it ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at…

It Ain’t Where You’re From, It’s Where You’re At…

By: Thomas Noone

Scattered Belongings By: Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe

Where are you from?

Where do you fit in?

African Diasporas: Pre-Columbian& Post-Columbian

Pre-Columbian World Post-Columbian African Diaspora

African Diasporas• Not all African Diaspora’s are the same… each is individually

affected by personal experience and location of particular nation-state…

Bi-Racialization

White Indigenous Roots + Black Diasporic Roots = ?

“Hence neither the exclusionary discourse of White Englishness nor the inclusive discourse of the Black

English-African diaspora completely represents their everyday lived realities. Designated Black/White parentage and English/English-African diasporic

upbringings position them at a complex and specific multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial and transnational intersections” (63, Scattered Belongings, Ifekwunigwe).

Can you claim a diaspora if you are mixed race or are you in a sense…homeless?

It Ain’t Where You’re From, It’s Where You’re At…By: Paul Gilroy

What’s the role of music, nationalism, and history in race and ethnicity….

Two Opposing Theories

• Essentialism• It blends cultures, ethnicites, and

races together under broad terms like “black” or “latino”

• “The essentialist view comes in gender specific forms, but has often been characterised by a brute pan-Africanism that, in Britain at least, is now politically inert” (5,Gilroy).

• Pluralism• Recognizes diversity and divisions

among people of common races and ethnicity

• “This perspective currently confronts a pluralistic position which affirms blackness as an open signifier and seeks to celebrate complex representations of black particularly that is internally divided: by class, sexuality, gender, age, and political consciousness” (5, Gilroy)

Importance of Nationalism in Diasporas

• Nationalism can divide the diasporic spirit among nations and make them unrelatable

• Examples: African-American or English-African• With globalization and nation-states emerging

can there be such a thing as an “African Diaspora”?

Where Music Fits In…“The very least which this music and its history can offer us today is an analogy for comprehending the lines of affiliation

and association which take the idea of the diaspora beyond its symbolic status as the fragmentary opposite of an imputed

racial essence.” (15, Gilroy).

Nas Is Like…

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz7wVxzuoE

•Album was originally supposed to be titled “Nigger”•After months of backlash from media and his record label Nas changed it to an “Untitled” album, but the message remained•Song: “Be a Nigger too”

Bringing It All Together

• Is there really an African Diaspora?• Are we all from the same place?• Is Nationality what is most important in the

modern world?• Are Essentialist/Pluralist views clouding the idea

of race and diaspora?• Where is home and who can claim it? Is that

even important now or is it more important than ever?