International Relations
Leatrice Bagley, Sevaughn Banks, Ph.D., and Stella Browne
The committee is charged with the responsibility of establishing ties and relations with Black people throughout the world and recommending to the National Steering Committee such actions, programs, and steps it deems necessary to bring about a stronger bond of cooperation and unity for international resistance against the total repressive designs of racism as it affects self-determination and liberation for all colonized Black people through the world.
The goal of the committee is to bring about a stronger bond and unity by providing an understanding of how shared and similar experiences of struggles for survival created diversity and cultural variations among people of African ancestry. The committee will work to affirm the uniqueness of our related cultures without using a judgmental yardstick while stressing the need for culturally sensitivity across historical and geographical borders.
In establishing meaningful and productive international relationships, the committee will promote the acquisition of knowledge related to how our people were dispersed throughout the diaspora, their history, and their struggles to survive.
Based on the commonality of Black skin colorings and features, the non-Black community as well as some “mis-educated” Blacks, perceive people of African ancestry as one homogeneous group of Black people. The committee will focus Instead on the reality and existence of extraordinary cultural diversity and variation. A diversity and variation that was created by the forced transplanting and dispersal of Africans who were from diverse family, tribal, clan, ethnic, cultural, and political structures.
Because of time, place, and environment, transplanted Africans created new cultural variations. By adopting, adapting, and combining some culture of the oppressor, and that of other Africans, we learned to survive. Historically, and despite having not living life the same in all places or at all times, people of African ancestry throughout the diaspora continue to share a common legacy: similar experiences of struggle and survival while seeking self determination, self sufficiency, and liberation.
The committee, having three, new chairs, will use a different approach to establishing ties and relationships with Black people throughout the African Diaspora. The plan will involve presenting a series of in depth studies and conference workshops presentations, beginning with the 2008 National Conference. The presentations will focus on African history, and culture and be presented by persons from throughout the Diaspora, and within NABSW.
“A people without knowledge of their history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots."
-- Marcus Mosiah Garvey