Hindsight

Have African relations with the wider (often whiter) world always been marked by subordination? Sebabatso C. Manoeli-Lesame and Christopher L. Brown uncover unexpected episodes in Africa’s past, prior to colonialism, in which African elites related with the world as cosmopolitans. They argue that histories of un-colonial power relations have the potential to unlock new decolonial ways of imagining the future. Read more.

The end of apartheid in South Africa was hailed as a closing of the chapter on the country’s troubled past. What unfolded instead has proven more complicated, prompting storyteller Sydelle Willow Smith to create a somewhat autoethnographic photographic series examining post-apartheid whiteness. Reflecting on the series, art historian Leslie M. Wilson posits that Smith’s work meaningfully poses more questions than it answers. Read more.

In this digital collage about grief, Malawian photographer, kyle malanda, explores social media as an archive of life. See more here.

Nigerian photographer Ismail Odetola draws attention to the richness and complexity of Ewe culture in west Africa. See more here.

Using spray paint on pine, South African sculptor Sandile Radebe puts Zulu identity in conversation with changing times. See more here.

Miguel Valerio, our guest in this episode of Race Beyond Borders, invites us into a journey across Latin America – beginning in the Dominican Republic, all the way to Mexico. He reflects on his experiences of being read and raced differently across the region and becoming aware of who he is as a product of history. An historian of Black royalty in Mexico in the 1600s, Valerio draws connections between historical expressions of Black resistance, sovereignty and joy, and the formation of Mexico. In the episode, he discusses both this rich history and the ongoing struggles for Black political inclusion across Latin America. Listen here.

Pastel houses, pink sands and azure waters. In this episode of Race Beyond Borders, we journey to Bermuda, an island country that is also a British overseas territory. Our guest, award-winning historian Quito Swan, also takes us beyond his mid-Atlantic island home — to West Papua in Indonesia and to the global Black diaspora. Swan reflects on how the Black Pacific is a generative space for Black internationalism. In fact, he shows that an exploration of race and racialisation in Oceania both challenges established notions of what it means to be Black and enrich our understanding of the multiplicity inherent in the Black experience across the world. Listen here.