# African diaspora theory  
Contemporaneous with the institutionalization of black studies was the popularization of the African diaspora as a heuristic to understand black connection and linkage. The concept helped to explain the condition and future of African descendants against the backdrop of African independence movements. It emerged as both a political and analytic term concerned with the dispersal of African people and their role in building the New World. Early articulations of diaspora emphasized continuity, essentialist notions of Africanness, rootedness, and unity among dispersed groups of African descendants. Consistent themes included violent removal from the homeland, imagined connections among African peoples dispersed throughout the world, and physical or psychological return to Africa. Longing (the psychic and metaphysical yearning based on lack or absence) and memory (the constant reminder of an enslaved or otherwise dominated past that pervades the present) sustained these perceived connections and desires for return. The basis of unity in these conceptualizations was a shared history of white racist domination and exploitation.