Why Can’t We Be Friends? (The Diaspora)

Myself and a student with some Haitian decent get to talking about Haiti’s Revolution and its impact on the United States.While sitting on the media panel at the Harvard Black Policy Conference I received two questions from men, one Liberian (a former US colony), the other also from an African country, about the diaspora and how we felt in regards to reporting on the plight and lives of black people everywhere. I talked about how a few times on my site I’d mentioned how my heart breaks when I see different types of people of African decent fight each other using the same terminology either our slave masters or former colonialists used against us.

(More after the jump)

Then I remembered the hurt from some readers during a “black versus African American” terminology thread where some expressed disdain for Africans and other members of the Diaspora, condemning them for “sticking amongst their own kinds” or for not liking black Americans. Some even accused them of going too far in what they saw as trying to please white people to prove they were “different” from us.

I tried to point out that the ignorance flows both ways. We were born to hate each other, both sides often being cruel. I can remember black students cruelly teasing and harassing the one Nigerian girl in our class. How dare she not look or dress like the rest of us or not sound like us. And her family hadn’t thought about buying school clothes because she’d come from a place where everyone wore uniforms. But she was routinely asked the ignorant “lions and tigers” questions. It’s a testament to her resilience that she managed to not let the ignorance of others stop her from pursuing friends and going to dances.

As one man at the conference put it, when he came to America he was told to stay away from black Americans because they were the worse. But then, when he son was sent to school he is told that Africans are like monkeys and that he should be happy to be in the US. His son then tells his father that he acts like a monkey when ever he acts “African.” He, liked me, seemed to be carrying that same heartache. What sense did it make for him to decide to believe those who said “black Americans are bad” when they would easily say the same about him?

So why do some black Americans perpetuate stereotypes against these foreign born blacks?

It could be naivete. It could be me coming down with a bad case of “America is special” jibber jabber, but I always feel like black Americans should at least try to be leaders in the Diaspora just as our country is looked to for leadership in the world. Our wealthy are the wealthiest of blacks. Or educated are very educated (many from oversees come here just for the schooling). We have a proud history and story to share. But often we’re too concerned with ourselves to think about our starving and sick brothers and sisters in Haiti, who we owe in some ways for inspiring us to never give up on freedom.

Or how we have so much in common with blacks in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil (where slavery lasted the longest), Venezuela, France, Great Britain and more. Think of what we could learn from each other. From the Kenyans, the Ivory Coast, South Africa, Senegal. We know what it’s like to be strangers in your own country. In many cases these individuals simply don’t know our story. We can’t fault them for not knowing. We can fault them for falling for such an obvious rouse, but so many of us, out of self-hatred, fell for it to against them.

But imagine if black Americans started working with other blacks international on everything from microlending to building corporations? From hospitals to education? Our combined wealth and knowledge would make us a force to be reckoned with. We could have our own summits and G8 style forums that would make demands of corporations who are harming everyone from poor blacks in Texas oil towns to poor Nigerians along the coast.

Yes there would be fighting and conflicting interests, but they have that in the actual G8 and in the United Nations. Why couldn’t we do it? And why couldn’t we lead the way? Why are we still telling monkey jokes in 2009 about Africans? Why do Africans still believe lies that we’re the worst of the worst?

Why can’t we be friends?

daniellebelton

68 responses to “Why Can’t We Be Friends? (The Diaspora)”

  1. RiPPa Avatar
    RiPPa

    Being an immigrant myself from Trinidad & Tobago, I’m often discouraged to come across so many African Americans who are clueless to the geopolitics of the world as it affects all people of color. I think it says a lot when kids like myself are familiar with other cultures, and can embrace them whereas in this country, African Americans are almost segregationists in their own way. But hey, there is an air of exclusivity that permeates American culture so who are African Americans to be any different. I can only speak for myself and my experiences, but its as though nothing has ever happened outside of this country as far as the Black diaspora is concerned. Life would be so much better for all once we recognize that we are all indeed citizens of the world poossesing so much to share and learn from one another.

    Reply
  2. Lola Avatar
    Lola

    both sides are being told negative things about the other and believing them because we want to feel superior to someone

    Reply
  3. Thembi Avatar
    Thembi

    As a native-born black American slave descendant I see the situation in the reverse. African-Americans are generally less educated and wealthy than anyone who is able to immigrate to the United States. The black people who do so benefit from race-based affirmative action once they get here but statistics show that their experience in the United States is one of higher education and wealth than black OR white Americans. Immigrants are a self-selecting group and therefore aren’t particularly representative of the countries from which they’ve come and they’ve definitely come here for a reason and it aint to make friends (in other words, when my West Indian friends stress how hard their people work, I always remind them that they are definitely some lazy fools who stayed back in Jamaica). Its totally unacceptable for people on either side to operate solely on stereotypes that go both ways. As a slave descendant I have been instantly treated like pure garbage by Africans and West Indian black people just because they’d made up their mind about me in some fashion and had further decided that we have nothing in common worth protecting. I think that the real reason we have preconceived notions about non-native blacks is that they become part of "black" America by default (or perhaps by choice, I’m not sure) and those stereotypes get fueled further and confronted. In reality we dont have all that much in common except for white oppression. Since white people see us as the same we’re socialized in the same space and then we fight to demonstrate how different we are. There are plenty of unfair stereotypes in the black community (as in most communities) about, for example, Asian people, but our interaction with them is limited in a way that keeps us from having to have discussions like these.

    Reply
  4. Nicole Avatar
    Nicole

    on point!

    Reply
  5. serena kitt Avatar
    serena kitt

    We *can* be friends!I like to point out something, although it may cause dissension to do so. The White House presents a fascinating way to look at this. You have the President (who is African-American in the way that an increasing number of our brothers whose family members have come here recently identify), the Attorney General (whose family is previously from Barbados), the Ambassador to the UN (whose family is previously Jamaican). Then you have the First Lady, Trade Rep Ron Kirk, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, and OPL Director Valerie Jarrett, whose families are more recently and more largely black Americans going back a-ways. I don’t want to assume that there’s never dissension in the ranks, but all of these people on each of those lists sure as hell identify as both "black" and "American" all the livelong day, while no two of them, *within* either of those lists, really share the exact same background. If there’s a solvent to be found through black Americans’ role in this mix, it’s that we inhabit all those differences. There’s something nice about being able to look at the White House for an example of how to progress across national backgrounds, even if it is only looking at how highly-educated upwardly-mobile professionals get through their differences. If that’s all of our goal, to be able to contribute to our common societies and our respective societies, maybe we can take some cues from how these folks relate. It will be interesting to watch, and I hope we’re all paying attention.

    Reply
  6. dukedraven Avatar
    dukedraven

    I’m a firm believer that if you want the world to change, you have to change from within first, and then the world will reflect your inner change. This is how true change occurs. While I’m not seeing racism in my personal life, I’m slowly seeing a rise in bigotry in our society, which is partly due to Obama’s victory. I don’t like this growing prejudice, so I counter it by constantly reminding myself that we’re all connected and one, even when it appears that we’re so far apart and bear little in common. When I see misguided white people, especially those who may be harboring a bias, I tell myself that they don’t understand who they really are, and for this very reason, they fail understand who I really am as well. I wind up spending a lot of time forgiving people, and forgiving myself for judging and thinking bad of them.

    Reply
  7. Alsace Avatar
    Alsace

    "descent" NOT "decent" (sorry, that sort of thing drives me nuts). Don’t have much to add, as I largely agree with Thembi’s comment. But it’s important to note that whereas the advantages black immigrants bring with them (education, work ethic, minor property) have often been inherited by their children in the second generation, they have more often than not been lost in the third generation, that of their grandchildren, through the cumulative effects of discrimination, peer pressure, etc. Knowing this doesn’t stop internecine condescension, but you can sometimes alleviate it by pointing this out.

    Reply
  8. chris chambers Avatar
    chris chambers

    I dunno Snob, being the son of a Jamacian immigrant and an African American mom I have usually seen it 75-25. As in 75% of it running against African Americans from Africans, West Indians, etc. Running from general snobbery or separation, to out and out hostility and definite closer association with anything white or whiteness. But that’s just my anecdotal experience.

    Reply
  9. Marcus McElhaney Avatar
    Marcus McElhaney

    This article is great. I’ve often thought that we of the African diaspora could learn much from the Japanese. I mean historically, Japan was devastated in a major war and humiliated. Sixty years ago "made in Japan" was a joke and today there are some things that some of us will buy only if it was made in Japan. By working together and making good decisions Japan is again a world power to the point that the US apologized for the wrong treatment of Japanese during the war. What if the diaspora did the same. Maybe we can get an apology for slavery.

    Reply
  10. Robert M Avatar
    Robert M

    For a follow up you might want to take a look on Ta-Nehisi’s blog at Atlantic magazine. Funny how great minds think a like.One thing about the pictures from your trip I noticed most of you are in your late 20’s early 30’s. How representative of the conference?

    Reply
  11. politicallyincorrect Avatar
    politicallyincorrect

    I am African American and I have never had an issue with Africans and Carribeans who were actually from the country. I always ask them about their culture (in a respectful way of course) and they love telling the stories and jump at the chance for you to try their food. It is their children who are born in America who never even lived in their parents home country with the superiority attitude and who puts down African Americans. And when I was in high school we were all just black, but when I went to college its seems then people started waving the flags of their parents home country and saying things like AA’s don’t have a culture. I was completely shocked b/c I have never heard such things before I went to college. But the students who actually grew up in another country and came to America to go to college were the nicest bunch of folks and I never heard them put down African Americans. And I notice they didn’t even hang out with the flag waving children of immigrants.Does anyone think that some of this elitenism has something to do with colonialism. Like in general world culture the British and French are supposedly more sophisticaed. So their former colonial subject think they are better than regular ol black Americans?

    Reply
  12. RainaHavock Avatar
    RainaHavock

    I’ve encountered many blacks from the diasopra being in college. Most if not all were great people. Now I remember when I was in the school cafteria and I was hearing these talking to this African students. They were asking the dumbest question like did they use drums instead of phones to communication? >_< I wasn’t even in the conversation but I was so embarrassed at how ignorant they were.

    Reply
  13. Andrea Avatar
    Andrea

    Growing up in the Low Country in the 70’s, there were no "nothin" but Blacks and Whites. To us, everyone was exotic and interesting. I think there was less than 10 Asians at my high school in the late eighties. When I moved up North, I had never seen so many Whites with dark hair. Everyone seemed blonde that lived around us. So I never heard of the stereotypes or jealousies until I moved up North. Then while matriculating in college, I never heard anything on the campuses. I had all these Black professors that romanticized Africa and Africans or anyone from the Diaspora that I and my peers did too. Now…I am older than people in their early twenties and thirties. I think our attitudes are generational and socio-economic. Being in what is called African-American Theatre, we were quite naive about the two-way street of love that we thought Africans would feel for us. It took us–the younger ones in our twenties at the time to realize that the older Blacks were trying to teach us romantic notions of having healthy loving relationships with Africans and others. Little did we know what we would really find out.After college I started to hear of the stereotypes and experience the empirical truths that Africans and West Indians were not so happy to see me coming as a loving lost cousin. Ironically I just had a conversation last week with someone I’ve known for awhile who has choreographed Beyonce’s 2007 World Tour and other shows Beyonce performed on and he asked for some of my shirts I still have stored away. He says when he travels overseas, the Africans treat African-Americans the worse. My friend Lysette sings back-up for Kelis and she bought Uppity Negro shirts for her and Kelis because of the same thing Jeffrey said. My cousin told me the same thing. She worked in Russia and said they were not as mean as other Blacks in the Diaspora. Jeffrey and Lysette has not crossed paths but said the same things. Now how are all of these credible people saying the same thing? People I know are mad and hurt but are keeping it quiet because they are embarrassed by the behaviors of Africans and others who act supremist and they don’t want to be the one to bring up the racial grievances with Africans. I’ve seen the same thing they see. It’s hard to be the Bad Guy and bring up this elephant in the room. These friends of mine are in the entertainment industry as artisans and have trained a LONG TIME to not be fly-by-night wanna-bees to know what we were taught in our college classes in romanticism and what we were taught at Freedom Theatre in to love and accept all from the Diaspora. It is actually very one-sided for most of us.I have seen several accounts of this that has happened more and more in recent years with me realizing my friends are telling the truth. Whereas the ease at first in the early 90’s was not as contentious with those from other parts of the Diaspora, something has been concentrating against African-Americans. People don’t realize that at colleges now, most student leaders are Nigerian and not African-American. Other African students are leading too but an overwhelming amount are African. Something is going on with the African-American Malaise hitting young people who are too spoiled and are not hungry for leadership while those from other places with brown skin look like us and we think it is an anomaly. It’s not a new exception happening. It is a movement. Whereas young Blacks concentrate the numbers at universities still, the 1st and 2nd generation American-born of African or West Indian descent are more hungry and are more serious and they have better family systems set up to support them. Their families get what is America better than us and they don’t have historical grievances that impede their progress and direction. So we don’t get what is going on because we think it is a rarity of exception that people of the Diaspora are achieving when it is not. They are COMING TO AMERICA to reap the American Dream and not to redeem us or justify us. Corporate America even supports them more because they are more interested in the sciences which is what companies need to remain relevant against international companies. So Corporate America is promoting this too. But Corporate America is not trying to start internal racial grienvances with us. They are just contributing to a problem that exists and Africans promote it. Being African-American I know how stupid and insincere we can be. But in this case about who is really promoting this, it is not us even when we have knuckleheads running off at the mouth attempting to tease an African. Africans know we are less educated and are chronically immature. Everyone knows we are America’s children. Everyone knows that African-Americans live for fantasies of redemption instead of maturing to face reality and make realities work for us. It’s not anyone from the African Diaspora’s job to breastfeed us. America is based upon chasing capitalism and for that, competition is the goal. They are coming here to look like us, slide in and trump us, prove they are more dynamic than us, and still look like they did not triangulate the motives. It’s purely fair in what is competition. For us who romanticize ever iota of life, we will take that as wrong and unfair. We need to learn how to balance that not everything and everyone is romantic to exalt us and wait for us…or wait on us. But as much as I get this obvious grievance really visible now–because the younger people are so more brazen in showing what their African families have taught them in motives, I only see this grievance growing. Africans are doing it and they are showing us up. I also know from experience that I now am cautious of doing business with any Nigerian men or to have any of my intellectual property out there because they steal. I have been burned too many times by them up close and from afar and I think they are obviously taught to steal and rob from African-Americans. How do you copy someone’s intellectual property and perpetrate that you are fighting the same battle as me when you COPIED me and never asked to help me? That is what Dangerous Negro did and I have learned that they will play their suspecting public for stupid because they don’t know that is what they did. It’s brazen theivery. Never have I had to deal with African-American men goosing me for trying to screw me in business or stealing my intellectual property but it keeps showing up that young Nigerian men are the only ones doing it. I have had young Black men ask me to show them how to do what I do but never have they gone as far as African men–mostly led by Nigerians have had in trying to rob by copying me. How do you copy to compete in social innovation? That[s oxymoronic. But leave it to Africans to copy something made by American Blacks, they will and they will sell it in American neighborhoods and overseas. They learn the capitalistic way has nothing to do with being friends or playing fair. So no, we are not family.African-American men have been mostly supportive and the only disappoints I have had with our men is that the older ones try to blackmail giving you help with wanting sex in exchange. Our elders–Black Boomer Men–they don’t care as much as swindling or stealing your intellectual property because they don’t take you all that serious. They just want to fuck you because you are needy for help. So we have problems on both sides. I know that Nigerian families teach their young men these behaviors to be predators and ironically the lack of tutelage by good mothers and good fathers teach our Black Boomer men how to be so sleazy. I saw how older Nigerian women looked at me when on the festival circuit and it was not nice. They were mean to me and other African-American women while Black women too were mean to Black women. And then the irony was of that: Nigerian young women were at my aid. Nigerian young women wanted to be sisterly and they had extremely loving hearts. Go figure! They had a bit of of sisterhood in their hearts that I could not get out of my younger African-American sis
    ter peers.I wish I could continue to build on the practicums my instructors in college and at Freedom Theatre taught me in wanting to be connected to others in the Diaspora. I do. I tried. But I see they don’t really want to be bonded to me. They just want to exploit me–Andrea. It could be different for others but for me, that’s my reality as of the recent years. I’ve had wonderful relationships with Kenyans and those from Ghana…and Tanzania. I’ve heard that South Africans wanted shirts. I just know that there is strife growing between Nigerians and African-Americans. That’s my experience and I think it will become an empirical truth for more and more African-American (descendants of slaves).

    Reply
  14. Danielle Belton Avatar
    Danielle Belton

    @ AndreaI don’t want to edit your posts, but could you keep them a little shorter? It messes up the flow of the comments and I think you’d get more readers. It’s also in somewhat violation of the posting rules, although you’re at least staying on topic.But long post can keep others from commenting (or reading through all the comments) and I want as many people to have something to say as possible.

    Reply
  15. Andrea Avatar
    Andrea

    Okay…I will. I think however…you are the first person that brings up such overdue topics. I mean…do you know how LONG I have been waiting for someone like you to point out these things? No one will touch it. Not on campuses…to bring it to the forefront…so…people like me and the people I know are marginalized to not be able to make the issues a platform. We have such cowards out here but as well, not as many even know what is the NEXT pressing topic. You have an audience of young people that have no idea of what some of us sandwiched in between feel or have been trying to express to them but could not because we needed someone like you to be the gateway. I’ve read so many blogs but they are regressive and where else is any intellectual fodder dispensed? Essence?And then, hardly anyone can keep up with the brightest out there…www.cobb.typepad.com. He’s way to heady. So you are the United Nations of platform issues suppressed. Did you really think that that question and all questions are so lite and easy to answer? Are we to be hallow and edited to not intimidate under-developed minds? Is a blog only to accomodate a bastardized momentum of traction or to propel us forward? Is a blog just to showcase the mean median of intelligence or experience and not to exercise the voices? Are we to accomodate for the sake of showboating to show up to not say anything meaningful that might trigger others to think or connect? And since traditional media is dying and Black institutes already did a bang-up job at not doing so far what you do, then who and were do we do what is required? Then we wondered in twenty-years why no one held it together or tried. It wasn’t convenient.I will hold back to allow others to not feel as if for some reason I am holding them back from sharing. I didn’t even contest anyone but okay…I will not share.

    Reply
  16. Danielle Belton Avatar
    Danielle Belton

    @ AndreaI didn’t say don’t post. I want you to post. I just want you to be considerate and keep them shorter. The length keeps people from reading them and the comments that come after wards. I think some people glaze over your comments because you aren’t able to make your points more succinctly. Also, it’s just common courtesy to other readers. That’s all I’m saying. The last thing I want is to censor content.

    Reply
  17. black girl Avatar
    black girl

    If African-Americans cannot get along with other African-Americans (Chris Rock – war of black people against niggas) why would African-Americans embrace blacks outside of America? As a first generation immigrant I was the topic of many a teasing at school because I spoke differently and I lived with monkeys in huts and ate bananas. I was made to feel less than the other children who looked like me because I was not American by birth. However, as my parents came here and worked through the system (contrary to popular belief they did not come here with money or education … but what they did have was purpose) and became educated and rose through the socioeconomic ranks to have a comfortable middle class life and then upper middle class life my parents were told that the only reason that they were able to rise so far so fast is because they were given special treatment and paid no taxes. Some others said that they were able to rise so far so fast because they had never been slaves and slavery did not exist where they were from … all of these things were not true.Now that I no longer speak with an accent and my history cannot as easily be seen I talk with “friends” and every once in a while I will hear them talk about the foreigners that are coming and taking their jobs and birth right and how they stink and don’t shower and they are blue black, ugly with big stank noses or how one set thinks that they are better then us African-Americans but how us African-Americans were here first so they have to get in line behind us.I know that this is not the feelings of all, but this is my experience. In my experience, with a large percentage of the African-Americans that I have come in contact with, African-Americans are too culturally self-centered to care about blacks outside of themselves and to try and understand differences and see that we have a lot to learn from each other. I mean, why is Oprah opening a school in Africa when there are poor African-American children right here in America?

    Reply
  18. Cat Markum Avatar
    Cat Markum

    As the American-born son of West Indian immigrants, I may be able to offer just a sliver of insight.Every second or third conversation I ever heard in my house growing up was how terrble/awful/lazy/shiftless Black American’s were. On top of that, of Black American’s being the crap de le crap in the human pecking prder, haitian’s–for some reason–we’re seen as the second lowest form of life on the planet.As things turned out, I feel madly in love with, and married, a secon dgeneration Hatian woman…and my parent’s racism rubs me so raw that I barely speak to them anymore.But all of this, this tension, this learned hate, begins at home.

    Reply
  19. xayide Avatar
    xayide

    My experience was similar to that of black girl. My mother came to the US because there was and still is heavy US recruitment for nurses overseas. I know African immigrants like the ones mentioned above who are of wealthy and educated backgrounds, but please do not put everyone in the same boat.I think that the attitudes go both ways and those attitudes go back many, many years. Even in the height of the back to Africa movement, Marcus Garvey saw African Americans as superior and more cultured than native Africans and those attitudes are still held today. I have had arguments with my South African cousins about their views of Americans and arguments with African Americans about how they view Africans. I think that both sides need to learn more about each other. African Americans need to understand that modern Africa is not all HIV/AIDS, poverty and wild animals – nor is it paradise. They need to understand that African is a continent consisting of countries with diverse cultures and people. And Africans need to make an effort to understand African American history and culture. In a sense we are one people, however our paths and experiences are different and we need to respect that and strive for mutual understanding.

    Reply
  20. Fly Girl Avatar
    Fly Girl

    Well. The ignorance continues. This is a topic I constantly address and it doesn’t appear to be getting any better. As an African American journalist, I specialize in African and Caribbean travel and culture for exactly the reasons displayed here. There are too many misconceptions, myths and ignorance among us and I attempt to provide accurate information. The first place to start is with geography and history. The U.S. does a pitiful job with educating students about much beyond our borders. So many African Americand don’t know the history of colonization and slavery throught the Diaspora. They don’t know where much of the Diaspora is. I know that everyone can’t afford to travel but everyone can educate themselves about history. A lot of the looking down noses from Africans and Caribbeans come from media stereotypes but some comes from the disbelief that a people from such a wealthy country can be so willfully ignorant about history and culture that has and does affect us. WE ARE THE SAME PEOPLE. Most African Americans were transported from the West coast of Africa. This means that many of our speech patterns, music, dances, traditional values, can be traced to NIgerian, Senegalese, Ghanian, Malian cultures. Learning about these places and cultures means learning about ourselves. Hip hop, the most recent African American art form, has been clearly traced to Senegal. The blues flows straight from Mississippi to Mali. We should know these things. We should also know that before the slave ships arrived in the U.S., they stopped in the Caribbean. From Cuba to Trinidad, African dialect, food and customs have been preserved because the landscape was so similar to the West African and enslaved people were able to escape and survive in a familiar landscape. Colonialism has affected African and Caribbean mindsets the same way that American racism has. This means that a preference for light skin and upper class accessories is often the focus. It doesn’t make it right but we should understand where it comes from. I was married to a Trinidadian whose siblings looked down on Americans for being lazy and shiftless. I was supposed to be the exception. They were highly educated ignoramoses but that does not make all Trinis or Jamaicans or Bajans like them. I have many African friends from all over the Diaspora- London, Cuba, Barbados, Nigeria, Jamaica, Senegal, Brazil, and I have never had an issue with being treated badly by my own people. If we had more understanding and respect for each others culture and history, we would not have so much resentment.

