Banton Discusses Strengths of African and African-American Studies Program

Hardin Young: Welcome to Short Talks from the Hill, a podcast from the University of Arkansas. My name is Hardin Young and I’m a writer here at the university. Today I’d like to welcome Caree Banton, associate professor of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History. Banton was recently named director of African and African American Studies, and she’s the author of the book, “More Auspicious Shores”: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of the African Republic, 1865 – 1912.” Caree, welcome to Short Talks…

Caree Banton: Thank you so much.

HY: So, first things first. Congratulations on being named director of African and African American Studies. So at this point, what would you say is your top priority as director of this program?

CB: The top priority for us right now, given that we are in these kind of, you know, grave times, is to use other means of mobilizing, you know, our community who are actually suffering and under duress right now. And to use African and African-American Studies as a program that is deeply interested in the questions that affect this particular community, questions about race, questions about health disparities, questions, you know, surrounding racial inequities altogether, to really probe those questions from multiple perspectives, from sociological perspectives, from a historical lens, from a scientific lens, and to make that visible for other, broader views, whether it be in the university commit community or otherwise.

HY: Sure, so let me build that answer. What do you think the advantages are being an African African-American Studies major or minor?

CB: Well, that’s a great question. The advantages of being an African and African-American studies major or minor is that, firstly, it gives you this very critical interdisciplinary perspective, right? So it’s not bound by the discipline. If you’re able to show that you can, you know, gather sources and ideas from a literary perspective, a historical perspective, a sociological perspective, an economical perspective, a legal perspective – that’s what we do here in African and African-American studies. And if you’re able to contextualize and synthesize those kinds of ideas, it’s something that will stay with you – it’s a transferable skill wherever you go, whatever major you move on to, whatever job you move on to, if you go on to graduate school, it is a skill that will serve you well. So that is number one. Number two, it will make you very conversant in, you know, the nature of our being in this highly globalized society. What is going on in our world on multiple levels. So, whether it’s conversation relating to African-Americans and indigenous communities or African-Americans and black-and-white relations, or Afro-Latinos, or whatever the case might be, it gives you a level of nuance and complexity that you might not otherwise find or be able to deal with, you know, if you’re engaging at surface level discussion. So, you will certainly be able to engage at that level once you take on an African and African-American studies major and minor, right? So, it makes you conversant in those kind of topical issues. And, of course, given that we’re at a crossroads now, where we are, you know, we’re in this globalized environment where cultural competency is at a premium, you know, so adding that to your CV and adding that to your curriculum as a human obviously is very important.

HY: Yeah, you make a convincing case. So let’s talk a little bit about your book, More Auspicious Shores. Can you give us a brief overview?

CB: Great. Yeah, so More Auspicious Shores: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of the African Republic is a kind of micro history set in motion from the Caribbean across the Atlantic into Liberia in 1865, where I trace the migration of 348 Barbadians from a post-emancipation society where they were highly disgruntled with a freedom that was not of their own making and of their own design, and they leave and they go to Liberia, a colony that was established by the American Colonization Society for African-Americans. And the question that kind of drove this research is “Why would British colonial Barbadians be interested in going to an American colony when they could have gone next door to Sierra Leone, which is the British colony next door?” Right? And what they essentially said is that they were interested in going to help African-Americans to build up a black republic because they believed a nationality would be important for gaining respectability for the race. And so I look at how they experience freedom, citizenship and nationhood and blackness in Barbados and then, once they cross the Atlantic into what essentially had become the black republic in Africa, how do they experience freedom, citizenship and nationhood and blackness? And who gets to define blackness in this black republic? Is it the African-Americans? Is it these West Indians? Is it the many different ethnic groups of Africans or the African re-captives who were liberated from slave ships and put in Liberia? So, that essentially is what I deal with in my book.

HY: OK, so let me ask you this. What was it about this particular group of people going to Liberia? Why did you choose to focus on them?

CB: Well, I could tell you the long circular story of, you know, going to grad school and your advisor, you know, all that jazz, but essentially the long and short of it is that Liberia has been, of course…has a very extensive historiography. There’s been several books written about African-Americans from Virginia, the earliest groups to go to Liberia, African-Americans from North Carolina, African-Americans from Baltimore, from right here in Arkansas, and to Liberia, right? And so when I came across that people from the Caribbean were going to an American colony, it really peaked my interest, because, literally, Sierra Leone, which is the British colony, is right next door. So, you know, the fact that British colonial Barbadians would want to go to an American colony instead of a British colony was very fascinating. And then it would just add a new wrinkle into the historiography that was so, you know, heavily researched on African Americans. And what it reveals to us is that blackness is not a monolith, right? That blackness is not homogeneous, that there are varying perspectives that define blackness that drove all these different groups to Liberia, different experiences, and we see this being hashed out in the republic. You know, it came to define, you know, who got to define blackness, whether it’s African-Americans or the West Indians or the native local ethnic groups of Africans or the re-captives. It defined who was included in the nation, who was excluded, and we could, you know, come all the way up to the recent wars that began in 1989, you know, the horrific wars that happened in Liberia, you know, and trace those kind of early beginnings that, you know, what happened with colonization, which was, basically if we look at it, it’s the recasting of what has been happening in America regarding colonizing, you know, native land. This is it being done by people who are black to other people who are black.

HY: That sounds fascinating. We’ll provide a link for people who want to read more about it. So what are you working on next. Do you know yet?

CB: Yes, yes, yes. So I’ve been for the last couple of summers… and in fact I was supposed to be on sabbatical this past spring, and I was supposed to be in Liberia, because I am collaborating with an archaeologist working on material cultural objects of the back to Africa movement. So, architecture, you know, pottery, food waste that made its way back with the people, back to Liberia. So how the ideas or the subjectivity of the colonizer and the colonized would be defined through the kinds of objects that they brought with them and that they sought to build, right? So through the architecture, through the kinds of spoons (food?) and, you know, the things, the objects that they chose to buy and to use and whatnot. So we’re doing a lot of archaeological work. We did a great dig on Providence Island last summer, and the intention was to be back this summer, and hopefully maybe next summer, you know, we’ll see how it goes.

HY: Yeah, I hope I hope it works out. We’ve got to get this COVID thing straightened out. This is Short Talks, and we’re going to have to wrap it up. I will ask you one more question before we go. What have you read recently that you would recommend?

CB: Yes, I read Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. He was here. We have a yearly African and African-American studies lecture series, and Kiese Laymon was here and it was a brilliant talk. He came to my class. My students had read the book. I read along with them and he gave… He was so, you know, very kind to them and, you know, sat and talked with them for about an hour about it. But it’s a brilliant book and he’s even more brilliant as a person, and so I would definitely recommend that one, Heavy.

HY: Dr. Caree Banton, thank you for joining us today.

CB: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Matt McGowan: Music for Short Talks From the Hill was written and performed by local musician Ben Harris. For more information and additional podcasts, visit Arkansas Research. That’s arkansasresearch.uark.edu, the home of science and research news at the University of Arkansas.