Race Beyond Borders is a weekly show that looks at race from different angles, within and beyond South Africa, the United States, to the wider world. It exists to raise new questions about race in general and Blackness in particular, beyond geographical divides.
Race Beyond Borders is borne out to the recognition that the current global conversation on race tends to focus on the experiences of Blackness in the global north. As a result, many conversations about race unintentionally marginalise Black people who live in the global south, and in so doing, reproduce the power imbalances bemoaned in national contexts.
Because the Black experience is global and stretches beyond the Atlantic, the global conversation on race, racism and Blackness can only benefit from an expanded frame. That’s why, through Race Beyond Borders, AFRE seeks to open the aperture by actively reclaiming Blackness across diversity, to give voice to the global experiences of Blackness.
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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreIn 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
Read Morejust 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.
“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.”
Read MoreThis 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.
Read More"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.”
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreRace Beyond Borders is a weekly show that looks at race from different angles, within and beyond South Africa, the United States, to the wider world. It exists to raise new questions about race in general and Blackness in particular, beyond geographical divides.
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