Emma Dabiri | |
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 Dabiri in 2021 | |
| Born | Dublin, Ireland |
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| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Black studies |
| Sub-discipline | African Diaspora Studies |
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Emma Dabiri FRSL (born 25 March 1979) is an Irish author,academic,and broadcaster. Her debut book,Don't Touch My Hair,was published in 2019. [3] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. [4]
Dabiri was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Nigerian Yoruba father. After spending her early years in Atlanta,Georgia,her family returned to Dublin when Dabiri was five years of age. [3] She says that her experience of growing up isolated and as the target of frequent racism informed her perspective (2019). [5] After school she moved to London to study African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),her academic career leading to broadcast work,including co-presenting BBC Four's Britain's Lost Masterpieces ,Channel 4 documentaries such as Is Love Racist?,and a radio show about Afrofuturism,among others. [6]
Dabiri is a frequent contributor to print and online media,including The Guardian , Irish Times ,Dublin Inquirer, Vice ,and others. [7] She has also published in academic journals. Dabiri's outspokenness on issues of race and racism has caused her to have to deal with extreme trolling and racist abuse online. She says of this that "it's just words" and the racism she grew up with fortified her to deal with it. [8] She is the author of two books:Don't Touch My Hair (2019) and What White People Can Do Next:From Allyship to Coalition (2021).
Dabiri holds a Western Marxist's critique of capitalism,and in What White People Can Do Next,she dedicates a chapter to "Interrogate Capitalism",building upon the ideas of Herbert Marcuse,Angela Davis,and Frantz Fanon. [9] Western Marxism places greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society. Dabiri summarizes:"In fact,in many ways race and capitalism are siblings",while "capitalism exists,racism will continue". [9]
Dabiri lives in London,where she is completing her PhD in visual sociology at Goldsmiths while also teaching at SOAS and continuing her broadcast work. [10] [11] She is married and has two children. [5]
Dabiri has appeared on the television programmes Have I Got News For You , Portrait Artist of the Year . [12] and Question Time.
In her 2019 book Don't Touch My Hair,Dabiri combines memoir with social commentary and philosophy. She moves beyond the personal to examine African hair in wider contexts,with the book travelling across geographical space and through time to take in pre-colonial Africa up to modern day Western society. Throughout she writes that African hair represents a complex visual language. [13] The review by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff in The Guardian summed up Don't Touch My Hair by saying:"The first title of its kind,with fresh ideas and a vivid sense of purpose,Dabiri's book is groundbreaking." [14]
In this book,Dabiri explores the erasure,stigmatization and appropriation of Black hair. Dabiri takes a historical and cultural approach to investigate the global history of racism towards Black hair,all while leading readers on her own personal journey of self-love and acceptance. [15]
Dabiri analyzes topics such as the criminalization of dreadlocks and the Natural Hair Movement.
TIME magazine described Dabiri's 2021 book "What White People Can Do Next:From Allyship to Coalition as
Dabiri's manifesto for radical change in a world impacted by the pandemic and the surge of attention on the Black Lives Matter movement. With essays titled 'Stop the Denial,' 'Interrogate Capitalism,' and 'Denounce the White Saviour,' Dabiri marries historical context with contemporary commentary and analysis in a direct, accessible style, referencing thinkers including Fred Moten, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde and bell hooks." [1]
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1977 Newbery Medal awarded novel by Mildred D. Taylor. It is a part of her Logan family series, a sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees.
Black people, Africans and people of African descent have lived in Ireland in small numbers since the 18th century. Throughout the 18th century they were mainly concentrated in the major cities and towns, especially in the Limerick, Cork, Belfast, Kinsale, Waterford, and Dublin areas. Increases in immigration have led to the growth of the community across Ireland. According to the 2022 Census of Population, 67,546 people identify as Black or Black Irish with an African background, whereas 8,699 people identify as Black or Black Irish with any other Black background.
