Emocionados para ser unidos: All but one of Fulbright Colombia's Afro-descendant and Indigenous Scholars for 2010-2011
Proudly a few steps closer to ending the racial educational achievement gap in the Americas: A Few of my fellow Grantees from Colombia, and Fulbright Junior Program Coordinator, Lucy Rengifo Moreno (center)
Fulbright Colombia's Third Annual Seminar in Leadership for Afro-descendant and Indigenous Scholars will stand out in my memory for years to come. Arriving from half a dozen cities, 18 of us Fulbrighters from both nations, along with two Colombian Martin Luther King Scholars, gathered in Bogotá to deliberate about racial, social, and educational politics, paths toward economic development, and the meaning of ethical leadership. Designed to foster idea exchange and collaboration between the Grantees of such backgrounds, the bilingual four-day conference was a springboard toward a more thoughtful, humane, racially just and socially integrated world leadership structure, in academia and elsewhere.
The idea exchange present in the conference can be conceptualized as the formation of cross-national and cross-cultural coalitions for scholarship and public service. Another of the conference's objectives is to attract more extensive demographic and regional diversity to the community of Colombian scholars going abroad. (We often joked during the conference that thanks to the Fulbright and Martin Luther King grants that benefitted many of the participants, no longer will such a group comprise only White scholars from only the Universidad de los Andes and other of Bogotá's most exclusive private colleges.) In line with the initial vision of Senator Fulbright himself, Fulbright Colombia offers upward of 100 scholarships annually to send Colombians to the United States for postgraduate study, research, and Spanish teaching. Of the 18 total Afro-descendant or Indigenous Fulbrighters engaging Fulbright Colombia programs, 12 of those are Colombians going to serve in the US of A. Talk about opportunity! Of those, we're talking mainly about folks who have grown up in regions that are some of the most underdeveloped, neglected by policy, and disconnected from global market integration in Latin America. We're talking about places like Chocó, Cauca, Nariño, and Putumayo--areas in which running water is sometimes absent, power outages are frequent, road reconstruction may have been neglected for decades, and narcotrafficking activities can be rife. Words like "impressive" or "inspiring" are understatements to describe how some of these Grantees have surmounted the heavy social challenges of growing up in such departments and make it to become among the academic elite of their country. I cannot describe the utter sense of achievement it gives me to have sat in a room looking around at my fellow Afro-Latinos--folks who have suffered decades of concealed and unaddressed racism, under methodical attempts to promote the Latin American myth of "racial democracy"--and know that they've become something bigger. It nearly brings me to tears to think about how much systemic discrimination we've overcome since the abolition of slavery. And tears of joy to be able to spend four days around these folks I had just met, who quickly became my brothers and sisters.
The best news was we couldn't have asked for better sponsors of the event. Around five officials from Phelps Stokes, a Washington, DC-based philanthropy, were present from the first moment of conversations to offer insight, mediation and guidance. Founded in 1911 by New Yorker Caroline Phelps Stokes, the organization is one of the oldest social justice-oriented NGOs in the United States, focusing on leadership development, educational improvement, youth empowerment, and social integration programs in under-served, mostly Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities in Africa and Latin America. Phelps Stokes has also partnered with philanthropies and activist groups of all sorts to expand educational development practices throughout the United States (a full list of the organization's accomplishments in the 20th Century can be found here: http://www.phelpsstokes.org/our-legacy/work-in-american-indigenous-communities.) Phelps Stokes' supervision of the event was especially relevant because of its recently strengthened focus on programs that serve the least developed departments in Colombia, particularly the far west Pacific region of Chocó--a department it just so happens that a sizable proportion of 2011's Colombian Fulbrighters to the United States call home.
I must offer a heartfelt thanks to our other sponsors, as well: the Fulbright Colombia Commission, US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Colombian Ministry of Culture, the Colombian Ministry of Education, and ICETEX, the Colombian state's higher education promotion and financing institute. They put together a star-studded group of educators, philanthropists, and social development professionals to lecture us and guide us through four days of personal empowerment exercises.
