The African Diaspora: A Migration That Shaped The Modern World

Wendell sits down with Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir, Department Chair, African American and Diaspora Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, to discuss the African Diaspora, its reach and influence in the modern world, and comparisons of the experiences of those who were sent to Louisiana vs. the Caribbean.  

For more information on Dr. DeCuir: 

https://www.xula.edu/directory/people/ssinegal.html

https://www.sinegal-decuir.com/home 

https://www.instagram.com/dr.sinegaldecuir/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hello and welcome to the Freshwater Yankee Podcast. As always, my name is Wendell Riley, and today I have a special guest with us, Dr. Charlene Sinegal de Queer of Xavier University. And Charlene, you are the you're a professor of history, a Keller Family Endowed Professor, and the chair of African American and Diaspora Studies at Xavier. Did I get most of it?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

You got it right. And that's Xavier of Louisiana, not Xavier of Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

That's that is an important distinction. That's another reminder of how big this country is. You know, somebody like me who's from a tiny place with 1.5 million people, I forget to make those uh those distinctions from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

No, I've had one student who actually called me saying, I applied to Xavier and I haven't gotten a letter. So I went and I looked. She actually applied to Xavier of Ohio. And I said, baby, you applied to the wrong Xavier.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Wow. That is.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

So it has happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I mean, it's basically the same. New Orleans and and anywhere in Ohio, basically the same thing, right? Not quite. Yeah. Well, listen, um, you know, one of the main things that I wanted to bring you on to talk about today is uh the African diaspora. You and I, of course, uh we have worked together for several years uh on the board of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. And so uh when I started this podcast, I think I approached you about this uh just under a year ago, and I was like, hey, you know, I'd love to have you on. I'm starting this new podcast, and you were you were so gracious, and and you said yes, absolutely. So um I'm glad that we are finally recording this episode, and I wanted to just say thank you for for being here today.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for asking me.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, you as I like to tell people, you have done all the hard work with all of your research and and writing papers, writing books and teaching people. So now you I just get to hang out and just ask you a bunch of questions and and and hopefully um discover more about who I am, as someone who is a part of the diaspora, but then also somebody who lived, grew up in one part of the diaspora and now lives in a place where the influence of the diaspora is very pervasive. I mean, Louisiana is a uh, you know, uh a state, in my opinion, that has been transformed the most, I think, by um by African culture in in the United States. And you can tell me if I'm wrong. That's just that's my supposition, right? Uh just because of, you know, having lived in other places in the United States, but just seeing how how deep the roots of culture run in this state. Um But but before we we get into all of that, tell tell us your story. Tell us who you are, where you are from, and and why you chose to to study this very important uh topic.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Okay, so I always tell people I'm an I-10 girl. I was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. And some people say that's Cajun country, but I say that's Creole country. Um when I left Lafayette, I ended up at Xavier of Louisiana. Um at the age of 18, yes. I did my undergraduate work there, and then I moved to Baton Rouge, where I attended LSU and did my graduate work with my master's and PhD. And once I was done with my PhD, I started working and teaching at Xavier. So my family still lives in Lafayette. I currently reside in Baton Rouge and I work in New Orleans. I'm in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

I'm the best of both worlds, my family and my work.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so you when when did you decide that you were interested in history?

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Uh yeah, you know, I've always been that child, that nosy little child that asked so many questions when she was like seven, eight years old. And the adults would say, Girl, mind your business. And eventually I just asked enough questions to where they understood I would never mind my business. And I wanted to know connections between different things. I wanted to know how how we were related to this cousin. What was my family tree? Where did I come from? Why is our last name Senegal? Were we enslaved? All of these different questions. And I remember asking my grandfather, and he would really just sit there and talk to me about everything. And eventually I became the family historian. Um, when I went to Xavier, I started studying biology pre-med because I thought I was going to be a medical doctor. And God unfolded my path, and my path was always my passion, which was history and being inquisitive.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So you are you are a living example of the value of oral traditions. I mean, oral traditions are really, really significant in in my culture in Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago culture. And, you know, you mentioned something that I've I I have been saving up for this uh this podcast episode, this idea of where are you from, who's your kinfolk? Because I I get those questions a lot in Shreveport, and it's like it's a big part of identity uh for for black people in the South. Um this idea of like It really is.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

