Political Blackness Across the Americas (375-0-20)
Instructors
Barnor Hesse
8474913775
1860 Campus Dr Crowe 5-131
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-435: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
The aim of this course is to understand the political meaning of Blackness in the Black Radical Tradition, by examining its emergence and circulation across the Americas between the colonial-settler-slavery societies of the 16th century and the white western democracies of the 20th centuries. This requires us to think historically about Black populations, including their identities, cultures and movements in terms that include Latin America and the Caribbean as well as the United States. In short, it means understanding Blackness in the Americas as a multiplicity of Black experiences, identities, cultures, politics and histories. It is important to recall that up until the mid-point of the 20th century the overwhelming numbers of African descended (Black) populations across Africa, the Americas and Europe lived under formalized colonial and racial regimes based on different institutionalized versions of western white supremacy. During the 20th century despite Black populations in Latin America and the United States being citizens of independent countries while those in Africa and the Caribbean largely remained colonized subjects, Black populations throughout this Black Diaspora, were routinely the subjects of racial subordination, racial segregation and racial violation. It is in relation to these conditions that the course discusses political Blackness, in particular why and how it emerged and the ways in which it persists into the 21st century, enabling critiques of white supremacy and mobilizing movements of politics, culture and identification. Throughout the 20th century the colonial question of race, its rule over Black populations lives, and diverse Black resistances to race, have deeply influenced the cultural and political orientations and solidarities of Black people across the Americas. The course is a reminder that Black populations across the Americas have historically navigated and attempted to overcome through politics and culture, the same and different continuities and discontinuities of racial subordination, segregation and violation affecting Black populations. The course will focus primarily on Latin America and the Caribbean.