Children & Families of the African Diaspora

The local group, Heritage Productions, and Howard University collaboratively presented a half-day conference/seminar at Bermuda College on August 1 in the lead up to Cup Match, a 'national' time of rememberance of slavery and emancipation. Dr. Hakim Rashid, Dr. Constance Ellison, Dr. Wade Boykin and Bermudian PhD candidate Joseph Johnson of Howard's Dept. of Human Development and Psycho-Educational Studies spoke to and later engaged in discussion with an African American and Bermudian audience (all black Bermudians except for myself, including a number of Bermudian Howard alumni and current students) on educational issues specifically related to children of African descent—the implication being there being many common educational issues for that demographic whether in the United States or Bermuda. The Howard speakers addressed the historic and ongoing imposition of hegemonic Eurocentric worldviews on people of African descent with emphasis on faulty 'deficit' and 'remedial' learning models. The effects of globalisation on education were interpreted through a specific lens of technology and media to call for reform on 'educational unrealities', such as those raised by Bermuda College's Dr. Eugenie Simmons at the July 25 Sustainable Development Economy meeting (see earlier post) whereby Bermudians lack education and training for realistic and lasting employment in the local and sustainable job market (versus Bermuda's more shifting and transient international business sector). The potential for education to manage globalisation was also proposed as possible, but coupled with an awareness and caution that this is a long, ongoing process since existing educational-social structures are impossible to outright dismantle. Good local research was advocated to underly education's management of an increasingly technology-rich, complex, interlinked and shrinking world. 'Integrity-based learning strategies' were outlined to provide locally-constituted and socially-supportive learning contexts, foster talent among students of African descent, and bolster their resiliance to 'toxic' learning environments. The need for awareness of the collateral social damage resulting from alienating and misdirected educational practice, what might be called 'institutional disability', was highlighted, as was the special consideration required of the subliminal messages embedded in the words and language we use to discuss these issues. A strongly American conceptualisation of the African Diaspora and a push for increased black empowerment along with other specific political concerns and agendas was threaded throughout the presentations. For me, besides being an eye-opener to some of the major issues facing American and Bermudian educators (which were very much conflated) the conference (in both content and as a discursive mechanism itself) unlocked my curiousity to better understand the meanings of the African Diaspora concept for Bermudians, especially black Bermudians, and how it connects and reflects globalisation and broader Bermuda societal issues, as well as the local politics and meanings of heritage.