My goodness. I mean, you know, I get asked all the time because my maiden name is Senegal and my married name is de queer. So I'm Senegal de Queer and you know, everybody think thinks West African for Senegal and De Queer French. And it is, and there's so much history behind both of the names and both of the families in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, well, good this is great. So let's let's take a big step back, right? And and if you would just kind of take us to class a little bit and and give us as as succinct as you can, right, uh an overview of the diaspora and the transatlantic slave trade.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I would say the diaspora, the African diaspora, is everywhere in the world. It is global. It is where every place that the institution of slavery touched. And a lot of people don't really understand when you think about um Afro-Caribbean people. They don't understand that these Afro-Caribbean people actually come from Africa. They don't understand the connections between the United States and the Caribbean islands and the musical traditions and all of those things. It just this actually makes me uh remember a couple days ago I was looking at a TikTok and it was Carly B. And she was explaining how she was Afro-Caribbean because she said she got the question all of all of the time, is she black? And she said, Yes, I am black, if you're considering that black is a part of the diaspora, that all black people came from Africa in some form. And so she just broke it down and it made a lot of sense to um to me the way she broke it down, and I think a lot of sense to a lot of kids and people who follow her. So um she got that out, right? And I'm excited about that. But I believe, you know, like I said, that the diaspora is everywhere that the African slave or the Atlantic slave trade touched. And the Atlantic slave trade, of course, was the forced migration of African Americans across the Atlantic Ocean. It was about 12 and a half million Africans that were captured from Africa, and this is according to Ira Berlin, um, Africans in colonial Louisiana. And approximately 10 and a half million made it to the destinations of the Caribbean Islands, um, which were called the West Indies at the time, um, Brazil, which was controlled by Portuguese, and then of course the United States, which were the 13 colonies at the time, and eventually the United States after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783. So this forced migration was a forced cultural exchange, is what I would call it. It was a forced cultural exchange. And it was a horrific forced cultural exchange, but nonetheless, it created the global world that we have now, the diversity that we have in not only the United States and the Caribbean islands, but globally. So um that's what it did. Now, the Atlantic slave trade, of course, first began in, I would say, the 1400s, and the first colonial power that came to Africa were the Portuguese. The Portuguese came in um, because they had the the great favorable tide winds that bounced them on the coast of Africa, and then they started to think, oh, all of these people. So they started to trade with African kings and queens, and they were traded training in people. And the Portuguese were the first ones that started the um experiment with plantations. They actually started off of the coast of West Africa, um, Cape Verde, Santo, um, Mardina, I think it's Merdina, M-A-D-E-R, yeah. And so they started in those areas, and then what they realized was that they could use this labor to create cash crops. And so that is really how it started. And all of this warped into a triangular trade system where you now had many different colonial powers, the French, the Spanish, um, again, the Portuguese, the Dutch, they're all coming to Africa and now getting the slaves and transporting them into their colonial islands that they are now co colonizing, right? Um, and and they start a plantation-based system to have cash crops. And the first cash crop, of course, was sugar. Right. Everyone wanted sugar. Yeah. It was used for medicinal power, you know, medicinal. Um, it was used, of course, to sweeten the teas, you know, all of those different things. And so that is really when the the need for labor is going to start arise. And it actually coincides a lot with um, again, colonization and these um colonial powers finding new land in America are in the Americas. And then now what do we do with this land? How can we, you know, derive profit from this land? And so the Atlantic slave trade, which had all of these African bodies that were could be used for labor and then free labor because of the way the trade system was set up in Africa and eventually the kidnapping of African people for the slave trade. And that, of course, started economies and created generational wealth throughout the world.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah. So so this did the the regions that were initially targeted, we are talking about um sort of north northwestern Africa. Um countries like uh Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone. Are we talking about that region specifically?

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yes, the western um side of Africa. So yes, Sinegambia or Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, uh, which would be the Blaine, yeah, Angola, um, all the entire western coast of Africa, you had people who were enslaved from those areas. Now, from Louisiana, the most enslaved people came from the Senegambia region. And I believe they started to import slaves, I want to say around 1719 um to about 1731, directly from the Senegambia area. But they were doing it, the French were, they were very smart in why they were capturing those enslaved people. And that was because those enslaved people came with skills. They knew how to harvest rice, they knew how to harvest cotton, sugar, indigo, um, all of these different things. They knew how, you know, masonry work, brickworking, um, ironworking, weaving. They had all of these special skills, you know. And I always tell my students what you don't, what a lot of people don't understand is when they think about enslavement, they say, oh, they just took barbaric people who didn't know anything. No, they took people who were skilled laborers, um, people who were kings and queens, who established politics and political governments, who, you know, uh were doctors and uh astronomers and all those things in their culture. So they actually took um, again, very smart people. I think that's people who had their own culture already.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Right. And and these were, you know, for all intents and purposes, if you wanted to contextualize it in a in a modern way, these were professionals. These were not just like see, a lot of times there's we we have fed the narrative uh both uh from a literary standpoint but also visually of you know the men in just like torn-up uh slacks and you know, no shirts on, that kind of thing, and and the women in like ratty clothing and stuff like that, not understanding like that's sort of what they were given when they got here versus what they were when they left home, you know?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Right, exactly. And that's the Eurocentric um way of of explaining or teaching, um, because I think again, when you think about, you know, certain parts of American history, they change the narrative.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

