immigrants in the mainstream Western media. While […]
Late last year I had the opportunity to review College of William and Mary History Professor Robert Vinson’s remarkable new book, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa. Vinson details both physical and intellectual journeys between South Africa and the United States in the decades before apartheid. His characters […]
These days, it’s not uncommon to see Western fast food chains alongside local favorites in the post-colony. Lagos, for example, has its Nigerian fast food chains (Mr. Biggs, Chicken Republic, etcetera) but also a brand-new, shiny KFC in the upscale Ikoyi neighborhood, a symbol to many of the city’s modernization and integration into the world […]
The documentary film, Blacks Without Borders: Chasing the American Dream on Foreign Soil (2008, directed and produced by Stafford U. Bailey. Co-produced by Judy Thayer-Bailey)–which tells the story of a group of African-American professionals who immigrate to South Africa right after the end of legal Apartheid–is now on Youtube in its entirety. (It’s been since February […]
On Monday a new book on Malcolm X by the American intellectual and historian Manning Marable will come out. On Friday night Marable passed away. Though Marable, based until his passing at Columbia University, is less well-known outside the US, he started his career with a PhD dissertation on the South African political leader, John […]
I’ve been wanting to post for a while now about the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion. Primarily the work of the filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris; remember Harris film, “The Twelve Apostles of Nelson Mandela,” about his South African step father. The DDFR is described as an “interactive, multimedia project,” where New Yorkers–mostly Africans and African-Americans–showing Harris their family photos and […]
Andre Pinard is a friend and a neighbor. He works for Alloy ACCESS, “… the nation’s preeminent agency for global brands and organizations looking to understand and effectively reach multicultural millennials.” Their areas of expertise “… are African American, Hispanic and Urban-minded millennials.” He sent me this video on his idea of “The New Black.”