What did we discuss at this moving conference? An incomplete list of some of the lecture topics follows:
Tuesday, 30 November, 2010-
a) Introduction
b) Afro-descendant Perspectives on History, Culture, and Society in Colombia
c) Colombian Indigenous Populations in the National Context
d) Dialogues about National Public Politics Affecting Afro-descendant and Indigenous Populations
Wednesday, 1 December, 2010-
a) Basic Elements of Leadership Development
b) Values, Principles, Compromises, and Learning About Public Service
c) Basic Elements of Conflict Resolution and the Construction of Effective Coalitions
Thursday, 2 December, 2010-
a) United States Foreign Policy toward Colombia: Implications for the Incidence of Afro-descendants and Indigenous Populations
b) Conversations about Race and Ethnicity in the United States
c) Successful Experiences in Participation in the Processes of Community Development
Friday, 3 December, 2010-
a) Anticipated Experiences of Colombian Fulbright Grantees in the United States: Opportunities for Leadership Development at US Universities
b) Colombian Fulbrighters' Academic Programs and their Contributions to their Communities
c) Closing Remarks
While all of the presentations were thoughtful and groundbreaking in their own unique ways, I must shout out that which to me was most stirring: "Indigenous Communities in the United States and the Politics of Education," by Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman of Harvard and Phelps Stokes. Her illumination of the de jure racism that has held back US Native Americans was sobering. I was reminded of how decades of US laws, put in place at least since Andrew Jackson's administration ordered thousands of Cherokee to their deaths in the Trail of Tears in 1830, have distorted and restrained the academic, social, and economic potential of Native Americans. The group reflected about how such systems of oppression have stimulated the "whitenization" of traditional Native American education and language structures. Hmmm, that's funny: it sounds startlingly familiar to what has happened to Afro-descendants throughout the Americas since the 16th century! Dr. Huaman's 60-slide presentation reminded me of the need all North Americans should feel to learn more about our nation's most neglected--and psychologically and economically impoverished--minority group. The ensuing discussion about the parallels between the social and environmental constraints faced by Native North Americans and Indigenous Colombians made my head spin. Soon I had to take a 30-minute breather outside of the conference room to digest what I had heard. Of note is the fact that like in the United States, the number of indigenous Colombians that has survived hundreds of years of persecution and environmental racism is a tiny fraction of the total modern population--just 2.5 percent of the national population today. It is also alarming to consider that most of the areas today reserved as "indigenous territories" in Colombia are also those at gravest ecological risk, such as the Orinoco oil mining region in the northeast and the Amazon in the southeast. The result: today, the vast majority (73 percent) of Colombian indigenous populations reside not on the land on which their traditional livelihoods relied, but in the urban centers. (A similar rural-urban divide afflicts the indigenous population in the United States, where only 30% of Native Americans live on reservations.) Does it not trouble any one else that those are precisely the regions where soil, fauna, vegetation, and air quality are most vulnerable to industries that rely on heavy natural resource extraction? So where else will the indigenous live? Should they just be pushed eastward into Venezuela or Brazil? That makes no sense! The conjunction of failed social policy and erroneous business models has disturbed native communities in the United States and Colombia, as elsewhere in the Americas, for too many years, and now I feel sick. My reaction is to think there is too much top-down "development" planning, occurring without regard to grassroots tastes or needs, going on in both. Now we need to get it right and integrate regional and communal preferences before we can consolidate policies at the national level. Hence, the predominant phrase on the tip of my tongue when emerging from this section of the conference was, "It's late 2010: When will the exploitation stop!?"
But, we must ask ourselves, are there any shining lights in the cave of stagnant structural racism? What progress has been made in the areas of achieving educational equality across Colombian demographic groups? It is true that today, taken on average, more African Americans and Afro-colombians are gaining access to higher education than before. But we must be mindful of the sore spots that persist. First, 63 percent of Colombians still are not entering higher education. In particular, the most marginalized areas of the country have largely stalled in their educational maturation. For instance, the heavily Black and Indigenous western and southwestern departments of Chocó, Cauca and Nariño remain stuck at low levels of access to higher education: their university participation statistics have not much budged in four decades. I know I said before that being amongst the group of well-accomplished minority scholars at the conference made me emotional. But what gets me even more riled up is to think about how much progress still needs to be made to achieve racial equity in academic and professional life, in the Western Hemisphere as in the world.
Still, I'm glad that the Colombian press was paying attention to the instructive and empowering potential of this event. Within the first 24 hours of the conference, I was ecstatic to see that this year's Colombian Fulbrighters had received some well-deserved recognition from the country's most prestigious newspaper, Bogotá's El Tiempo. For the Spanish readers out there, here is the link to the article, which applauds Fulbright Colombia and its co-sponsors ICETEX and USAID Colombia for offering a forum in which the country's top Afro-colombian scholars can discuss social and educational challenges affecting their communities:
It's hard to summarize the educational weight of the Seminar. I feel one of the best ways I can do it justice is by sharing some of my favorite quotes that popped up during the event:
"[A pesar de varias frustraciones], todo eso es decir que la educación superior en Colombia ha alcanzado mucho progreso en los últimos cuatro años en particular."
