Dr. LaRose T. Parris, originally from Jamaica in the West Indies, and shaped by the diverse cultural landscape of New York City, is Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx. Holding degrees from New York University (NYU), City College of New York, and the CUNY Graduate Center, Parris is a well-respected scholar in Africana and Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, African Diaspora Studies, Black Radical Studies, and Black Feminist Thought. Dr. Parris was honored with the 2016 Nicolás Guillén Prize for Outstanding Book in Philosophical Literature for her groundbreaking work, Being Apart: Theoretical and Existential Resistance in Africana Literature.
I met with Dr. Parris on November 29th, 2023 through Zoom to discuss more about her field(s) of scholarly interest and perspectives on Pan-Africanism.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You use the ideal of “Pan-Africanism” in your teaching and writing. Please share what the term “Pan-Africanism” means to you. How do you define and interpret its core principles and objectives?
First and foremost, my exposure to Pan-Africanism came through my parents, who were Garveyites. It was in the late sixties when we immigrated as a family from Jamaica to the United States. Since I was homeschooled in addition to attending public school, from a young age they were teaching us about our ancestors. Not just the ancestors in the Caribbean or the United States, but also Africa. So, from a very young age, my understanding of the African diaspora included continental Africa—the motherland. We were raised to understand our belongingness to a race of people who were scattered through the mechanisms of the European slave trade, but also from the African continent.
When we moved to the US, we first lived in the Bronx in a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood. This allowed me to understand my belongingness in that space as part of my African ancestry. That changed significantly when we moved to Long Island, to a community of Black people who were ashamed of their African ancestry. So much so that they embraced the term “Black” and rejected the term “African American” because they did not identify with Africa. I had always understood that my core African identity tied to Blackness was intrinsic, not optional. This was not a concept I had to come into consciousness with, I just understood this from a very young age.
Growing up during the civil rights and Black power movements, I saw the world changing as a young girl and felt a sense of possibility and power among our people. Since my parents were politically active, from an early age I was able to see people like Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez—significant figures in the Black Liberation and Black Arts Movement—discussing Pan-African unity and the global Black condition. So, for me, this idea of Pan-Africanism was always political, but also highly personal, familial, and cultural.
So, how that translated into my scholarship was that I was looking, for example, in my first book, particularly at common themes that entrenched anti-African racism—what I call it in the book. It delved into how this anti-African antipathy became ingrained not only in the consciousness of African people but also in European people, Western ideologies, and philosophers.
When I reflect on Pan-Africanism in my work, I think about it in terms of the intellectual traditions that laid the foundation for Afrocentrism, Afrocentric history, and the philosophy of the Black radical tradition. This involves framing enslaved Africans as agents of history who initiated slave revolts, just as scholars like C. L. R. James and W. E. B. Du Bois emphasized.
Enslaved Africans weren’t passive victims; they organized as an active group of workers. Events like Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Gabriel Prosser’s plan, Denmark Vesey’s plot, and Harriet Tubman’s indefatigable leadership and rescue missions contributed to the buildup of tensions that erupted in the Civil War. So, when I look at Pan-Africanism, I recognize regional variations among the African motherland and the diaspora, especially in the Americas. But I really look at Pan-Africanism as actually being birthed through Black resistance during slavery.
Pan-Africanism is fundamentally about resistance. Why else would figures like Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois in the United States and Marcus Garvey from Jamaica, along with individuals from the African continent, unite except to come up with an effective program for toppling white supremacy, European colonialism, and Black subjugation? Pan-Africanism is a directly political program of resistance, involving both ideological and material facets. On the ground, it means organizing and forming coalitions.
There’s also the ideological work of deprogramming our people from believing that they should always have a subordinate position, you know, in relation to Europeans and white people. So, this is how I teach it. I break down how Pan-Africanism has been historically used to empower, energize, and awaken our people.
When I say “awaken,” I think of David Walker, because in his appeal, he urges to “awaken, my afflicted brethren.” So much of slavery was not just physical bondage but also mental enslavement, as you know. It took great vision for our ancestors, an internal knowing, that they were inherently free and deserved to be so. You can’t break bonds unless you know you have the right to break those bonds, which means you know you have the right to be free and that you are free to break those bonds.