And the narrative is changed based on um, you know, how a country wants to be perceived. And so again, also a lot of times people don't understand the cultures of other people. And if you don't understand it, you can't respect it. So let's just say you had um these, you know, colonial powers that are going into Africa and they're witnessing for the first time, you know, people who are not conventionally dressed as they were, right, but still in their society, dressed in proper ways that they should be, right? And so to a Eurocentric person, a European coming into Africa, you're stepping into a totally different culture that you don't understand. It's just like African people, when they first saw white people for the first time, they thought they were ghosts, you know. Um they were like, they had never seen a white person before. So it's the same thing, and it's it's a lot of um misconceptions. And I do think with history, uh, a lot of times, especially with African American hist history and diaspora history, students are not given the full picture. They don't understand exactly where they came from, they don't understand exactly that. Again, these people were professional people. They were intelligent people, and those are the people that we derive from. We don't derive from people who were savages, we don't derive from people who did not have a culture, we don't derive from people who were um illiterate and did not have a religious base, you know, because a lot of times the colonial people came in and they said, we are Christianizing the savages. Well, guess what? They were not savages only to you and your Eurocentric way of thinking, but to them, they were not. They were civilized.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, yeah. I I think you see that a lot in in uh whenever there are migration patterns throughout history. There's there's erasure that comes with um uh like geopolitical uh benefits, right, to the people that are doing the erasing. But some erasure happens naturally because, for example, right now in Trinidad and Tobago, we have uh an influx of uh people fleeing Venezuela. And so we have uh an immigration problem in Trinidad. But you have doctors and lawyers f who were practicing and professional back in their home country, and now they are having to take on jobs, um maybe being a bartender or a waitress or something like that, or or house cleaning. And it's because the the skills that they had are not recognized in the same way where they end up. And so I think that's a big part of it. I if I think back and I try to visualize who my uh forebearers were, you know, I I I wouldn't even know where to start, you know, and and I say that, uh, and this is part of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation and be open about that because I think there's there's a lot of ignorance among uh people in the diaspora, not just outsiders looking in. I mean, even within our communities, we we don't have a lot of us don't even know where to start looking in to figure out who we where we came from. And so there's a big part, it feels like a hole in in me as a person, like to know who I am. Like that part of me, I my lineage only goes back so far where and then it becomes well, it it it becomes a regional thing, right? Or, you know, I would have to do a DNA test to really kind of trace it back. But I can't sit and have a conversation with someone who had a conversation with their grandparents, who had a conversation with their grandparents and so on.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Right. Absolutely. And and that right there is why I do what I do, why I study, you know, African American history, diaspora studies, and why I even created this major at Xavier. Because Xavier University, we you could minor in African American and diaspora studies, but you couldn't major in it. And so when I started teaching at Xavier, I really, really wanted to create this department so that we could have students actually majoring in it and that I could look at it um globally and look at where and how African Americ at the African continent and African American people and people of the diaspora have created um cultures, have kept connections also with their African roots, um, how they have changed the world and how the contributions are a lot of the times overlooked. But if you dig deep enough enough, you will find those contributions. And that is why I do what I do because I want people of the diaspora to understand that they are also powerful people with their history.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful stuff. And and it it is so it's a weird thing because it's it's so in our face all the time. You see the influence of of of uh people of African descent all over the world. I mean, if you look at the World Cup now, you look at almost any World Cup roster, there is someone, and and usually more than one. Even even for European nations, you would have uh where you would not think that there would be a black person in sight. You would see someone on the team, and you know, they are either um second or third generation or just like much like going back much further, but they are part of the diaspora, and that's a thing that I wish we could spend more time parsing out and and and really thinking about, right? Um rather than just the 90 minutes while you see a player on screen or something like that. But it but that's just one immediate example, and it it goes with food and music. I mean, there's so many things, science, um you know, so many of the foundational aspects of of this country in particular, uh it you can draw a true line directly back to the African continent.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Absolutely. And I love um that you talked about the World Cup because it is actually giving not just African Americans and people of the diaspora a visual understanding of how the slave trade touched all of the world, you know, because a lot of times like you'll have um young people who don't even realize that there are black people in Germany, that there are black people in in France, you know, or um in Cuba, and they're like, How are you, you know, Cuban and and and black, and you're Afro Cuban, even in India, you know, all of those places. And a lot of people just don't understand how widespread the African diaspora. Transfer reaches. It reaches every part of the globe.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

So let's let's talk about that a little bit. And more specifically, Louisiana. I have traveled to multiple states within this country. And I have to say, Louisiana is just different. In some of the most amazing ways possible. I love living in Louisiana because it it reminds me a lot of living back home in Trinidad and Tobago. Even in North Louisiana, you know, we have a reputation for not being as as Louisiana as the rest of Louisiana, right? But you can't. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

But you can't.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

I can agree with that. All right, all right, all right.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

But but we we often say Shreveport is a part of Texas, okay? Yes, I know, I know.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I listen, I am I'm fighting the good fight to stay to stay a part of of Louisiana. But um but no, but but but in all seriousness, like just anywhere you turn in in Louisiana, like the food in in particular or the music, um, what are some of the and I I I know some of these answers, but just for for our audience, like what are some of the key um influences you would say from the diaspora on a state like Louisiana and and and how that differentiates it from other states within the United States?

