The Black Holocaust: How the Atlantic Slave Trade Still Affects Us Today

In this American moment, of questions of academic censorship, why tell the story of the Black Holocaust? What is it? What was/is the significance of depopulation of the African continent for ten centuries, in the past and now? Who participated, benefited, and lost? And, what lessons can we learn about the power of the stories we tell and don't tell, research of oppressed peoples, and the successes and shortcoming of the 2020 racial reckoning? 

Dr. Kesho Scott is an internationally renowned Diversity Trainer/Consultant, an Associate Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Grinnell College, and an award-winning writer.  Kesho was a founding member of International Capacity Building Services, a cultural competency training team that specializes in facilitating both “unlearning isms” and Human Rights workshops as well various seminars and training programs that have been successfully adapted for audiences throughout the United States and abroad. In over two decades of developing unlearning racism work, Kesho has led hundreds of professional and community-based workshops; she has been keynote speaker for national conferences as well as a participant on several dozen national and local radio debates, discussions and public service announcements.  Grounded in this extensive experience, Kesho developed an “affirmative duty” technique for facilitating unlearning racism workshops.  It is a method that helps shift participants’ awareness, commitment, and skill-set toward being actively and personally anti-racist and anti-sexist, rather than remaining merely passive observers.