Episode #380: Black Latinx Identity and Culture: Dash Harris on Diaspora Storytelling & Co-Founding AfroLatinx Travel

Episode Summary

Learn how growing up between Brooklyn and Panama shaped Dash’s journey into documentary storytelling and global travel. Peabody Award–winning producer and historian Dash Harris tells stories about coming of age between 1990s Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and Panama.  She reflects on navigating Black and Afro-Panamanian identity across cultures and how those experiences shaped her understanding of race, identity, and the global Black diaspora. Dash tells the backstory of filming Negro, her groundbreaking docu-series exploring race and anti-Blackness across Latin America. She also explains how filming the docu-series ultimately led her to co-found AfroLatinx Travel, a company that organizes trips centering the African roots of Latin America and connecting travelers with Black communities, histories, and cultural traditions.

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Dash Harris

Dash Harris is a Peabody-award winning multimedia producer, activist, world traveler and public historian focused on AfroDiasporic stories, identities, histories and futures. She is the co-founder of AfroLatinx Travel, which facilitates group trips centering Latin America’s African roots that are led by Black Latin American locals.  She is also the producer and director of Negro: A Docu-Series on Latinx Identity and its deep-seated race, color, and class complex. Born to Black Panamanian parents, she grew up in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, NY, and today she offers trainings, workshops, and coaching on dismantling anti-Blackness in Latinx communities.

What You'll Learn
  • How growing up between Brooklyn and Panama shaped Dash’s understanding of Black identity across the global diaspora
  • How her Negro docu-series explores race, anti-Blackness, and Afro-Latinx identity
  • How her companyAfroLatinx Travel offers trips that center the African roots of Latin America
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WATCH NEGRO: A DOCU-SERIES ABOUT LATINX IDENTITY 

FOLLOW DASH AND SEE UPCOMING AFROLATINX TRIPS

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Time Stamped Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.

[1:14] Introducing Dash Harris

[2:32] The Black Women’s March for Reparations and Wellbeing in Brazil

[8:47] Dash’s Mom’s Experience Immigrating from Panama to New York

[11:14] Growing up in a Black Panamanian Immigrant Home in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn

[17:12] Music, Culture and Childhood Memories from 1990s Bed Stuy

[23:24] High School in a Majority-White Suburb

[26:29] Attending Temple University in Philadelphia

[28:11] Studying Abroad in London

[31:19] Filming “Negro: A Docuseries on Latinx Identity”

[38:46] Co-Founding AfroLatinx Travel

[48:34] Upcoming AfroLatinx Travel Destinations for 2026

[51:53] Follow and Connect with Dash