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Well, first we have to get to the colonial history of Louisiana and state that Louisiana was colonized by the French first in 1699, was it 1619? No, 14, 1682, and then by the Spanish in 1762, and then back in France's hand from 1800 to 1803, and then sold to the United States. And I say that because that right there, it's what connects Louisiana more than any other state in the United States to the Caribbean Islands, because French and uh the French and the Spanish had all of these islands in the Caribbean, the the the West Indies that they called, and those enslaved people came to Louisiana as well. And so the connection was always there. And then there's also the huge connection after the Haitian Revolution, um, when Haiti becomes free, and around 1809 or so, you see about 10,000 people from Santa Domingue, Haiti, that come into Louisiana. And they're coming to Louisiana because Louisiana, again, was colonized by the French and they still had a lot of the legal codes, um, the Catholicism. Yeah. It was it was a free uh people of color population already here. And so when they came in, that actually doubled the number of the population and also doubled doubled the number of the free people of color. It brought in enslaved people as well, directly from the Caribbean Islands. And what you see is a melting pot. Another thing with with Louisiana is that even after 1808, when the Atlantic slave trade was, you know, abolished in the United States, Louisiana received its last group of smuggled slaves in around the 1830s, 1832, 34, something like that. It's about 430 of those enslaved people that came directly from Africa. And again, I'm talking about 1830. This is like 30 or so. Yeah. That's not that long ago, yeah. No, it's not that long ago. But th this is, you know, 20 something years when the Atlantic slave trade hit, and it was illegal to capture and steal, you know, Africans and bring them to the United States or to any of the you know, Americas at that point. They still did it in 1832. And so all of those African people who came in, they bought with them their culture. They bought with them the music, they bought with them the food, they bought with them the religious traditions and all those things. And what that does is it it just spikes the community again, right? Because now you have people who have been enslaved in Louisiana for a very, very long time, and they're coming into contact with people that are directly from Africa in the 1830s, which means you're gonna have cultural exchange. You're gonna have people who were born in Louisiana who wants to understand what it was like in Africa because they know they originate from that area. And so you have all of this cultural exchange as as well. And then, as I said, the Caribbean islands, the French and the Spanish are also prior to um the sale in 1803, bringing their enslaved people with them from the Spanish West Indies and also the French West Indies. And so Louisiana really just becomes a melting pot of everything. And that is why it is considered the most African and the most Caribbean place in the world. And even today, you know, um, most people in Louisiana, including myself, Catholic, we're Catholic. Uh, the language we started to, you know, mix the languages between French and Spanish, indigenous languages, um, and so on, and came up, came up with our, you know, own Creole language, like, ça va bien, uh, tous les manger, you know, dude, would you like to come eat? Uh Dome La Jean, give me money. My grandmother used to always say that. But uh I know a little bit of, you know, the Creole language and whatnot, but all of that is what makes New Orleans unique and it's what makes Louisiana unique.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Does it does this touch other uh contiguous states in any significant way, like uh Alabama or well, Mississippi, and then maybe into Alabama, or was it mostly sort of confined because of the influence of France and how pervasive that was for so long?

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yes. So this is really confined to Louisiana, and the reason is is because all of those other um, you know, states that you just mentioned, those would have been um eventually colonized or started as a part of the Louisiana Purchase, because Louisiana Purchase doubled the land of the United States, but you have the 13 colonies there first, right? Yeah. And so the 13 colonies, because they were colonized by Great Britain, they were Protestant in religion um and they spoke English language. And so all of those areas, once once the Louisiana Purchase is made in 1803, it opens up new territory for new um, what is it, uh, new settlements. And so you have Mississippi and you have Alabama and you have all these new states that are coming in. But these new states that are coming in are being um populated by people who were of British linearity. Right. They were people from the 13 colonies, not people coming from the French-Spanish colonial area and moving into that area, right? And so what was what is really interesting is that even Louisiana, because you had the whole Louisiana purchase, um, but Louisiana, that little boot that became Louisiana, is the only area that really stayed African, Caribbean, French, and Spanish all together. And even if you look at look at the legal codes, the legal codes in the state of Louisiana are different from many of the legal codes outside of the state of Louisiana. You have the Napoleonic codes, you know, which are from the French. Um, you know, we we had the Code Noir, which was from the French. We had um the codes from the the Spanish uh reign and all those things. And um, I know when my husband was studying for the bar, he was like, oh, Louisiana with these Napoleon codes. And everyone is like, Louisiana is the hardest place to back pass the bar because you have to know the Napoleonic codes as well.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah, yeah. So so am I right in understanding? You said outside even outside of Haiti, there was movement of um Africans from the Caribbean into Louisiana. Did it go both ways or was it sort of like a one-way migration? Maybe you were brought to a Caribbean island uh as a slave, and then they maybe shifted you to from a plantation down there to a plantation in in Louisiana. Is that sort of how it worked?

