The year was 1848 and European leaders from all over came together for this conference. The room was buzzing with anticipation as they sat around a horseshoe-shaped table with a large map of Africa hung on the wall.
It was the Berlin Conference – which began “the scramble for Africa” – and not a Black person was in sight. Colonizers from Europe, America and the Ottoman Empire gathered to set rules about dividing and conquering the African continent.
With no critical thinking, respect, or consideration of the people already existing in the places they wanted to claim a stake in, they hunched over a map with rules and pens, creating unseen borders.
These pseudo-colonial borders remain today, and they’ve caused a world of problems, including the Rwandan Genocide and other conflicts between communities that once supported each other. And it didn’t just happen in Africa.
There’s a decades-long history of redlining in the US, a systemically racist practice whose borders keep Black people out of specific neighborhoods and fatally impact our health.
We must control our land. It’s more than buying a house. It’s buying and supporting our neighborhoods. It’s redefining the borders and creating a new map without white influence.
No matter where we are in the diaspora, liberation means we must determine our futures in every way.