feature: my multimedia dinner series to explore blackness in america

“Nothing of what we design is politically innocent. Architecture, furniture, clothing, art, books, but also laws and policies constitute artifacts that are important to critically question at a political level.” – Leopold Lambert
I’m a cook and restaurants are a political space— spaces where broader social dynamics play out yet we are invited to ignore them “at least for the evening.”

the dinners are being held in spaces specifically contrived as a “black spaces”— places where the perspective of black folks is priority. the food, traditional nigerian food, is another important element of the dinner because it also prioritizes non-american, specifically african cuisine, over the dominant eurocentric flavor profiles.

By Tunde Wey, AFROPUNK Contributor *

i journaled my preparation leading up to these dinners and i want to share them with you.

it was a self-purification process of sorts, getting my mind right and ready to talk about these things. i am still reading and re-educating myself about blackness in america.

title:
queens + kings

voices:
dr. rashida govan.
rashida is an all-around dope lady. she’s dimple-cheeked and tall, with wonderful locks, sometimes plaited intricately. you may find a dash of ankara in her clothing ensemble. she’s a scholar, doing research work around education. she also runs a non profit, project butterfly, where she works with young african american girls.

location:
fattoush cafe and restaurant. new orleans, la.

introduction:
as a nigerian, who was born and raised there, i have been uncomfortable with the afrocentric narrative that depicts african americans as descendants of kings and queens. rashida offers her perspective.

liner notes:

• the narrative is problematic. it’s a misleading because it isn’t represented in reality— the reality of africa. this narrative romanticizes africa and presents it as some mythical place. it perpetuates the fetishization of the people and the place.
  
  

• however regarding africans as kings and queens is an important and necessary counter narrative devised to push back against the popular stereotypes of black folks as violent, hyper sexual and promiscuous.
  
  

• this narrative is not allegorical. it is a literal reference to the authority and power that is possible to black folks, even in their current circumstances. the power possessed by other black people on the continent. africa after all is continent replete with black lawyers, physicians, teachers, inventors, jurists, presidents— kings and queens.
  
  

• there’s a systematic miseducation of black folks, that defines blackness through the lens of white supremacy. this lens creates a limited view of the possibilities and esteem of black folks.
  
  

• africans who are turned off by the afrocentric orientation of some black folks have to realize that as africans they have been indoctrinated into a system that is for the most part self affirming. this indoctrination happens through folklores and stories in which africans are the protagonists. this affirmation is also visibly evident in the systems and power structures africans live in, which are populated by people who look like them. this is a visually powerful reinforcement of the self worth of africans, despite whatever hardships they endure.
  african americans do not necessarily these affirmative cultural reinforcements, at least not in the abundance africans do.
  
  

• the white supremacist version of african american history is a truncated one that suggests a beginning at the transatlantic slave trade. we need counter narratives to offer rebuttals to this.

* http://www.fromlagos.com/
https://www.instagram.com/from_lagos/

https://soundcloud.com/from_lagos