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Yes, they absolutely did that. Because if again, if you you're thinking about colonialism and French, the French are, you know, they colonize Louisiana. Well, you have wealthy French people who have plantations and property in the Caribbean Islands. And so what they are doing is now trying to get in on this new land and bring their plantation system with them. So a lot of times they might move from the Caribbean Islands that they're own, which is still colonized by the French and go to another French colony, which would have been Louisiana, and just move their entire operations because in Louisiana, maybe the the terrain would have been better. Um you could uh branch out in your cash crops instead of just cultivating sugar. Now you can cultivate indigo, um, you can cultivate rice, you can also cultivate cotton, which eventually becomes king. And so you see that um again, the French and um the Spanish areas in the Caribbean, they did take their enslaved people with them when they moved to Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Wow, okay. I see. I I I did I never thought about it. I always thought of it as these separate pockets of the diaspora that were sort of insular in their own way. I didn't realize like there was that much movement there. Which which makes sense if you consider these people to be assets, right? And you're basically expanding into a new market, then you just take your assets with you.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Um, and because even when you're thinking about like the Haitian Revolution, right? And so after Haiti, you know, gets their independence, you have all of these people who were French who were living in Haiti, and they're like, we gotta get out of here, right? So they migrate to the most French place that they can find. Right. And that most French place is Louisiana, it's the safest for them to take their enslaved people, you know, with them as well. And so, um, and again, the culture is similar because you have the Catholicism and you have all of those, you know, the plantation system is still there. So it's an easy migration from from Haiti to Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Wow. Yeah. And, you know, like when I when I think about Trinidad and Tobago. So I was raised Catholic, half black, half Chinese. Um we have a large, and and Trinidad is slightly unique in this way. We have a large population of people from India who came over as indentured laborers. So that has a big, um a big influence on our culture, more than say, like Jamaica. I think Jamaica is predominantly African, whereas we are sort of like 40%, 40% with a mix. But we were also in Trinidad colonized by France, by Spain, uh, and then uh eventually the British, and that's we we emancipated out of colonization uh from uh the British. So, you know, I tell people all the time, like, if you walk through the French quarter, that is what a lot of Trinidad and Tobago looked like when I was growing up, and it still does to this day. Like, we still have architecture that looks exactly like the French quarter in New Orleans.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Um that is amazing. I was gonna say that it sounds like Trinidad is very Louisiana-ish in its colonial makeup.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And um it's the same thing for us where we have, you know, you go down, you go to one town and it has a Spanish name, and then you go to another town. Like my the where where my family, um, like my mom lives is is called uh Pity Valley. It's a small valley, right? But then we have places like Sangri Grande, which is a a Spanish name, or San Fernando. And so, and then you mix in like indigenous names as well. And it's that kind of weird cultural melting pot. It's it's very hard to explain to someone on the from the outside, like what that is like. Because it's it's just it's just part of what you're used to. You grow up and it's you it's normal. Yeah, it's normal, but in a way it is it feels like a superpower because you ha you you get to partake in multiple cultures within your own culture when you are growing up. And obviously, some of the roots of this are very dark and and sinister, but at the same time, like you know, hopefully we all sort of grow and and and leave those those those parts behind, but but keep the good stuff, you know?

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Yes, absolutely. The whole uh, you know, colonization was not um it was dark and wicked and so on. And you know, the slave trade and slavery was dark and wicked and so on. And so I think now what we do is we study to preserve the histories of the cultures of the people that influence, that um help to build, you know, um the United States and new cultures around the world. And so, but in doing so, we have to teach the correct true history and letting everyone know, as I said before, that um people of the African diaspora actually do have a history. We didn't just um come on alien ships and you know, and and we didn't, you know, uh because the narrative is that, you know, um enslaved people had to be taught how to be human, enslaved people had to be taught how to work, and all these different things. But but they bought with them a system of labor. They bought with them gang um labor of work, not getting, you know, working together in unison and using music to increase or decrease the pace of maybe picking cotton or chopping down sugar cane and so on. And so all of these things that you know you can connect to the African diaspora, especially the biggest connection that everyone can see globally is the music and the dance.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

