Christiana Best-Giacomini, Ph.D.
September 8, 2026
Over the last decade, I have noticed an important shift: Black people and Black leaders across the globe are increasingly stepping forward, peacefully but firmly, calling for the truth to be acknowledged. We are challenging the powerful empires and institutions that have shaped the global order over the last four centuries to confront historical realities that have too often been minimized, distorted, erased, or ignored.
I also want to acknowledge that my respect for the United Nations is growing. There was a time when I had largely given up on the institution. About twenty years ago, I attended meetings connected to the United Nations General Assembly and listened as speakers from around the world addressed the devastating effects of patriarchy on women. Yet some of those same voices seemed unable or unwilling to acknowledge that racism is also profoundly destructive and that racism and patriarchy frequently intersect and reinforce one another. The divide was striking, particularly in the ways Black and White populations understood and discussed oppression.
More recently, however, I have been encouraged by what appears to be a greater willingness within the United Nations and other international institutions to confront the enduring consequences of slavery, colonialism, and the distortion of Africa’s place in the world. This includes greater recognition of the enormous human devastation caused by the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, as well as renewed attention to the ways conventional world maps have historically diminished the visual size and significance of the African continent.
These issues are neither coincidental nor separate. They are part of a much longer history in which Africa and people of African descent were systematically diminished—geographically, economically, politically, and culturally—while European power was expanded and normalized.
One of the clearest examples is the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. Representatives of European powers and other states gathered in Berlin to establish rules governing European claims, commerce, navigation, and territorial control in Africa. Africans themselves were not given a meaningful place at the table where this framework for the future of their continent was being established. Although the conference did not literally draw all of Africa’s colonial borders, it created rules that facilitated and accelerated the European partition and occupation of the continent.
Think about the significance of that for a moment: powerful nations gathered thousands of miles away from Africa and developed a framework for claiming African territory and accessing its resources without the consent of the people whose lands and futures were at stake. The Berlin Conference was not simply a diplomatic meeting. It represented a worldview—a belief that European powers possessed the authority to determine the political and economic destiny of other peoples.
The consequences did not end when colonial rule formally ended. Colonial boundaries divided communities and joined others together within political territories created largely around European strategic and economic interests. Colonial economies were structured around extracting raw materials and labor for the benefit of imperial powers. Political institutions were reorganized to facilitate colonial administration. Indigenous systems of governance, knowledge, language, and culture were frequently marginalized or suppressed.
This history matters because the wealth accumulated through slavery and colonialism did not simply disappear when those systems formally ended. Countries across Africa, as well as nations and communities whose populations are predominantly of African descent, endured centuries of extraction. Their land, labor, natural resources, and human capital helped generate enormous wealth that disproportionately benefited European empires and other nations shaped by European colonial expansion.
For more than four hundred years, white supremacy, colonialism, and racial hierarchy have influenced the global order: whose histories are told, whose suffering is acknowledged, whose lands and resources are exploited, whose knowledge is considered legitimate, and whose power is preserved.
That is why I do not see today’s conversations about slavery, colonialism, reparations, Africa’s representation on world maps, or the continuing economic disparities between the Global North and Global South as separate conversations. They are pieces of the same historical architecture.
What feels different now is that people of African descent around the world, including leaders such as Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados; Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso; Colonel Assimi Goïta of Mali; and General Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger, to name a few, are increasingly challenging long-standing narratives about Africa and the Caribbean, colonialism, sovereignty, and global power. Across very different political contexts, their voices reflect a broader insistence that others should no longer have the sole authority to define our history, determine our worth, or dictate our future.
We are naming what happened. We are connecting what was deliberately separated. We are questioning the maps, histories, economic arrangements, and institutions we inherited. We are demanding that the historical record tell the truth. And we are insisting that acknowledgment must be accompanied by action, including serious engagement with reparations, economic justice, sovereignty, and the right of African and African-descended peoples to self-determination.
We are no longer asking permission to name the truth. We are naming it for ourselves and demanding that the world reckon with what that truth requires.
(Dr Christiana Best is an Associate Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut)
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