Perspective: What Being Black Across the Diaspora Taught Me About Ecology
This story is supported by a grant from #BlackinScicomm Week and COMPASS Scicomm. All stories under the brack•ish series can be found here.
St. Kitts and Nevis is one of the many small, independent island nations in the Caribbean, and it happens to be where my dad was born and raised.
By the time I was born, my family had moved from the Caribbean to the U.S mainland and back again, finally settling in the Southern United States when I was three. However, we would return to the islands every now and again, since most of my extended family still call the islands home. One of my most vivid memories of my trips to St. Kitts as a child were the monkeys, mischievous little primates that delight tourists and frustrate locals. St. Kitts is special in that way, most Caribbean islands don’t have native primate species (other than humans of course). However, the Vervet monkeys you find on St. Kitts are not monkeys you’d find in nearby Central or South America. Their closest relatives and kin are across the Atlantic Ocean in Western Africa, their ancestors brought over on slave ships alongside my own ancestors.
The Vervet monkeys you find on St. Kitts are not monkeys you’d find in nearby Central or South America. Their closest relatives and kin are across the Atlantic Ocean in Western Africa, their ancestors brought over on slave ships alongside my own ancestors.
I’m a Black person living across the diaspora that has scattered my people all over the world these past 500 years. The inalienable fact of life being Black, as well as being an immigrant is building a home out of the unfamiliar. Those of us brought across the ocean had to learn to make homes for ourselves in strange, unfamiliar environments. Meanwhile, our kinfolk who remained on the continent faced a drastically altering landscape, as colonial forces upended thousand-year-old ecosystems through dispossession and extraction. As it turns out, my ancestor’s animal neighbors were making the same journeys, adapting to the same stressors, a shared story of catastrophe, but also of adaptation and resilience.
As my family moved from the Caribbean to the U.S. mainland, it seems like we had to do it all over again, albeit on a smaller scale. As part of my attunement process going from place to place, I’ve gotten used to reading landscapes, trying to understand the history and character of a place through the life that inhabits it. A healthy appetite for books and nature documentaries would fuel curiosity into passion, a passion I’m still nurturing as a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Several homes, and many years of experiences and training later, the desire to understand my surroundings remains, and the questions in my head persist.
I’m a Black person living across the diaspora that has scattered my people all over the world these past 500 years. The inalienable fact of life being Black, as well as being an immigrant is building a home out of the unfamiliar.
As an ecologist and wildlife scientist, I am most curious about the ways animals cope with a dynamic, unpredictable environment. As our world changes, animals are faced with all sorts of new realities, and the decisions they make will have drastic consequences for their individual survival, and the survival of their populations. We often discuss biodiversity under climate change as a tally of what species we stand to lose and to be sure