Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T15:31:19.101Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Study Abroad in Africa: Learning about Race, Racism, and the Racial Legacy of America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Derise E. Tolliver
Get access

Extract

In 1998, the American Association of Colleges and Universities raised the question of what higher education could do to prepare graduates to address “the legacies of racism and the opportunities for racial reconciliation in the United States.” One of the most powerful and pedagogically rich approaches to facilitate learning about race, racial identity, and the impact of racism in America today is study abroad in Africa. With a history that includes dynasties and empires; the capture and enslavement of Africans and the transatlantic slave trade; and the structures of colonialism, neocolonialism, and apartheid (which have often been conceptualized as parallel to the institutionalized racism of America), the continent of Africa can be a wonderful classroom for this type of learning. This is particularly the case when the location of study is West Africa, by most accounts where the majority of people of African descent living in the United States have ancestral ties. Visits to and interactions around the monuments to and symbols and physical remnants of the complex historical relationships between Europeans and Africans can be a catalyst for stimulating challenging but ultimately rewarding discussions and growth with regard to issues of race and racism.

Type
Making Programs Work
Information
African Issues , Volume 28 , Issue 1-2 , 2000 , pp. 112 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2000 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. M. Maisto, “Campus-Community Dialogues and Partnerships: Lessons from Racial Legacies and Learning,” Diversity Digest, Spring 1999: 2.

2. Tolliver, D.E. and Watts, R.J., “Final Report of Culture, Spirituality, and Psychology: Studies in Ghana” (unpublished paper submitted to Foreign Study Program, DePaul University, Chicago, Ill., 1996)Google Scholar.

3. Day-Vines, N., Barker, J., and Exum, H., “Impact of Diasporic Travel on Ethnic Identity Development of African American College Students,” College Student Journal 37, no. 3 (1998): 463-71Google Scholar; Gmelch, G. and Gmelch, S.B., “An Ethnographic Field School: What Students Do and Learn,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 30, no. 2, (1999): 220-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Rodriguez, B., “Creating Inclusive and Multicultural Communities: Working through Assumptions of Culture, Power, Diversity, and Equity,” in Cultural Diversity: Curriculum, Classroom, and Climate Issues, ed. Adams, J.Q. and Welsch, J.R. (Macomb, Ill.: Western Illinois University, 1999)Google Scholar.

5. C. Gurley, personal communication, December, 15, 1999.

6. Helms, J., “The Conceptualization of Racial Identity and Other ‘Racial’ Constructs,” in Human Diversity, ed. Trickett, E.J., Watts, R.J., and Birman, D. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994), 285–311 Google Scholar.

7. Rodriguez; Helms; Pinderhughes, E., Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power (New York, US: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Katz, J., White Awareness: Handbook for Antiracism Training (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

8. C.P. Alderfer, “A White Man’s Perspective on the Unconscious Processes within Black-White Relations in the United States,” in Trickett, Watts, and Birman, 210-29.

9. Rodriguez; Maisto; Alderfer; J. Jones, “Our Similarities Are Different: Toward a Psychology of Affirmative Diversity,” in Trickett, Watts, and Birman, 27–45; Katz; Terry, R.W., For Whites Only (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1975)Google Scholar.

10. Pinderhughes.

11. K. Anyidoho, “Slave Castle, African Historical Mindscape and Literary Imagination,“ 1999, http://www.pa-nafest.net/kanyidoho.html (7/19/99).

12. Mclntosh, P., White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies (Wellesley, Mass.: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, 1988)Google Scholar.

13. Rowe, D.T. and Kambon, M., “A Curriculum in African Psychology,” Psych Discourse 30, no. 9 (1999): 7–10 Google Scholar; Browder, A.T., Survival Strategies for Africans in America (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Karmie Guidance, 1996)Google Scholar.

14. Katz.

15. Zona, G., The House of the Heart Is Never Full and Other Proverbs of Africa (New York, US: Simon and Schuster, 1993)Google Scholar.

16. “Center for Living Democracy Issues Report on Bridging the Racial Divide,” Diversity Digest, Winter 1998, http://www.inform.umd.edu/digest/W98/bridging.html (1/11/00).