The Questions of Diaspora

Am I Not A Woman & A Sister, Anti-Slavery Hard Times Token, American, Yale University Art Gallery. Originally printed in AphroChic magazine Issue 1, Fall 2019.

It’s hip-hop and street style. It’s Juneteenth in Harlem, the Caribbean Day Parade in Brooklyn and Carnevale everywhere. It’s all over Beyonce’s latest video. But what is the African Diaspora? It’s a common term for referring to the collection of cultures across the world that trace their roots back to the African continent.

But many of us refer to it so often or hear of it so frequently that we may not stop to explore precisely what it is or what it means. In fact, there are many definitions of the African Diaspora, various constructions describing its inner workings, and even different per- spectives on the point in time at which it came into existence.

The difficulty in pinning down a specific definition for the term might stem from the fact that it’s even harder to define what diasporas are in general. Over the past 50 years, diaspora has become the favorite answer to a multitude of theoretical questions and the basis for countless more. It has given rise to what scholar Brent Hayes Edwards calls, “a confusing multiplicity of terms...including ‘exile,’ ‘expatriation,’ ‘post-coloniality,’ ‘migrancy,’ ‘globality,’ and ‘trans-nationality’ among others...” French sociologist, Dominique Schnapper, traces the history differently, asserting that diaspora has not spawned these terms, but rather that, “since 1968 it has des- ignated all forms of population disper- sion, until then evoked by the terms expelled, expatriate, exile, refugee, immigrant, or minority.”

So coming to an agreement on the definition of diaspora is difficult, even before trying to describe a specific one. But the level of importance that’s been placed on the concept in recent years is undeniable. So getting a clear idea of what diaspora is might be a good idea, but as so often happens, getting to a good answer is all about asking the right questions.

Ngbaka mask, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yale University Art Gallery

The Question of Origins

Diaspora is an ancient term with a long history. Meaning simply “dispersion,” or “scattering,” in Greek, the historian Thucydides was likely the first to use it to describe the displacement of people by war. Its associa- tion with dispersed Jewish communities began with the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek between the 3rd and 2nd centuries, BC. Deuteronomy 28:25 is often referred to specifically for its use of the word to describe the Jewish nation being “scattered to all the kingdoms of the earth.” For the next two millennia, diaspora was used almost exclusively to refer to dispersed Jewish populations throughout history. But by the 20th century other groups had begun using the word as a designator. Armenian writers begin focusing on displacement in their work as early as 1915, while the African Diaspora sees its first mention by the late 1960s. It wasn’t until the early ‘90s that the explosion of communities regarded as diaspora began an expansion of the term. The trend has continued into the 21st century, expanding the application of the term beyond national dispersions to include the many groups that inhabit the concept today.

In 2000, listing the number of studied diasporas, Khachig Tololyan, editor of the academic journal Diaspora, counted “three dozen trans-national communities...ethnics, exiles, expatriates, refugees, asylum seekers, labor migrants, queer communities, domestic service workers, executives of trans-national corpo- rations, and trans-national sex workers,” and the list has grown since then.

The Question of Movement

At the core of every construction of diaspora is the idea of movement. All diaspora communities have their origins in one place and have moved to several others. The question raised by identifying so many disparate groups as diaspora though, is whether all forms of movement should be thought of as the same. The key distinction in this debate is between migration and dispersion. The primary difference between them is simple, but significant: volition. Simply put, the former is something you do, the latter is something that someone else does to you.

Dispersion happens in instances where communities are forced to move by forces such as war, mass deportation or, in the case of the African Diaspora, a massive international slave trade. Migration, conversely, is largely a choice. Even in those situations where lack of employment or resources cause movement, they don’t force it in the same way. And while there is unquestionable trauma in being forced into migration because of famine or a weakened economy, it’s a different trauma than that of surviving a war or experiencing the Middle Passage.

Translating that distinction to currently considered diaspora groups, we see that differences do become apparent.

The earliest groups to be consid- ered diaspora, the Jewish, the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Africans, were all victims of dispersion of one type or another. Later groups, such as that of international sales representatives, or even Detroit lieutenant governor Garlin Gilchrist’s laudable Detroit Diaspora concept, refer to groups that moved of their own volition. Other characteristics common to diaspora constructions, such as a dream of return to the place of dispersion or the recognition of a shared culture between members of the group, may possibly be said to apply, but certainly not in the same ways.

If there are dispersed communities that function as diaspora and cannot be suitably defined by any other term, we risk losing sight of the unique features found in those communities by conflating diaspora with other forms of movement and migration. This in turn can lead to misconstrual of the changing dynamics of diaspora communities and a misunderstanding of their needs and goals.

In evaluating whether or not certain communities qualify as diaspora, we must consider what’s at stake for them in this categorization, and the extent to which they function as communities. If I’m an international salesperson, for example, I may be dispersed from my homeland, I may dream of a day of return, I may even have a tense relationship with the hostland. But do I have a sense of recognition with other professionals so dispersed, even from my own homeland, to other host lands? Do we recognize in each other a common struggle or shared yearnings? Is my dream of return for all of us, or just for myself?

At the same time, reevaluating the sense of dejection associated with the loss of the homeland in light of later prosperity is a common theme for diaspora groups. However it is a very different conversation for Armenian or Jewish communities, than it would be for trans-national executives or domestic service workers. However, current frameworks of diaspora make it difficult to distinguish between them.

