Race Matters launches 27 October 2021
As part of our Race Equality Project, and in celebration of BHM 2021, we are proud to be launching a new programme in our Diversity and Inclusion Lecture Series later this month. Race Matters will join our successful Be Inspired! and Young Minds programmes, and will offer thought-provoking, lived-, and insightful narratives that aim to broaden attitudes toward the topic of race, exploring and challenging discrimination in a multidimensional way
Inaugural Lecture: Celebrating Black Peace Activism
The inaugural lecture of the Race Matters Series will take place on 27 October 2021. Join Dr Victoria Araj & Dr Pamela Nzabampema, as they discuss how Neocolonial approaches to peacebuilding – as seen most recently in the cases of Palestine, Libya and Afghanistan – have proved at best, inadequate, and at worst, harmful to people and societies in these countries and beyond. Lincolnshire’s role in providing air power to state-building/’peacebuilding’ projects has led to the County being known by some as ‘Bomber County’. However, when we deconstruct, decontextualise and historicise this dominant neocolonial approach to peace-building, another narrative of the fight for equal rights, conscientious objection and community cohesion emanates from our locality.
"In the first lecture of the Race Matters series, we will draw upon Lincolnshire connections to those who struggled for peace, justice and equality, such as Salim Charles Wilson, Richard Hill and W.E.B. Du Bois and analyse their global and transhistorical impact. Then, drawing on case-studies from the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, we will discuss the historical developments of customary/traditional mechanisms of conflict management from the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras. We will demonstrate how, despite, the attempts of the colonial and post-colonial rulers to dismantle or reduce the powers of these mechanisms, they have remained important governing nodes, especially in rural areas, where most people continue to refer to them to resolve their disputes. We will then explain how we can learn from such decolonized approaches to move towards sustainable peace and justice within our own communities and beyond"
Dr Victoria Araj Dr Pamela Nzabampema