Which authors of revolutionary Pan-Africanism do you consider most essential to read, and what sets their contributions apart in advancing the discourse on diasporic unity?
With Pan-African awareness ingrained in me from a young age, I have had certain questions, not just during my time in graduate school. I had been pondering them before graduate school; they just got fine-tuned while I was writing my dissertation. Given that my parents were educators, and my father a professor, these questions were always part of my upbringing. While he chose not to not to further his academic career due to his own issues and conflicting professional goals, he had a study devoted to Africana Thought when I was growing up—a fact I didn’t fully grasp as a young child. On these shelves, I grew up surrounded by the very books that became the focal point of my first monograph: C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction and The Souls of Black Folk, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. I still have his collection of Frederick Douglass’s works, edited by Philip Foner. That collection played a significant role in my first book, where I focused on Douglass’s speech, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered.”
In an ideal world where the Africana diaspora is genuinely and dynamically united, how does that unity look economically, linguistically, in terms of nationality, politically, and in its social aspects? How do you imagine the empowerment and flourishing of a united diasporic community or communities?
Think about it. If we were truly unified as Black people of African descent globally, we would be unstoppable. Granted, there would need to be a redistribution of resources to provide the capital and wealth necessary to create and disseminate resources for all of us. But if we were unified and had a serious Pan-African program in place, believing in the efficacy of our unity and our strength without the aid of the former colonizer (the current oppressor), we would be powerful.
Consider our global numbers. This is what Pan-Africanists of the early twentieth century, late nineteenth century, and mid-twentieth century always emphasized. As Bob Marley said, “We’re more than sand on the seashore. We’re more than numbers.” He’s telling our people to wake up and live, to embrace the possibility of our unity. We are more than the sand on the seashores, more than numbers. If people truly believed this and had more faith in our capacity to create, innovate, and liberate, there’s nothing we couldn’t do. That’s the perspective I’ve always had about Pan-Africanism.
Given both historical challenges and contemporary complexities, do you believe it is possible to envision a world where the Africana diaspora is truly united? What factors do you think contribute to or hinder this unity?
There’s a lot of deprogramming that has to take place. A significant part of this involves addressing the influence of social media and neoliberal thinking, which suggests that having more money will solve everything. Does it really? More Black people have money now than they did a century ago, and have the problems been solved? No. So, this whole neoliberal fantasy that having more millionaires like Oprah, Jay-Z, and Beyoncé will fix everything? Not really. What’s changed for regular Black people? Not much.
I believe the goals of Pan-Africanism are threefold. Psychologically, to deprogram our people from the entrenched belief that they must be attached to whiteness to excel, exceed, and actualize. On the societal level, the goal is for us to form crucial political connections and linkages within our home countries and expand them globally throughout the diaspora. Lastly, politically and globally, once we have these expanded social networks, the aim is to work on changing and breaking the power dynamic of Western or Global North dominance and Global South subordination.
Reflecting on our many current challenges, what role do you envision for Black radicalism in achieving equality and liberation? Is radicalism a necessary force? If so, how would you define and illustrate instances of productive radicalism within the context of contemporary struggles?
Radicalism is absolutely needed in a Pan-African program. Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Marcus Garvey, all of these thinkers (mostly men, but I cite them for their resolute political agendas and analyses of the Global North’s inherently colonialist and capitalist hegemonic power structure) were very instrumental. Fanon, for example, was certainly a Pan-Africanist to an extent. In The Wretched of the Earth, he argues that national consciousness for liberated people has to be different from the former colonial regime’s priorities. He indicted the national bourgeoisie for perpetuating colonial programs that continued to subjugate the working classes. For Fanon, Pan-Africanism had to be classless, lacking class elitism, and focused on a truly progressive program post-liberation.