The Question of Definitions

Why does diaspora have to have a specific definition that everyone agrees to? The short answer is: it doesn’t. If all migrations result in diaspora, then there can be as many conceptions of diaspora as there are types of movement — more even. However, if diasporas are themselves a unique thing, different in process and outcome than other types of migration, it makes sense to study them as such, especially those groups for which there’s more at stake than the designation of being “in diaspora.”

Look at it this way: If one person believes that a hammer is a building tool, and another believes it’s a cooking utensil, they can discuss the importance of the tool and their love for it all day; but whether the job is building a house or baking a cake, they will have a very difficult time doing it together. They don’t have to agree on the best ways to use it, but it would help if they shared a generally coherent idea of what it is.

Kente Prestige Cloth, Ghana, Yale University Art Gallery

The Question of Africa

So what does that mean for us? Currently there isn’t much that sep- arates the way that the African Diaspora is understood from the widely varied approaches taken in the study of diasporas as a whole; and for those not dedicated to studying it specifically, the African Diaspora is taken to be simply one more in a field of many. This raises questions as to whether there are any unique features of the African Diaspora that aren’t common to all forms of migration and that demand specific attention and study.

This much we know: nearly all concerned parties agree that those of African descent who reside in locations outside of the African continent con- stitute a diaspora. However very few seem to be able to agree on what that means, or why it is important. Yet these characteristics do exist, demonstrat- ing not only the distinctive features of a diaspora but presenting the African Diaspora as a unique case for study.

Consider the fact that, unlike other diasporas, the African Diaspora does not have a single point of origin. True, we call it the African Diaspora, but as many of us are tired of pointing out, Africa is a continent, not a country. That means that the story of the African Diaspora is not a question of dispersal from one place to several but from many places to many more. That changes things.

Diasporas are generally about one culture being scattered to many places and maintaining relationship to each other through their shared point of origin. However each culture of the African Diaspora is not a scattering of one culture into many but a fusion of many cultures into one. In every instance, dozens of different African cultures, present in different levels, came together along with any number of Native American and European cultures to become a distinct thing. It became the African American and the Trinidadian; it became the Jamaican and the Haitian; it became Dominican, Cuban, Brazilian, and more. It became all of us. This significant difference does not make the African Diaspora any less a diaspora. Nor is it more usefully understood as a series of smaller diasporas from specific countries in Africa. It is specifically the joining of many African cultures, in unique ways, across a variety of places, that creates the African Diaspora.

Consider also that the African Diaspora exists not only as a state of being, but as a concept. In a short treatment of the subject, historian Colin A. Palmer lists five distinct diasporic moments in African history, beginning with the first human migrations out of the continent. His suggestion being that the existence of other examples of large-scale movement on the part of African people means that, “there is no single diasporic movement or monolithic diasporic community to be studied.”

While it’s true that the global migration of Africans predates the trans-Atlantic slave trade, it’s difficult and to ignore that the African Diaspora as a concept is a direct development of that particular dispersal, and more specifically, of a long history of thought and action aimed at dealing with the political, social, moral, and economic ramifica- tions of that moment in human history. And it is on that point that we can begin to answer some of these questions.

The Question of Purpose

What is the African Diaspora for? That is the right question. It’s right because it puts every other question we’ve asked in perspective. Nearly every construction of diaspora as a concept holds that the relationship between dispersed populations and the “homeland,” whether real or imagined, is of vital importance to the category. Yet few if any consider diaspora from a functional standpoint.

Perhaps the best way to understand the African Diaspora is not as a state of being or a happenstance of historical migration, but as a tool. The African Diaspora isn’t simply the result of voluntary or forced migration from one continent to several. It is an analytical structure formed out of a complex set of ideas created by networks of thinkers, creatives, groups, and movements working both in concert and in contravention to one another over hundreds of years.

Understanding the Diaspora in this way makes several useful changes to the way we approach the question of defining it. First, it argues that the creation of the Diaspora was not an in- cidental consequence of dispersion, but an intentional decision on the part of those dispersed.

Second, it requires that the Diaspora conform to the one criteria that applies to all tools: that it was created to do a job. And, like any tool, understanding the African Diaspora is in large part a matter of understanding its process of manufacture and the reasons for its construction. Once those are ascertained, we can move on to the only question that ultimately matters: Does the African Diaspora still have a job to do, or is it already obsolete?

This essay is the beginning of a series that will address this question by analyzing the African Diaspora from the perspective of a tool. To do so, it will trace the historical development of the African Diaspora concept as an emergence from the extensive tradition of international Pan-Africanist thought that preceded it through the various articulations of the concept that have influenced the use of the term today.

This series doesn’t claim to be exhaustive in its survey of contributors to Pan-Africanism or to the theory and study of diaspora. Nor does it claim to be authoritative about the nature and uses of the concept. The goal here is to begin a conversation, not end one. And if it inspires us to do more and say more to explore and strengthen the bonds between our communities towards functional and mutually beneficial ends, then that would be nice too.

The work of Diaspora is not done, but we can only reach a better understanding of the potential uses of the diaspora concept going forward by more thoroughly understanding the needs and processes that brought about its emergence and the purpose for which we currently need it.

Spinning By Firelight–The Boyhood of George Washington Gray, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Yale University Art Gallery