Global Force for Racial Equity in the Black Diaspora

Global Force for Racial Equity in the Black Diaspora:

The Black World's Annual Collaborative Conference

The Black Communities Conference, a.k.a. #BlackCom, is a vibrant and uniquely important gathering featuring panel discussions, local tours, film screenings, workshops, keynotes, and more. BlackCom’s core mission is to foster collaboration among Black communities and universities for the purpose of enhancing Black community life and furthering the understanding of Black communities.

The Institute for African American Research and NCGrowth, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in collaboration with other institutional partners like North Carolina Central University, hosts this annual multi-disciplinary conference to connect academic researchers and Black Communities across North America.  By creating new collaborations, BlackCom will help to document, safeguard and enhance the life of these communities.  The annual conference is held in Durham, North Carolina at various venues.

Since its founding in 2018, more than 1,300 attendees representing all facets of the black community have come together from all US states and from across North America to meet, discuss, and collaborate around the black world’s grandest challenges.  The conference is a 50/50 partnership between those from the academic community and those from the grassroots and practitioner communities.

In 2018, Black Communities: A Conference for Collaboration, was organized as an event that took place in Downtown Durham and whose mission is to foster partnerships that will enhance the capacity of Black communities to thrive.  BlackCom foreground partnerships between Black communities and universities but also facilitate collaborations in support of Black communities that involve nonprofits, arts, activists, archivists, preservationists and others.

The conference drew in close to 600 attendees representing communities, nonprofit organizations and universities from across the US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Through workshops, working groups and presentations, attendees and presenters shared their knowledge of Black communities and explored potential research partnerships. BlackCom had over 100 sessions, and more than 300 presenters. The energy at the event was palpable. As Sonny Kelly, a performance specialist said in his email to BlackCom: “I have never gone to a conference or Workshop where I was that engaged and energetic and interested for the entire time. The BCC, to me, is what good looks like when it comes to a conference that is really about something.”

In 2019, the second Black Communities conference was again hosted in Downtown Durham, with close to 700 attendees representing ten different countries.  Black Communities remains a significant way of engaging community-engaged scholarship, connecting scholars and community leaders toward collaborative projects that support black communities.

The conference has grown annually (pre-pandemic) in its attendance.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, BlackCom has taken its work to connect black communities to the best scholarship and practices online, ensuring that the collaboration continues.

In 2020, Black Communities launched webinars, a spinoff of the conference during COVID19.  For two months, BlackCom hosted 8 informational webinars on how the dual pandemic --COVID19 and racial violence-- was experienced by black communities. Open to the public and bringing in as many as 200 participants at a given session, the webinars gave BlackCom national and international visibility. The webinar conversations served as scholarly expertise and community expertise joining together to discuss the state and future of black communities during a global crisis as well as practical approaches to supporting black communities at this time.

BlackCom will sit at the center of the DGEP model, allowing the collaboration and engagement to scale across black communities globally.  This will be critical in the strategy of investing $1 trillion into 1,000 black communities to create equitable teaching cities across the world by 2030.  Furthermore, because of BlackCom’s unique success since its founding in 2018, it has the potential to convert it’s annual conference to one focused around Racial Equity broadly speaking, while maintaining the affinity around the array of black communities issues worthy of discussion, and in partnership with other DGEP partners like Go Global NC’s Latino Initiative and Latin Americas program.

SCALING:

FOLLOWING THE PANDEMIC THE GOAL IS TO CONTINUE TO GROW THE ANNUAL IN-PERSON CONFERENCE EACH YEAR TO INCLUDE MORE BLACK COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE WORLD, AND TO GROW THE ASSOCIATED STAMPS – SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ART’S AND HUMANITIES, MARKET, POLICY, AND SUPPORTS – ECOSYSTEM OF PARTICIPATES AND ACTIVITIES.  THE GOAL IS TO CONTINUE TO PROVIDE BLACK COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE WORLD, AND THEIR ALLIES OF ALL RACES, WITH VALUABLE TOOLS TO COMBAT RACIAL INEQUITY.  FURTHERMORE, THE GOAL IS TO COLLABORATE AND SPREAD KNOWLEDGE ON HOW TO ADVANCE A RACIALLY EQUITABLE AGENDA.  THE GOAL IS FOR BLACKCOM TO RISE TO THE NOTORIETY OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IN DAVOS, SWITZERLAND.  HOWEVER, BLACKCOM WILL ALWAYS BE OPEN TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO PARTICIPATE AND IS NOT AN INVITATION-ONLY MODEL.  SCHOLARSHIPS AND GRANTS WILL ALLOW THE BROADEST PARTICIPATION, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE ECONOMICALLY CHALLENGED.