Black History Month is a prime time to celebrate black individuals who’ve played prominent roles in American history, including black history not contained within the United States.

Black history transcends boundaries and encompasses people who fought for equal rights in the face of fear across the globe. People like Julia de Burgos, an Afro-Caribbean writer whose feminist ideals served as a precursor of her American contemporaries, and Zulia Mena, who became the first Colombian congressional representative to advocate for the rights of Afro-Colombians in 1994.

Non-black communities should appreciate the names that have amplified the voices of people of color around the world to shed light on issues that aren’t always discussed in the U.S. The more we challenge ourselves to learn about outside movements, the more our understanding of human rights expands.

“We have to think about brown and black people in a regional and global context,” said Kwame Dixon, an assistant professor in the African American Studies department at Syracuse University.

Dixon, who has lived in countries like Brazil, Ecuador and Nicaragua, teaches courses about Pan-Africanism at SU, and is preparing to publish a book called “Comparative Racial Politics of Latin America.”

Dixon said studying black politics in different countries has broadened his understanding of human rights with a globalized and diversified perspective. If communities of color, like Dixon, study prominent black individuals from across the globe, we’ll find that the definition of human rights expands beyond U.S. borders. Dixon said accounting for diverging histories and experiences is crucial to understanding the development of human rights, especially those that are intersectional.

“There’s a lot of human rights discourse about Afro people in the United States,” Dixon said, “but very little discourse about black Latin Americans.”

By taking the global and making it personal, Dixon reflected on the attitude of discourse at SU, saying that although there may be pockets of discussion around campus, the campus community could do better.

“We have some of the same circular, redundant conversations, over and over,” Dixon said. “… I wish we had a reset button so that we can think of new conceptual ways about what the university talks about.”

As college students in 2018, we should know higher education is about bringing new conversations and perspectives to the table as a means of cultivating more well-rounded, culturally aware thinkers. With organizations such as the NAACP in the city of Syracuse, or the CNY Solidarity Coalition, we can move in that direction.

Lianza Reyes is a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at lireyes@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @ReyesLianza.

Published on February 18, 2018 at 8:41 pm