In this episode, we begin to explore how Blackness is an aspect of the human experience and what it means to belong to a diaspora where there are competing and contested meanings of what it is to be “Black” and to self-identify as such. This episode focuses on 4 participants (Alan, Ruby, Shanta and Joel) and the ways they grapple differently with the concept of Blackness: What is Blackness as they see it?  It also includes a brief interview with a leading philosopher, Dr. Quayshawn Spencer, on the significance of genomic/geographic ancestry from the way the US government utilizes population data to define race and Blackness and how people interpret racialization. (14:47)