The Afro-Latin beats, the the beats that come directly from Africa currently, you know, the beats, uh, the music of Carly B, the the rapping, um, the music in New Orleans, you know, that unique music, the unique music of Louisiana, the Zodiko, um all of those things come from the African, you know, African culture and African tradition, and also the movements and the music. And I, you know, I remember um being a little girl, my mom would say, Don't you dance like that. And, you know, it wasn't called twerking at the time, it was just called shaking your bottom. Right. But um, but as I have done the research, I realize that even though maybe, you know, African Americans have been displaced for over 400 years from the African continent and so on, you still have memories for some, I don't know where it comes from, but there's still a connection and the movement is the same. You could look at videos of girls in New Orleans dancing to bounce and women in Africa dancing to the drums. You could even hear the same drum beats and the way we rhythmatically just move our bodies without even knowing that is a cultural connection that is beyond um, you know, just being born and raised in Africa. And then there, yeah, and and there are other examples of that, you know. Um, and sometimes, you know, you you just you wake up and say, where did I get that from? Well, somewhere in your past, uh and you know, some people believe in reincarnation and you've been here before, your soul and your spirits and and all those different things, right? Which actually is part of the religious um beliefs of some people who weren't enslaved, right? And so if you think that it makes sense that you, even though you don't know how you have that connection, that connection is there.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, it it feels encoded in who we are, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Encoded in our DNA.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Absolutely. And and no matter how many filters you run it through, that it still remains. Like I have a I have a good friend of my colleague, and she um we were talking about Twicken, because you, you know, you mentioned it was funny, and I was like, you know, I I actually read like a couple weeks ago that and this this was at the time, I said, you know, hey, I I actually read a couple weeks ago that Twicken, like you could draw a through line to back to the to Africa, um, because this was a traditional dance. And she had a and she was like, oh man, and she's like, I feel bad now, you know. And as I don't feel bad, like the this, but these are the the moments that we have to if we can just all stay open-minded about culture and really talk about this stuff. And you Absolutely And and you then you can draw these through lines back to and and throughout our collective histories. And that that's one of the things, like as I've gotten older, living in Louisiana, I it just it's astonishing to me, again, to go back to the the the similarities, even in the food that we eat. There are dishes in Trinidad that are very similar to dishes in Louisiana. And they they they developed independently, right? But they still have the same basic components. Same with our music, you know, there's there's there's zydeco, and there's um there are all these these offshoots of like Louisiana hip-hop, and I know hip-hop is one of your your fields of study, but like for us, we have calypso music and soccer music, you know? And um the drums are a major part of our culture. Um both on the Indian side, but we our love for drums, we actually created, you know, the one of the only instruments that was created in the 20th century with the steel, steel drums. Um those were invented in Trinidad and Tobago. And that again, you could point straight, like, that is not something that is independent Trinidad and Tobago. You can't just like not pay attention to everything that had gone before. And I think that is sort of the the tragedy of the story of slavery, is that like you mentioned, there's this idea that when when people showed up on these shores, they were these blank slates that only had value because of their physical prowess, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Yes, and and you had a lot called that tabula rasa, uh a blank slate. And that was actually one of the arguments used in the American Revolution, where um the Americans said that they were being enslaved by Great Britain, um, and they also believed that um, you know, Great Britain wanted them to be a blank slate, you know, tabula rasa, don't learn from yourself, don't just depend on, you know, Great Britain. And it's very interesting because um when you had the abolitionist movement and when you had the civil rights movement and so on, you can argue the same things. You are actually, America is actually enslaving or oppressing people of the African diaspora. And again, you're trying to think that we are a blank slate. We are not Tabio Rossa, we are not a blank slate. We have come with you know our culture. Yeah. We know how to do things. Yeah. We're not babies.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Right. Exactly, exactly. So, so and and of course, as part of slavery, you want to if you are if you are enslaving someone else, you want to maintain that control over them. So can you talk a little bit about what was removed? You know, obviously um religion was replaced, um education was replaced, or sometimes in some cases not replaced. Can you talk a little bit about some of the elements that were stripped away and then what was given back or given in place of?

SPEAKER_02 43:42

Right. Yeah, and so when we think about enslavement in the United States, again, as I said, it's two different things going on because you have the thirteen colonies and what that type of misleadement looked like because they were colonized by the British and then of course Louisiana with the French. Now in Louisiana When the enslaved people are coming in, they're coming in with their own religious base. But what they do is they hide that religion, that animistic religion, where they they believe maybe that everything has a soul or everything like Mother Nature, right? You should respect all of the elements. And so that is then hidden into Catholicism. And a lot of depending on where the enslaved people came from, if you had the Yoruba religion, um, if you have like the animistic religion and so on, and you're coming into Louisiana, what they did was they hid their deities within the Catholic deities. And a lot of times those deities really they they matched, you know, they matched. And so while the plantation owners were thinking that they were practicing Catholicism, they were actually practicing their own religion. And then this religion also in Louisiana is going to change um with the different, you know, African cultures that are coming in and it becomes Louisiana voodoo.

SPEAKER_03 45:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

And you see um the African religions going into many different parts of the Caribbean Islands and coming something else, right? In Cuba it was Santa. Uh and uh Brazil is Candombre. And so, but it's still the African religion that is mixed into the religion of the colonizer and it's hidden.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And so the and I'm I'm trying to drive to that that place where we talk about uh oral traditions and and how these communities were able to practice their cultures, right? Whether it's religion or or telling stories or education, food, all of these things. But you have to, it's almost like you had to do that behind closed doors, in a way, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:03

Yes. It was passed down knowledge. And it's really interesting because it makes me think of the story of Bear Rabbit. And this was an uh a tale that came from Africa. Um, the Griots used to talk about Bear Rabbit, and Bear Rabbit was actually about the rabbit who outsmarted the fox, I believe, right? And it was about the lesser animal outwitting the more powerful animal. And what that meant to people who were enslaved was you can still outwit and be smart and still survive in the system. And so that was a story that actually brought strength to the enslaved population. And there are other stories as well that are just that were passed down from generation to generation. The way we cook, the spices we use, um, uh going into, you know, uh a wooded era area and and and picking out the herbs that you need to make a medicine bag or the herbs that you need to make a tea and so on. They still do that here in Louisiana to this day. And it's just something that's passed on from mother to daughter and so on throughout the generations. And that's why it's very, very important to have oral tradition and griots. And I do consider myself to be a Griot in a certain way because whenever I am teaching, I feel like I'm teaching stories.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

And the way I teach, I don't necessarily, I don't, you don't have to know dates. You don't have to know exact dates. Now, please don't tell me that slavery ended in 1965 instead of 1865. Now that might be a little harsh, but I'm not gonna ask for stiff specific things. What I want you to understand is the concepts. I want you to understand how history, the history of the past connects with the present history because everything is like a it's like a fiber. I tell my students all the time it's about continuity and change over time. But I feel like if you, you know how sometimes you have a snag in your clothes and you try to pull the fabric to make it straight. That's what history is. You're pulling the fabric to make it straight, but you have to understand both ends, right? You have to look at both ends and pull in a certain way. And that's what I try to teach my kids, my students. I teach them about the continuity of history. This is why this is going on right now. And you can trace it to way back when. And I always say that the problem with America is that it constantly sweeps its issues under the rug.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