Ruth Negga is an Irish actress known for her roles in the AMC television series Preacher (2016–2019) and the film Loving (2016). For her portrayal of Mildred Loving in the latter, Negga received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. For her Broadway debut as Lady Macbeth in a production of Shakespeare's Macbeth in 2022, she earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study The Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes that internalized racism involves both "conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which whites are consistently ranked above people of color." These definitions encompass a wide range of instances, including, but not limited to, belief in negative stereotypes, adaptations to white cultural standards, and thinking that supports the status quo.
The golliwog, also spelled golliwogg or shortened to golly, is a doll-like character, created by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton, which appeared in children's books in the late 19th century, usually depicted as a type of rag doll. It was reproduced, both by commercial and hobby toy-makers, as a children's soft toy called the "golliwog", a portmanteau of golly and polliwog, and had great popularity in the Southern United States, the UK, South Africa and Australia into the 1970s.
African-American hair or Black hair refers to hair types, textures, and styles that are linked to African-American culture, often drawing inspiration from African hair culture. It plays a major role in the identity and politics of Black culture in the United States and across the diaspora. African-American hair often has a kinky hairy texture, appearing tightly coiled and packed. Black hair has a complex history, culture, and cultural impact, including its relationship with racism.
Melanie Verwoerd is a South African and Irish political analyst and diplomat. She was previously a politician, ambassador, and the director of UNICEF Ireland.
Discrimination based on hair texture, also known as textureism, is a form of social injustice, where afro-textured hair or coarse hair types, and their associated hair styles, are viewed negatively, often perceived as "unprofessional", "unattractive", or "unclean". This view can lead, for example, to some school students being excluded from class.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Nkechi Amare Diallo is an American former college instructor and activist known for presenting herself as a black woman despite being born to white parents. She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.
Phoebe Robinson is an American comedian, New York Times best-selling writer, and actress based in New York City.
Stella Dadzie is a British educationalist, activist, writer and historian. She is best known for her involvement in the UK's Black Women's Movement, being a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the 1970s, and co-authoring with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan in 1985 the book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain. In 2020, Verso published a new book by Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance.
Munroe Bergdorf is a British model who came to public attention in August 2017 when she was employed as the first transgender model to front a L'Oréal campaign in the United Kingdom. Bergdorf attracted further public attention following an article in the Daily Mail highlighting Facebook comments that she—a mixed race trans woman of white English and black Jamaican heritage—had made about white people. These comments—which included the claim that all white people were guilty of "racial violence" and that the white race was "the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth"—generated accusations that she was racist against white people. In response to her comments, L'Oréal fired her from its campaign and Facebook removed her posts from their website, regarding them as being in contravention to its rules against hate speech. Bergdorf said she also faced online harassment, much of it of a racist and transphobic nature.
Hazel Chu is an Irish Green Party politician who has been a member of Dublin City Council since May 2019. She was elected Cathaoirleach (chairperson) of the Irish Green Party in December 2019, and was succeeded by Senator Pauline O'Reilly in December 2021. She was the first Irish-born person of Chinese descent elected to political office on the island of Ireland. She served as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 2020 to 2021, and in doing so became the first person of Chinese ethnicity to be mayor of a European capital.
Allyship is an English-language neologism used in contemporary social justice activism to describe efforts by groups of people to advance the interests of marginalized groups both in society at large and in particular social contexts, for example universities or workplaces. The term and related behaviors are controversial, with critics alleging that allyship is an ideological, performative, and insincere notion that may ignore prior concepts of tolerance and solidarity.
Ebun Joseph Arogundade is a Nigerian-Irish lecturer, author, and consultant. She is founder and module coordinator of the first Black Studies module in Ireland at University College Dublin.
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Tendai Moyo, also known as Varaidzo Tendai Moyo, is the Zimbabwean-born co-founder and CEO of Ruka Hair, a direct to consumer hair extension brand for Afro-Caribbean women who prefer natural hair.
