Don Wyatt: The Past, Present, and Future Blacks of China
China’s growing economic investment in Africa no longer escapes the attention of any well-informed observer of world affairs. However, the corresponding upsurge in Africans now immigrating to and residing in China has gone comparatively unnoticed. Misimpressions about both of these phenomena abound, and we are naturally inclined to regard the second as having just as recently arisen as the first. Yet, the lens of history reveals the ongoing African experience in China to be not only vibrant and colorful but of surprisingly long duration. Don J. Wyatt, the John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor at Middlebury College, holds his disciplinary and teaching specialization in the intellectual history of China. He has authored, coauthored, edited, or coedited several books, with the most recent among them being his own "The Blacks of Premodern China" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). His talk is fascinating and informative. Part of the John Hope Franklin Afro-Diasporic Legacies series. Co-Sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa.
