I want to talk about what I’m calling ‘empirical nationalism’ that I’m starting to see among some students—from undergrad to prospective PhDs. Rightly, for their essays, students, especially Black students, are looking for scholarly work that reflects their experiences.

So, for example, in doing a literature review about the politics of Black women’s hair, students will argue that the majority of work is focused on the experiences of Black American women and thus claim little to no work has been done on this topic.

These claims erase the great work done by Black British and Irish scholars (see: Shirley Ann Tate and Emma Dabiri) they also dismiss the Black American canon. Empirical nationalism refuses the Black diasporic connection which seems rather myopic to me

All of my empirical work is comparative because racial & gender inequalities rhyme across time and space. Of course there are important particularities we must take seriously & of course Black American hegemony is very real but I’m worried about this unwillingness to connect

For me, the best academic work is that which is promiscuous and draws upon and extrapolates from a range of disciplines and traditions to develop new insights. I really hope students can learn to use the Black American canon as a springboard rather than seeing it as a millstone