While the rug is, it's got a big old pile over the rug, and and and the mess is seeping out every time you walk on it. It's like a puff of dust that's coming out, which is another problem. Another problem that affects diversity in the United States. And again, cultural suppression of any anybody is wrong. Culture suppression of people of the African diaspora is terrible because we have to understand that the African diaspora helped to create the world.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

And you can't take that out of history. You can't take that out of anybody's history.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Right. You can't you it's it's so integrated. If you remove that part of it, you basically have a flawed narrative. Like it doesn't it there it you can't get from point A to point B. These components are so intertwined and interconnected to this day, right? And it goes all the way back. And I think that is absolutely Yeah. And I think that is one of the reasons, not I think this is this is one of the reasons why I wanted to to start this podcast is because I believe in the power of oral traditions as well. And and I think if if you know, there there are lots of problems with technology the way it is today. But I think having mediums like this where we get to have this type of discourse, and hopefully one or two people listen to this and go, wow, I'd like to know more about this. Let me let me let me Google this. Yeah, yeah. That I think is to me, that is how simple and effective oral traditions can be. Because it literally is just sharing ideas with knowledge. Yeah, with with a positive purpose in mind, right? It's this idea of like and and I think it it it can go across cultures within this country. I mean, obviously America is extremely diverse. Um but I think globally as well, right? Even even back home in Trinidad and Tobago, again, this is a lot of this stuff we don't know. We weren't taught this stuff in school. You know, I I I have a you know, I was raised in the British education system, is extremely rigorous academically, right? But none of this stuff was really taught to us, you know. So um, you know, so so and we're we're getting close to time, and I I would, man, we could talk about this for hours and hours because this is such a fascinating topic. But what would you how do you approach young um black people in America? Like what are some of the things that you try to impress upon them to to at least put them on a path of real discovery?

SPEAKER_02 51:29

Always when I start teaching, I start with Africa. And again, just to let them know how powerful they are and the shoulders that they stand on. That's the first thing. And then going into the middle passage and and really talking about how horrific it was because it's one of those things that skipped over, right? And then so really my thing with teaching is telling the facts. I do not try to put my own personal, you know, ideas or feelings. I tell the facts, and then we discover, you know, and we talk about different things and we discover where this where does you know this lead and so on. But I think when we when we started this podcast and I mentioned Cardi B, Cardi B right there, which she did in that one minute on that TikTok, probably reached more people or more kids than I ever could imagine.

SPEAKER_03 52:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

And it probably sparked their, you know, curiosity to actually go and look it up. And it's really interesting because I'm certain that I will have students that come into my class next semester and who will reference Carly B. Well, Carly B said it. And it's it's interesting because sometimes you have to have these, you know, famous stars or you know, to say it when we have been writing about it for many, many, many years. We have been teaching about it and so on. But um I would like to say, you know, what I've found in teaching for the 17 years at Xavier is that when I first started teaching there, and I was teaching African American history and slavery and servitude and you know, those types of courses, students came in knowing more of their history, more of their culture. Currently, in 2026, and this is 2009, 2025, 26, they don't know anything. They come in and they said, Oh my God, I didn't know that. And then what you find is I have so many kids at Xavier that want to take courses in African American and diaspora studies because they say that they have not learned that. And that right there could help them become better doctors because now they're understanding about black culture, they're understanding about medical mistrust and so on. And it's, you know, Xavier is now opening up its new medical school.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

And it should be up and running. Uh, I want to say in the fall semester or so on. But, anyways, I was asked to go and speak to the faculty, so all of the doctors and the whatever else about the culture of Xavier and um Louisiana culture and kind of ground that culture in this new school that is gonna be made, which is, you know, gonna be, yeah, the the only HBCU medical school in the Gulf Coast. That says a lot, right? And I I remember um I helped with curriculum too, and I told him, I say, you have to have Harriet Washington's book on there, and that's um Medical Apartheid.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Oh very good book. All right, all right.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

And I think I just got way off topic.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

No, no, no, no, this is this is exactly it. Because so so what I'm hearing is that we we as descendants of African slaves, we have work to do. We can't sit back and ex if we let other people tell our story, then we're sunk, right?

SPEAKER_02 55:06

Uh very much so.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Yeah. Because they can't they can't or they won't tell it the way it it really is.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

They will not tell that facts and the truth. They're gonna twist the history to be in their favor. It's just like the old African proverb um about the hunter and the lion, right?

SPEAKER_03 55:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

If the hunter kills a lion, the lion never tells a story.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

So yeah, we have to be here to continue to write these stories. And even with the big move of erasure um of, you know, the histories that we have today, there has to be people like me, a younger generation of people also that still continue to come in and even revisit old texts, revisit old historians and their ideas and their interpretations of what that history was. And even going back into the archives and looking for you, i.e., who you are in those documents. And that's what makes you know the beauty of history and the diversity of the field as well. Because when I look at documents, I try to find me. I try to find, when I say me, I try to find African people or African American people or people from the diaspora. Not only that, I try to find women, right? So I try to find their stories that's often hidden. And then if you are historian on LBGTQIA plus, I believe, um, you look for those stories within the history.

