News and Views by and about Black Latinos
Sandra Jowers-BarberTeaching the African Diaspora:
Using History to Connect People
Posted February 28, 2008
One of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching history at the University of the District of Columbia is the diversity of the student body. It is estimated that 110 nationalities are represented at our institution.
Using History to Connect People
Posted February 28, 2008
One of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching history at the University of the District of Columbia is the diversity of the student body. It is estimated that 110 nationalities are represented at our institution.
Bringing a multicultural teaching perspective to the classroom provides students with a wider prism through which they are able to experience different cultures. All of the students gain by having the ability to speak with peers who have fled war-torn countries, been victims of political upheaval or had other experiences vastly different from their own.
I believe this diversity is one of the most important teaching tools available to me.
Students are encouraged to share their personal histories as well as their experiences as students in a new country. These discussions usually reveal a greater number of similarities than differences among the students. These interchanges are for many students their first opportunity to interact with persons from other countries.
Students tell me that they gain new insights into cultures that were once foreign to them. Others may have their preconceived ideas about a group of people confirmed or shattered. Some come away with perceptions that have been informed by one-on-one conversations that reveal people with emotions, fears, feelings, challenges and ambitions similar to their own.
African American students often view those from the English-speaking Caribbean to a great degree as an extension of themselves. Because many of them have one or two parents or other relatives from the Caribbean, there is a sense of connectivity. The language is similar and patios long ago became part of the African-American musical vocabulary. The dance hall music of Jamaica is woven throughout rap music and the late Bob Marley long ago firmly entrenched reggae in the music arena in the United States and internationally.
Without question, the most complex and interesting class reaction from most students is reserved for those Black students who are from countries other than the English-speaking Caribbean or Africa. It is at that juncture that the lack of knowledge of the African Diaspora enters. It is also at this juncture that I believe teaching the African Diaspora becomes necessary and important.
Even though the African Diaspora is a topic that most students feel they know a lot about, what they actually know is extremely limited. The teaching of the African Diaspora dispels the myth embraced by students that Africans were only taken to Jamestown and the Caribbean. Exposing students to the fact that slave ships, from the 15th to the 19th centuries, stopped at ports in other countries provides them with a different perspective.
That perspective allows them to understand and accept the fact that the Black students they sit next to in their various classrooms who are from Canada, Central America, South America, Europe and Asia are indeed also descendents of Africans. It is visible proof that the African Diaspora has placed Africans in countries on every continent.
More importantly, the presence of these students confirms that their ancestors, just like those in the Caribbean and the U.S., also survived, contributed to and made lasting impressions on the new cultures they had to adapt to. The only difference is that their passage ended in a different part of the world. Students will only know that when they are taught that the African Diaspora had a wider sweep than they imagined.
When they understand that the reality of the African Diaspora means that descendents of Africans are everywhere around the world, a different type of conversation can start to take place. That understanding can change what may have been a classroom of strangers into a village of distant relatives trying to bridge the distance that has keep them apart.
Sandra Jowers-Barber, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at the University of the District of Columbia. She directs the University’s Oral History Project and her areas of research interest are African American disability, African American women and public history.
Sandra can be reached at sjowers@udc.edu.
