Awakening the African Personality to re-imagine Possibilities in Pursuit of Inclusive Black Futurities


Verne Hippolyte-Smith, OISE, University of Toronto; Amal Madibbo, University of Toronto

In thinking of the operations of systemic anti-Black racism across multigenerational processes of inclusion for the Black diaspora in Canada, Black youth in Canada display resistance to foster their inclusion. Alienated and uprooted from their ontological and historical roots, the self-conceptualization of the Black subject is constructed within an anti-Black, epidermalized and self-negating consciousness (Fanon, 2001). While some Black children and youth internalize this false Black identity inscribed to their existence, which can be manifested through negative self-actualizations, others find ways to resist and subvert the epistemic violence (Hill Collins, 2019) which has constructed the white myth of Blackness, by staying connected to their roots and cultural knowledge. In this paper, we explore how second-generation Black Canadian youth in Ontario resist succumbing to the self-fulfilling prophecy spawned by dispossession, alienation, and internalization to forge Black futurities. We interrogate the youth’s understanding of and engagement with Black indigenous knowledge, families, and communities. Our positionality as two academic Black women passionate about Black thought led us to draw on Negritude as an onto-epistemological theoretical and practical framework, and utilize a qualitative research method (Lindlof and Taylor, 2018) consisting of semi-structured interviews with Black youth, and content analysis to interpret the data. Negritude offers a deeper critical consciousness of Black ontology and identity that transcends corporeal and visual realms of understanding the Black self, allowing us to subvert the corollary of colonialism and white supremacy (Césaire, 1939). Negritude is proposed as a humanism (Senghor, 2004) which delineates a pan-psyche that converges the political with the emotional which is saliently fecund in spirituality, cosmology, art, language and the word (Damas, 1974). Semi-structured interviews facilitate access to the subjectivities and racial and cultural meanings Black youth express, and content analysis enables identifying and linking themes related to their lived experiences of Black youth and the experiential knowledge of their families and communities. While all the participants have fashioned methods of resistance centered in family connectivity, the passing on of strong values associated with Black culture in shaping identity and sense of belonging, and transglobal relationships with their indigenous roots, they lack a deeper understanding and grounding of “enfleshed” African ontology and Afrocentric and Black indigenous epistemes and praxis, which can strengthen their sense of belonging and help to better strategize to insure an inclusive and equitable anti-racist future. Thus, there is an urgent need for radical action specific to the Black personality and embodiment. By engaging Negritude, young people can connect to a deeper ontological understanding of Blackness as an anti-thesis to the Eurocentric consciousness, therefore unearthing and awakening an unapologetic boldness or “Black Swagger,” which is a prerequisite for audacious Black imaginaries and futurity. That will allow to cultivate and amplify more self-assured Black voices and propel resilience into meaningful transformation. Therefore, to hold the potential for deeper impact on disrupting and assure the continued forging and development of inclusive Black futurities it is imperative to truly ground oneself into their Black ancestral indigenous knowledge.

This paper will be presented at the following session: