By the twenty-first century, there are prescribed rules of thumb when using the explanatory paradigm. The field of study and the tools of explanation continue to grow, and African diaspora advocates are slowly filling all the “traditional” disciplines of the academy. Today, there is a veritable cottage industry of African diaspora theorists in the academy who continually employ concepts and frameworks that add richness to our understanding of black life in different places. There are even interdisciplinary programs in African diaspora studies located in several universities. Most theories and analyses use the Afro-Atlantic model as the norm with slavery as a point of trauma and dispersion, although this norm has been expanded to encompass contemporary African migrations and diasporas, including black life across the Indian Ocean. The first task of any narrative analysis is to clarify the concepts used, and in diasporic studies we must also define the community and individuals being studied.

African diaspora theory provides a framework for understanding the socio-historical experiences of peoples who have been categorized by phenotype or skin color. However, what are the problems associated with categorizing people of African descent into a transnational, historical continuum and then describing communities using the concept of diaspora? First, people in the diaspora do not necessarily accept or use this concept when talking about their own communities. One does not need to identify as an African diaspora person for a concept or theory to be useful. Secondly, sorting peoples into racial categories and assuming that each represents its own history also runs the risk of becoming the worst kind of essentialist doctrine. This paper critiques numerous trends in the conceptualization of the African diaspora,

Simply put, diaspora as a concept can be defined as a community of identity that forms when people move. However, this multi-valued theory has rarely been so simply defined; rather, it has been used to characterize a complex set of circumstances, from individuals who are racially categorized, to oppressed religious or cultural groups, to communities of consciousness, to a whole host of other dispersed groups. The concept of diaspora originated in the Greek language with a certain ambiguity regarding the Greek imperial project of settlement and migration. Subsequently, the concept was applied to the forced migration of Jews from the Holy Land, and our understanding of diaspora became inextricably linked to this “classical” Jewish model of oppression and victimization. today, scholars studying black life and culture in the African diaspora generally use several characteristics in their analysis:
1) dispersal/migration;
2) Germination;
3) Community of consciousness.