"[Despite various frustrations], all of this is to say that higher education in Colombia has achieved a lot of progress in the last four years in particular."
-Anonymous
"You will be lucky in life if you can find...Work that is congruent with who you are and what you want to be... I can go anywhere in the world, and when people ask me where I work, I have no problems of feeling ashamed."
-Dr. Badi Foster, President of Phelps Stokes
"Entre lo dicho y el hecho, hay un gran trecho."
"There is a large stretch of distance between what is said and what is done."
-Ken Yamashita, Director of USAID Colombia
"Leadership is the process of influencing others and supporting them to work with enthusiasm in achieving common goals."
-Kelly Macias, Independent Consultant
"Being a leader means being long-suffering. It means being the first one to arrive and the last to leave."
-Gabriel Hurst, US Fulbright Student
"La clave de un buen liderazgo es el reconocimiento y la concentración."
"The key to good leadership is recognition and concentration."
-Dr. Nimia Teresa Vargas Cuesta, Afro-Colombian community development advocate
"You Afro-Colombians don't know each other... In some cases, you don't even know yourselves!"
-Anonymous
"Life is a relay race: it is won and lost in the exchange zones."
-Dr. Badi Foster, President of Phelps Stokes
"Over the past 20 months, the Obama Administration has set out to strike up a new narrative toward Latin America."
-Arturo Valenzuela, Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, as quoted by Dr. Dorith Grant-Wisdom of the University of Maryland
"We cannot ignore suffering to our south nor stand for the globalization of the empty stomach."
-President Barack Obama, as quoted by Dr. Dorith Grant-Wisdom of the University of Maryland
"What's happening to Muslim brothers [in Europe] is unreal... And it's not just the Euros that are on the bandwagon."
-Dr. William Smith of the National Center for Race Amity, Wheelock College
"En sacrificar algo, hay una belleza."
"There is something beautiful in sacrificing something."
-Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman of Phelps Stokes
"I know some people who are so poor that all they have is money."
-President of a university in Chocó
"Cada persona tiene... Una historia distinta para contar."
"Each person has... A distinct history to tell..."
-Colombian Fulbright colleague
"The strangest, most bizarre looking person on earth... Is nothing more than a cousin."
-Dr. Badi Foster, President of Phelps Stokes
...
What does one reap from the chance to look in the mirror alongside 19 ambitious fellow scholars that look like oneself? Well, I can happily say that the Third Annual Leadership Seminar was one of the most personal-growth-provoking experiences of my life. By Friday of the conference, all Grantees concerned had opened up, offering their most honest illustrations of their concerns about scholarship, racism, and development. I can also say with a decent level of assurance that the American Fulbrighters met their responsibility in helping to inform and prepare the Colombian Scholars for their upcoming grant periods in the United States. Heading into the weekend, we were hugging and swapping contacts and lodging invites and promising to support one another as we continued our cultural explorations of one another's countries. And then in typical Colombian fashion, we danced Friday night into shreds at Discoteca Pachanga y Pachola in Bogotá, celebrating having accomplished Fulbright's foundational objective: increasing mutual cultural understanding. In spite of the rumors of cutting funding for the Leadership Seminar after this December, I strongly urge Fulbright Colombia and USAID to continue orchestrating this most pivotal event in years to come.
Dr. Badi Foster, Phelps Stokes President, and Tonija Hope Navas, Phelps Stokes Director of Programs for Latin America and the Caribbean and Special Projects, preside over Day One introductions at the conference
Making their points like sharpened pencils: From left to right, Colombian Fulbrighters Yuri Romaña, Farith Díaz, William Ballesteros, and Martin Luther King Scholar Jilmar Robledo
From left to right: Martin Luther King Scholar Jilmar Robledo of Chocó, Leadership Consultant Kelly Macías, me, US Fulbright ETA Amber Henry, US Fulbright Student Gabriel Hurst, and Colombian Fulbright Scholar in Cultural Studies of Afro-descendant Communities, Yancili Lozano Torres
Throw a fist down for your ancestors: celebrating the culmination of the conference with Colombian Grantees Yuri Romaña (left) and Wilson Borja (center)
Becoming a family within four days: what a solid crew!
After all was said and done at the Seminar, enjoying a chance to catch up with some of my other fellow Fulbrighters over some Asian cuisine in central Bogotá
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