Race Beyond Borders is a podcast by AFRE that looks at race from different angles, within South Africa, the United States, and beyond—to the wider world. At a time of growing attention to the present-day realities and legacies of anti-Black racism, Race Beyond Borders seeks to “trouble” conventional understandings of race and Blackness, and open new lines of inquiry beyond geographical divides.
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Season 3
This season, Race Beyond Borders explores the ideas, people, and places shaping the future of Blackness. Each episode examines different forces pushing and pulling Blackness in various directions. Throughout the season, we will draw on the voices of young people, creatives, academics and other thinkers to harvest insights about a range of possible futures.
These moving conversations explore identity and belonging, self-making and remaking, family, politics, and more. We’re excited to bring them to you each month starting in April 2023. Learn more at afremoya.com/podcast.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Race Beyond Borders on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
The latest episode:
Season 2
In Season Two, Race Beyond Borders explores race outside South Africa and the United States, in search of underexplored experiences of Blackness across the globe. Each episode spotlights a thinker-doer-creative who reflects on the political and the personal dimensions of Black life in their country. In charting the global African diaspora – from Italy to Iran, Martinique to Colombia, we will raise new questions about what it means to be Black beyond conventional notions.
Poetry is a new feature of the podcast. Using the format of Beverly Tatum’s “I Am From” exercise, each guest offers us a poetic window into their lived experience, conveying the sounds, sights, and sayings they associate with home. In it, there is a palpable intimacy and invitation to travel to the places that shaped them.
Visit afremoya.com/podcast to explore the second season of Race Beyond Borders.
Season 1
In our very first season, Race Beyond Borders will explore race across different domain of knowledge – from the perspectives of an underground womanist hip-hop artist from the East Coast, to an exploration of police brutality in South Africa and the United States, to the science and biomechanics of Black hair, all the way to uncovering philosophy’s relationship to race, and so much more. Join us.
Philosophy and the Dignity of Black Life
Episode 7 | With Mutinda Nzioki
This week, Dr Mutinda Nzioki and I discuss the politics and potential of philosophy in Africa. We begin the conversation by reflecting on the centring of western philosophical thought and the marginalisation of the non-European “other” in the discipline.
Queues Define the Working Class
Episode 6 | With Mosa Phadi
In this episode, Mosa Phadi and I sit to discuss structural racism in South Africa. Despite twenty-six years of democracy, it is impossible to understand inequality in the country without understanding racial capitalism. In our conversation, Mosa highlights that South Africa is “built on cheap labour” – a reality that 1994 did not disrupt.
How do we attack racialised inequality?
Episode 5 | With Stephen Menendian
In this episode, I reflect on this summer’s uprising against systemic racism in the US with Stephen Menendian, Assistant Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) at the University of California, Berkeley. One of the key outcomes of the groundswell of civic action sparked by the senseless killing of George Floyd has been a public conversation on race that no longer frames racism as
just a by-product of deranged or extremely prejudiced individuals, but rather there’s a sense that racism is in kind of the fabric of our societies.
Access ain’t Inclusion
Episode 4 | with Anthony Jack
“What’s the point of opening doors to a more diverse group of students if they’re going to continue to have a separate and unequal experience on campus? That’s the fundamental question that universities do not typically ask themselves.”
This week, Race Beyond Borders hosts award-winning sociologist Anthony A. Jack for a conversation about racial and class equity in institutions for higher learning. Specifically, we focus on what Anthony calls the “paradox of the privileged poor.”
Science, Systemic Racism, and the Spectrum of Black Hair
Episode 3 | With Malebogo Ngoepe
This week, Cape Town-based biomechanical engineer, Malebogo Ngoepe and I meet to discuss an underexplored prism through which racism is examined: science. We begin our conversation by discussing the disproportionate Covid-19 infections and mortality among Black people and communities of colour more broadly, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Of Police Brutality and Political Theatre
Episode 2 | with jonny steinberg
"To be poor and black and a young man in South Africa, and to live in a certain geography, whether it be an informal settlement or a formal township, is to experience a very brutal, very rough form of policing." Jonny Steinberg on Policing in South Africa
In this episode, Yale University professor Jonny Steinberg and I discuss what he calls his “long-standing on-and-off interest in policing, which stems initially from spending many hundreds of hours in patrol cars with police in the early and late 2000s.”
What is the African in African-American?
Episode 1 | with akua naru
In the inaugural episode of Race Beyond Borders, I sat down with hip-hop artist, Akua Naru, who is really a theorist of the Black experience. She is known for her sagacious and prophetic lyrics as well as her classic jazz-hop sound. Paying homage to James Baldwin, Alice Walker and Tricia Rose, her music is steeped in the rich intellectual ancestry of poets, writers and thinkers who have shaped and coloured the Black American experience. Through her expansive repertoire, her music invites us to see the world through her eyes.
Trailer
In our very first season, Race Beyond Borders will explore race across different domain of knowledge – from the perspectives of an underground womanist hip-hop artist from the East Coast, to an exploration of police brutality in South Africa and the United States, to the science and biomechanics of Black hair, all the way to uncovering philosophy’s relationship to race, and so much more. Join us.
