IDENTITY IN DIASPORA CULTURE

Diaspora cultures are, by definition, born of mobility. Civil war and international armed conflicts over the past two generations have set millions of people in motion around the world, creating many new diaspora cultures. The list is long and includes the Cuban diaspora (following the 1959 communist revolution in Cuba), the Hmong diaspora (following the U.S.-Vietnam War in 1975), and the Sudanese diaspora (following civil wars ongoing since the 1980s). The civil wars in Sudan displaced at least 4 million people, creating a new diaspora located on three different continents (Figure 2.35). Major armed conflict in Sudan developed around the economic, religious, cultural, and racial differences distinguishing the Arabic/Islamic northern region, where the military and government were centered, from the African/Christian southern region, where rich oil deposits are found. Thus, a significant portion of the diaspora are southerners fleeing the fighting between the northern military and southern insurgents. The United States has been among the largest receiver countries, taking in approximately 150,000 southern Sudanese. Major Sudanese diaspora concentrations are located in Minnesota, New York, and Texas.

The Sudanese Diaspora and the Establishment of South Sudan Geographer Caroline Faria conducted research among the Sudanese diaspora communities in the United States to investigate how members forge cultural and national identities under conditions of displacement. Faria’s study of the Sudanese diaspora took place during a critical historical juncture, ranging from the 2005 signing of a peace agreement to the establishment in 2011 of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation-state (Figure 2.36). It was during this period that the diaspora community vigorously debated what a new nation should be and what it would mean, culturally, to be a South Sudanese citizen.

Faria analyzed the first and second “Miss South Sudan” contests held in Washington, D.C., in 2006 and Kansas City in 2007 to demonstrate the importance of diasporic beauty pageants for “promoting and imagining a distant home and nation.” Beauty pageants, in general, are fruitful sites for studying debates around gender, race, and national identity because the contest winner is assumed to represent, even embody, the essential qualities of the nation. Thus in the Miss South Sudan contests, organizers, participants, and spectators struggled to identify an ideal type of woman who would signify the new nation.

As Faria discovered after analyzing interviews and public commentary and debate, the ideal South Sudanese woman must conform to certain racial, religious, and gender identities. First, differences in religious beliefs both supported and were accentuated by the north-south armed conflict in Sudan. Christianity has become an important marker of difference to distinguish southern Sudanese cultural identity from the north. Miss South Sudan pageant commentators and judges thus emphasized “a strong Christian Faith as a vital part of any perspective winner.” Second, southern Sudan is imagined as “culturally and pheno-typically oriented toward Sub-Saharan Africa while the North is associated with an Arab influence and a lighter skin tone.” Consequently, participants and judges in the Miss South Sudan contests linked the notion of feminine beauty to “blackness,” with the 2006 winner opting for the “natural” look of a simple hair weave that projected a more “African” identity for the new nation (Figure 2.37). Finally, the pageant exposed an unresolved contradiction in the Sudanese diaspora’s ideas of womanhood and women’s ideal role in the new South Sudan nation. Contestants were expected on the one hand to delay marriage and aspire to higher education and professional careers, while on the other to maintain a traditional role as mothers who would reproduce the new nation.

The case of the Miss South Sudan pageants highlights the challenge facing many diaspora cultures around the world: how to establish a coherent identity under conditions of displacement and uncertainty. In imagining national and cultural identities from a distance, diaspora cultures must confront basic questions about national ideals of masculinity and femininity and the relationship of race and religion to nationhood. Showcases of national culture, such as beauty pageants, are not merely sources of popular entertainment. Rather, they are cultural cauldrons in which national identities are cemented, reproduced, and reimagined.