Liberia is the country founded by freed enslaved African Americans, who returned to the continent and essentially enslaved and oppressed the natives. As a Liberian American, I’ve spent much of my time trying to understand how oppressed people oppress others. We’ve seen this occur at a national scale in examples like Liberia and how Israel treats Palestinians down to interpersonal levels of classism and transphobia in feminist and/or Pro-Black groups. What I’ve learned about liberation from Liberia, is that it wasn’t enough to leave the physical conditions of enslavement, or to even leave the country that represented trauma, loss, death, oppression. The oppression we are fighting against is not just external, but it’s also internal. I also learned that as we work, fight, and prepare for freedom/ liberation, it’s not enough to know what we’re fighting against, we have to know what we’re fighting for, because if we don’t have a clear vision of what we want, we will replicate all that we know. This talk is around deconstructing, analyzing, and unpacking the pieces of the oppressor we’ve internalized and normalized, so that we are not limited to a future where we replicate these same conditions that we’re seeking liberation from.

This talk is a part of PolyDallas Millennium.