Dr. Ekotto writes entry Speaking Without Fear for Concordia Language Village’s Worldview: A Language Blog.

I moved from Europe to the United States in 1983 to study at Colorado College. The following summer, I was the first Black African woman to work at Lac du Bois, the French program at Concordia Language Villages. There, I spoke about being a postcolonial subject and my positionality in a French space. I also started highlighting my identity as a black woman and my right to set my own political agenda, specifically, to emphasize my African history. Young Americans were so interested in talking about these subjects with me. It was a beautiful experience.

The next summer, I encouraged my brother Gilbert Ekotto join me at Lac du Bois. The year after that, we invited Pascal Gasirabo from Burundi to come to the Village program. We agreed that we would speak French like an African language and privilege our African cultures. We also introduced lessons on the history of colonialism, highlighted some francophone African countries, and taught about our own regions. What had been Lac du Bois, a Village program focused mostly on France, also became an African Village where French was spoken.

In A Rap on Race (1971), anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin attempt to understand how the tangled forces of whiteness and blackness have shaped American society. Mead is particularly interested in examining white fear. She suggests the problem of discrimination and hierarchical treatment is a result of excessive fear that warranted excessive protection. She relates this to common associations of blackness and darkness, offering examples such as “growing up afraid of the dark,” or the idea that “bad things happen in the dark.” This fear is then transformed into a means to rationalize the exploitation and violence visited upon Black Americans.

While Baldwin also considers the origins of this fear, he is more interested in explaining how it directly affects Black Americans. He argues that the lack of trust within the two communities is a direct result of white fear, and he counters the idea that Black individuals should be responsible for healing or mending it. Until white Americans directly address this fear and work to heal its associations with Black Americans, he suggests, the country will not heal.

Now, almost 50 years since Meade and Baldwin “rapped on race,” COVID-19 has changed the world, and George Floyd’s death has reminded many that America can no longer function with the racial status quo. We must transform our institutions both philosophically and structurally. We need to address the continued existence of white fear. To do this, we must attend to ongoing economic disparity. We must consider the discourses produced by social media platforms. We must change what we teach ourselves and our children. We must open history to all humanity.

I know that a colonized subject’s struggle is always there. It is caused by an ongoing nervous condition that comes from vulnerability. In France and Switzerland, where I was largely raised, I always had to be on the defensive. When I read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I realized that I harbored a fear that someone would say something mean to me. My fear came from their fear of me.

One of my favorite events each summer at Lac du Bois was International Day, when all the Villages come together to celebrate difference. Each Village introduces a cultural activity to others, and villagers have an opportunity to eat food from different countries. During the festival, villagers, counselors and staff make friends from around the world. We promise to keep in touch and come back the following summer.

What always struck me about International Day was the possibility of an open world, in the woods of Minnesota, where we come together from all corners of the globe. I saw what humanity might look like without the fear of others, and it had a material effect on me. For that day, surrounded by friends from around the world, I could live and celebrate the complexity of my identity as a French-speaking African woman without fear.

I know International Day to be an exception. But I hope that in America and across the globe, we will face our next conversations about racial equality and colonial status without fear.

About the Author

In 2010, Dr. Frieda Ekotto was awarded the “Global Citizenship Award” from Concordia Language Villages for 20 years of service preparing young people for responsible citizenship in our global community. For Lac du Bois, she developed and taught the college-credit course, “Race, Racism, Ethnicity and Gender in the French Speaking Space.”  She is Lorna Goodison CollegiateProfessor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Francophone Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.

Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella (2018) is now published in English by the Griot Book Project Series in partnership with Bucknell University Press. Translated by Corine Tachtiris, the book is available for purchase on Amazon. Originally published as separate pieces under the French titles Chuchote pas trop in (2005) and Portraite d’une jeune artiste de Bona Mbella (2010) this work of fiction celebrates untold love stories between African woman in a positive light. Now that it circulates in English, these stories are available to readers across the globe.

On Monday May 21, 2018, Frieda will be celebrated by her alma mater Colorado College as she accepts an honorary degree. The Colorado College Board of Trustees voted unanimously to confer Frieda with this honor, which will be presented to her at the college’s Commencement ceremony at Armstrong Hall on the Colorado College campus. This award acknowledges Frieda’s impactful teaching, internationally recognized scholarship, and significant leadership as chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. In accepting this honor, Frieda serves as an inspiration to students at Colorado College who may follow in her footsteps.

In Spring 2018, Frieda will teach a new undergraduate seminar titled African Cinema. The course is numbered Afroamerican and African Studies 440 and is cross listed with Screen Arts and Culture 440:

This course will concentrate on images produced on the concept of global blackness. We will first define what we mean by ‘Global Blackness’ and then analyze how filmmakers use images and narratives to challenge and change the spectator’s positioning as it concerns the possibilities of understanding blackness around the world. We will problematize questions of national identity through contemporary issues such as race, racism, ethnicity, sexuality along with class and gender. At one level, we will concentrate on cinema as a language, an ideological discourse that aims to provide a critical exploration. At another level, we will analyze how cinema produced by blacks is rooted in the ongoing struggle for the need to be part of national discourses, and how black cinema offers images that are consistently different from those presented mainstream cinema around the world.

DIGITAL DESTINY presents 20 sculptures in metal and found materials created over the past five years by Cameroonian artist Dieudonné Fokou. Fokou experiments continuously with new media, as he explores different modes of creation int he plastic arts. His work is nourished by themes of justice and the search for peace and liberty, as well as by his travels, problems inherent to society as well as his hopes and dreams for a better world.

This exhibit was curated by Frieda Ekotto and Emily Goedde. The work was featured in Gallery DAAS from September 16-November 18, 2016, including an artist talk in the African American Studies Department.