For the others, they shared a similar concern about the former colonial bourgeoisie maintaining elitism and classism, preventing true unity. When discussing Black radicalism, they adhered to a Marxist view but adapted it to address and accommodate anti-black racism. And why does it have to be accommodated? Because Marxism is Eurocentric, focusing on the European proletariat and not examining white supremacist or racist ideology. A Black radical perspective combines elements of an anti-black racist analysis and an Afrocentric view of a classless society, incorporating indigenous African thinking about classism and elitism.
So, a Black radical perspective is absolutely necessary for Pan-Africanism. These thinkers note how Marxism changed the global world order, but also acknowledged that African resistance played a significant role in transforming the power dynamics between the Global South and North, as well as creating the necessary conditions for BIPOC political agitation and enfranchisement in the United States and Europe. You cannot ignore how Black people, enslaved and colonized, have resisted oppression for the past six centuries.
Is there room for productive coexistence between Pan-Africanism and Afropessimism in addressing the challenges faced by the African diaspora? How can we find a balance between the committed vision of unity promoted by Pan-Africanism and the harsh realities revealed by Afropessimism?
While Afropessimism provides some very instructive points about the perpetuation of anti-black racism, it’s very defeatist. It’s very pessimistic. It has no place in revolution. If you are pessimistic, you’re resigned to giving up. The overt message within Afropessimism is “there’s nothing we can do.” All we can do is write and theorize from this space of victimhood and victimization. And Afropessimism is ahistorical. Our people have only been able to progress by realism, by struggle. Not by embracing this theoretical victimhood that ad nauseam goes on and on about how permanent anti-black racism is. If you truly believe that—considering how some of them, like Wilderson, had a background in revolutionary struggle—why did you engage in that if you believe that there’s no point? If you’ve truly given up? So, no, I don’t think Afropessimism has any place in true Pan-African Revolutionary thought.
The only place it has is as a counterpoint. It cannot really contribute to a discussion because its aim is to solely theorize about the permanence of anti-black racism. If that’s all you’re going to do, say how permanent it is, how horrible it is, and come up with this whole lexicon of fancy terms for how horrible it is, what is the point of that? Think about why Afropessimism has gained so much currency in the academy. Why? Because people, white people in power, people who forward the hegemonic project of Black subjugation, love to see Black people victimized. They love to see Black people whining and complaining. That’s what they love. They love to see us as the victim. They don’t want to see us as the historical agents of change. They don’t want to see us as revolutionaries who could literally topple the world order and demand a new system of relations. They don’t want to see that. That’s too threatening. It’s far too threatening for them to think of us as literally agents of change, agents of transformation, agents of justice. If you continue promulgating this increasingly influential lexicon of terms for our condition of oppression, purveyors of neoliberalism love that. They laugh and say, “Oh, these Black theorists aren’t a real threat because they’re only theorizing, not organizing… How wonderful!”
So, no, I don’t think Afropessimism has much place. Like I said, the only place it has is as a counterpoint. As a what not to do if you are truly about revolution, struggle, social transformation, and justice. What they’re doing is indoctrinating a whole new generation into believing that resistance is an exercise in futility. This indoctrination is both crippling and disastrous given that BIPOC and Global South peoples are facing an increasingly anti-human and authoritarian world order that threatens the lives of all people, but especially those who are committed to creating a more human world.
Foluke Akinkunmi
Foluke Akinkunmi is a Junior at the University of Connecticut majoring in Political Science with minors in Africana Studies and Human Rights. She is heavily involved with creating a sense of Black community on campus as she is a student worker at the African American Cultural Center as well as one of the student leaders of the Black Female learning community on campus BSOUL. She is also currently acting as the president of the UConn branch of NAACP. Her interests lie heavily in the concept of Pan-Africanism and global Black unity.
LaRose T. Parris
LaRose T. Parris is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her accolades include the 2016 Nicolás Guillén Prize for Outstanding Book in Philosophical Literature by the Caribbean Philosophical Association for her book Being Apart: Theoretical and Existential Resistance in Africana Literature. “To Be Young, Gifted and Woman,” Parris’s recent piece on Lorraine Hansberry and Rosa Luxemburg, appears in Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg. She is co-editor of the Living Existentialism book series, published by Rowman & Littlefield Press in London, UK.