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  21. Lola Avatar
    Lola

    To all the Africans reading this, they did not tease you because YOU are Africans, they teased you because THEY are assholes. I’m an American yet I was also teased mercilessly by my Black and Latino peers because I was quiet and shy, because I spoke proper English, because they were jealous of my good grades, because I was raised to be lady like and not get in fist fights. My clothes were clean and well cared for but they came from Kmart instead of the mall. The year I started college my mother was supporting 3 children on only $19,000/ year. Most of the things I was made fun of for doing were middle class characteristics but I was a working class girl. I assume that was the case with those of you who were picked on, correct me if I’m wrong but were you living in poorer or inner city areas or suburban middle class areas?

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  22. Marie Avatar
    Marie

    Great topic! If we could only voice our differences in positive ways instead of at each others expense. Solidarity across class, geographic, skin shade and hair texture differences is a tall order though – even absent of the colonial legacy. The European diaspora (if you can even apply the term diaspora to that configuration…) is damn good at overcoming those differences though 🙂 I’m not saying it’s a cake walk for them, but I guess status and money helps smooth out the differences a bit.

    Reply
  23. Lite Bread Avatar
    Lite Bread

    Beautiful Snob,I really do understand the feelings behind wanting to be "united". Heck, really all humans should be, but …Maybe it’s that Melanin just doesn’t "unite" like we’d like to believe.

    Reply
  24. Roots Avatar
    Roots

    So much has been said already I don’t know what value I would add to the discourse. But as the person in the pictures, whose parents were born in Hati, without saying this is a topic close to my heart. I have encountered so many people with hurtful stereotypes, from Nigerian taxi drivers to African-American friends, towards whoever the "other" black group was. When I traveled and lived throughout West Africa, it was no different…"Wny do the blacks in American kill each other?" As much as such comments hurt, we must be the ones who take the knowledge and understanding that we do have and share it with our brethren. Explain to the Caribbeans and Africans the toll of psychological trauma and disenfranchisement has had on the psyche of the African-American. Explain to the African-American that the perception of Africans/Caribbeans that they possess was given to them by the mainstream media in attempts to create divisiveness (a divisiveness so ingrained in us now it looks like we CREATED it!). We must use words of love and unity to heal our communities and speak truth to ignorance. In a two minute conversation you may not change everyone’s mind, but maybe that one Nigerian cab driver will think differently when he tries to preach to you why African-Americans populate the welfare system.

    Reply
  25. BluTopaz Avatar
    BluTopaz

    @ Lola,You bring up a good point about inner city areas vs. suburbia: I was raised in the former and remember when a Jamaican girl was transferred to my elementary school in upstate NY. Her family had just moved to the States from Jamaica. I had never traveled anywhere outside of our small town, but I was one of those kids who read the encycopedia for fun, did more homework for extra credit, (and btw yes i was called white girl, fake bitch, the usual names). I can’t tell you my embarassment of my fellow Black American classmates ignorant line of questioning to the new student. "Do you have chickens in your house’, "Do yall speak English in Jamaica'(?!) and other nonsense. I was also curious about where she came from, but I never once had the sense of superiority the others did re: my American heritage. When I got older and attended senior high, I was able to meet Black kids from other socioeconomic backgrounds who did travel quite a bit, and I never sensed this lack of knowledge about other cultures.

