JDI hosts ‘Black Diaspora’ panel during Black History Month

As February reaches its midpoint, the CSB+SJU community continues to engage in campus events commemorating Black History Month.

A continuation of their new series, “Developing Character @SJU,” the Johnnie Development Institute (JDI) hosted the “Black Diaspora Panel” on Tuesday, a discussion about Black and African diaspora. The panelists included students Anthony Granger, Cameron Jackson, Bangaly Kaba and Malik Knowles. Malik Stewart, director of Multicultural Student Services, and Aubrey Sherman, Student Director of JDI, were moderators.

Sherman kicked off the event by explaining the series’ objective.

“It’s a newfound discussion that we’ve been working on aiming to help all students, particularly Johnnies, to think about and engage with the many facets of character development that they might have within their life. Our goal with this series is to create a space for discussions featuring faculty, staff, students and other experts who will be able to share their wisdom and experience,” Sherman said.

The goal for this specific event was to talk about the different identities that each panelist identified with. Questions surrounded topics such as when individuals first recognized their blackness, what it means to be Black and how it differs on campus versus at home. Stewart defined what the African and Black diaspora is.

“[The African and Black diaspora is] the voluntary and involuntary movement of Africans and their descendants out to various parts of the world in the modern and premodern periods. Diaspora simply means the dispersion or spread of people from their original homelands,” Stewart said.

Each panelist started off by talking about their journey as a Black man, some of their experiences in first recognizing their blackness and at what point in life they realized it. Panelists came from an array of Caribbean, African, African American and mixed backgrounds.

One of the larger themes discussed at the event was code switching. Code switching involves a conscious or subconscious switch in language depending on the social setting, particularly used within minority groups. The panelists talked about some of the situations in which they used code switching, sometimes without ever realizing they were doing it.

“He [Knowles] was code switching [during his panel response] the entire time. If you were to hear him with his friends, it wouldn’t sound like that. It’s one of those things where I think people don’t always realize. He’s thinking about that consciously all the time on top of whatever it is he is doing. He has to think about the question, but also how he’s going to talk when he responds, and so a lot of students are doing that all the time,” Stewart said.

Another theme discussed at the event was the intersection between a panelist’s national identity and racial identity. They focused on how the concept of being black is a lot more complex than one might try to simply define in a couple sentences.

Kaba discussed the struggle to balance his African and Black identities.

“I always felt I’m African, but I’m not Black. It took a lot of reflecting to unpack that. Well, I am Black because I’m physically black, but I’m also African American because my family comes from Africa. It just took me a while to realize that being black is a lot more of a spectrum than sometimes it’s portrayed to be,” Kaba said.

Dana Alcalá, Social Justice Coordinator of the Institute for Women’s Leadership, shared some of her thoughts after attending Tuesday’s event.

“My favorite part was the conversation about Blackness being a spectrum that includes various intersections. As one participant shared, he had a hard time figuring out what sort of Black he was because his parents were from Guinea, he was born in America and the was Muslim. So, you have all these intersections, and he was thoughtful in saying that he is still figuring out how to navigate all these pieces that make him who he is,” Alcalá said via email.

The panelists then delved into the distinction between being Black versus African/African American.

“At my middle school there were a lot of people from Africa, West Africa specifically. I think growing up you kind of understood that you weren’t the same…you kind of understand that I’m treated differently than some of my friends who are from Africa and don’t have as good of English as I do, or their parents might not speak as well in English as our parents do. From a young age, you kind of learn the difference between my friends are African and I’m Black,” Jackson said.

At this point, Stewart directed the conversation to their experiences at St. John’s. Panelists talked about their unique journey as a Black Johnnie and how this played out in extracurricular activities.

“My freshman year I was a swimmer, and I’m not saying I wasn’t welcomed because I was definitely welcomed, but I was one of the only two Black people on the team, and I just didn’t feel as comfortable. [This wasn’t] because of anyone on the team but because I just didn’t feel the same as the other swimmers. The spring of my freshman year I looked at rugby as a second home to me. There’s a bunch of different cultures and people I felt welcomed by,” Granger said.

Toward the end of the event, the panelists discussed the intersection of race and gender.

“I think that it is really important how you are perceived. It kind of reminds me of both my dad and grandparents. They always try to teach me that there are certain rules to being a young Black male—for example, interaction with the police, or when people are around that don’t look like you, how do you act? It’s different because I don’t know [many] of my white friends who have had that same experience,” Jackson said.

In an interview, Sherman shared some key takeaways that the audience should take away from attending the event.

“Just take away the fact that these experiences these Johnnies are having are real and they matter. I think too often we’re too quick to sweep things under the rug or not really address certain situations or not validate people when they have these experiences,” Sherman said. “Validate your peers. Whenever they’re willing to speak, hear them out, listen and be willing and open to engage with them.”