England is not kind to its Black population, particularly its Black activists and scholars.  Universities still do not hire with the relish they do in the U.S., the thinkers in their midst nor do they provide the means for their work to continue. The closing of the African History project of Hakim Adi’s History [...]

A reparations discourse with all its unfulfilled claims is still an open point of contention for those whose ancestors were used to create the wealth which the British royal family still enjoys. When Meghan Markle married into the royal family, I heard it said half-jokingly that this was not to be considered our reparations. Perhaps [...]

There is a line at the end of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) when Celie delivers a curse to Mister: “Until you do right by me, everything you think about (everything you touch) will crumble.”  America is seen around the world now, a nation in decline, a failed dream which constantly becomes a nightmare [...]

We still revel in claiming firsts:  First Black person to be president, senator, congressman.  And this is not just a United States phenomenon.  It occurs across Africa and the African Diaspora.  Following enslavement and European colonialism across the Americas in particular, Black populations are still in the mode of recovery; gaining the kind of political [...]

The most recent public case of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot in the back on Sunday, August 23, 2020, in the presence of his children, who were sitting in his car which he attempted to enter, demonstrates again how aggressive and corrupt policing can render one dead or permanently damaged in [...]

I still love Frantz Fanon’s opening line from his chapter “On National Culture” in his classic The Wretched of the Earth (Penguin, 1967): “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” From the time that Stokely Carmichael voiced the term “Black Power” in 1966, there was a shift [...]

Citation for and Introduction of Kamau Brathwaite’s W.E.B. Dubois Award at The Tenth National Black Writers’ Conference, with Toni Morrison Nobel Prize Winning Author as Honorary Chair Medgar Evers College, Saturday March 27, 2010 Tidalectics! Nation Language! The African Diaspora in the Caribbean! “The African presence in Caribbean literature”! Migration as a discourse! Theory of [...]