SPEAKER_03 56:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

And so depending on who you are, that's the stories that you look for, and the interpretations of the same event can be totally different.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Right. Yeah, yeah. Because it's uh it is a collective experience, a multidimensional collective experience. And and again, same for for me as as someone who is trying to figure just like my life out. Because now I am have I have a daughter who I have to prepare for this world and and give her a true sense of who she is. And she's fortunate that she has strong, immediate familial connections, but I want her to understand where she comes from. And, you know, like there's there's work there, but it's good work, right? And I think ultimately it it just sets up the next generation for success.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Absolutely. And it's amazing work. And I just love when I see my students light up because, you know, they now have the knowledge and they can put the puzzle pieces together. Yeah. And they light up with this knowledge, right? Of knowing the strength that people at the diaspora carry, uh, knowing, you know, that the narrative, some of the narratives that have been painted are untrue.

SPEAKER_03 57:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:00

And so you can see the light up, you know, and just like you, I, you know, I have a 13-year-old son and I'm constantly, you know, trying to teach him things, and he says, Oh mom, here she comes with that history stuff. I'm like, oh my goodness. Okay, here she comes with that history stuff.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

It isn't it isn't your job title. So I feel like if anybody should get a pass, it's you. Um but but you know, I mean, I think all kids will will roll their eyes at us. But I, you know, I I'm hopeful that someday, like you said, you see that that light bulb moment and that um that curiosity. I think that is the thing that if you if you live a curious life, I think you are set up for success because it means that you will always seek uh knowledge and truth, and you hopefully will be courageous enough to do that by asking the right questions.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Continue to use the Socratic method of asking questions. I love when my students ask questions. And I may not know the answer, and I tell them, I will get that answer for you for next class. But I love when they come in and they ask questions. It's so great to see their minds working.

SPEAKER_01 59:15

Yeah. You know, I I say, because I, you know, in my role, um, I I teach social media marketing uh uh at the college level, and I think the thing that we have lost as a as a society, and I I mean this is across the board globally, is that we have lost the ability to really ask questions. We are so we have been sort of forced into these positions of of of having to know things, right? Because we've it's it's this reductive process of if you see something on social media, you have to have an opinion on it. And your opinion is either this is good or this is bad. But life doesn't work like that. There's so many nuances, right? And and so many. We don't take the time to just be curious, and so I'm hopeful that, and that's the thing I always tell people this. I said, Y'all, y'all like to make fun of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, but they are they ask questions, they they have a healthy cynicism. They don't just accept things, they go, well, wait a minute, why is this the case, right? Yes. I hope that we can, as as their elders, I hope we can nurture that and encourage that because I think it is the only way that we will continue to grow as a species. And you know, that's a little heady and philosophical, but I truly believe that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

It's very true. I mean, look at me. I was always that nosy kid asking questions, and I became a historian.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and in doing so, hopefully inspired thousands and thousands and thousands of kids to go on and do the same thing. So so thank you for what you do, and thank you for being on the the show today. Uh so we are at time, um, but I would love to have you back on and maybe we could talk about something else. Yeah?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

Yes, thank you for having me. This was so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

This was great. So uh any anything you want to talk about or plug? Where can people find you on social media? Any of that stuff?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

Uh I do have a social uh a public social media account, and it's at Dr. Sinegal the Queer.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

All right. I will make sure to put it in the show notes. Um and I know that you're working on some some cool projects, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yeah, yeah. I am working on a book project with LSU, uh LSU Press. And um I think, well, that that's my biggest thing right now. I'm trying to push everything off to the side so I can finish that. But uh yeah, you know, I'm I'm always speaking, you know, somewhere. I just I did the Xavier Centennial book as well, which I was one of the major contributors to that. And I did the New Orleans book talk. Um, I believe that was like the C-SPAN thing. Um yeah, so I I've been keeping quite busy. I don't even remember half of the things I do. I I know my my chair, not my chair, my um dean always says, Charlene, you're always doing something. When do you sleep? And I said, I don't sleep. So I forget all the things that I do, and then I have an identical tune sister, and she's she goes, Girl, I Googled you. You know you da-da-da-da. I'm like, girl, I forgot. I forgot. I forgot I did that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:38

Listen, you I I I hope you keep doing that. I hope you I hope you rest. Rest is important, but um, the work that you do is very important. And again, thank you for for who you are and what you do. Um, and I will be sure to again put put some of these things in the show notes so that people can find you and follow you.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:58

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

And again, Charlene, thank you so much. Uh, and to our audience, thank you so much for listening. Uh, please give us a five-star review on your favorite platform. Uh, you can find ways to support the show in the show notes. And as we say in Trinidad, we could talk later. All right, later. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

Our contributing producers are David McMillan and Lauren Leon McMillan. Music was provided by Peter Sandy of Home Base Productions, and I am your host, Wendell Riley.