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  26. Ama-louise Avatar
    Ama-louise

    We have this in england, between west indians and Africans, it was seeded in the minds of people during colonialism, each community was told how inferior they were to white britain but how even as low as they were they were not as bad as aficans/west indians. And until recently the communities have had a disdain of each other, but now we have a lot of intermarriage. Pockets of hatred have remained and always will exist, it’s racism just the same though.ps, i would just like to point out that i have never indulged those viewpoints and am very tolerant of all people regardless of background.

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  27. glory Avatar
    glory

    I wasn’t exposed to this thinking until college, since most everyone around me was also AfAm growing up. Freshman year, a Jamaican parented US born friend told me about the stereotypes she grew up hearing about AfAm’s (lazy, stupid, uncouth). It was brand new news to me. But then I realized that I had been told bad things about West Indians (hot tempered, dangerous, violent, stingy) in my old neighborhood. I never subscribed to what I had been told, and neither had my West Indian friend, BUT – I noticed that most of the blacks in college with me weren’t AfAm but West Indian or African. It made me wonder if maybe there was truth to the AfAm lazy stereotype. I still find myself trying to disprove it around non-AfAm blacks, including my future mother-in-law who is West Indian, whether or not I think they hold those beliefs personally. Time has passed, and I know better than to subscribe to any of those stereotypes now, but the stereotypes still haven’t gone anywhere. Reading has taught me that these kinds of prejudices are all relative to the country, socioeconomic status, financial means, culture of origin, etc. I’m personally fascinated by other diasporic cultures and respectful of non AfAms. I’m embarrassed by AfAms who harass Africans and others.

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  28. oci Avatar
    oci

    good post, serena!@ andrea-i’m confused a bit by your post. why do feel like nigerian men rob you and what makes you think they are taught that?

    Reply
  29. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Great Post…I think it all boils down to the man’s sublime and supreme divide and conquer tactics. We’ll always have problems with each other because we’ve been dispersed throughout the diaspora, watered down by colorism, and conditioned with a colonized mind. I love being black but ignorance within and outside of culture is what will keep us marginalized.I’m surprised that we don’t hate each other even more than we already do.

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  30. The A Avatar
    The A

    If allowed, fear divides every difference further and further into smaller and smaller fractions of Us vs ThemMY [GenderEthnicityReligonCultureContinentCountryRegionStateCityCountySchoolNeighborhoodStreetFratFamilySelf] is better than YOURS- Until you are standing all alone against the world.The only way we get beyond the miseducation is to be willing to question and open to be questioned about the information we have been taught about each other – about humanity.It starts with learning to love and appreciate yourself (big never-ending step)Then it grows into finding value and acceptance of others.Although problematic in it’s own ways, my daughter is growing up in a much more diverse place than I did. I grew up with way more diversity than my mom. I think the most valuable lesson my daughter is learning is to measure each person by the weigh of their individual character. Here I always thought mom was a bit like Archie Bunker, now my kid looks at me that way sometimes & I though I was doing good.Then again- MAYBE, just maybe, we can’t get along because we want to get along just because we are of the Diaspora. If that is reason enough to get along, is it reason enough NOT to get along with others?

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  31. An Urban Chameleon Avatar
    An Urban Chameleon

    It all really comes down to peoples exposures and experiences and unfortunately and fortunately people of the African Diaspora don’t all share the same outlook therefore there is bound to be conflict. African Americans and Africans ARE different from each other and then there are many differences with in (shoot Black people from the country are different from Black folks from the city). As an early commentator mentioned there is this assumed category that we all fall in just because we are of color but this is not enough to keep us glued together. Especially when slavery, this history we all have in common severely tampered with our cultural connection with each other (this is actually the irony!) separating Africans and African Americans and creating further divisions with in. Another part of what I often refer to as “Slave residue” particularly when I hear ignorant comments directed at either group, is our infliction of self hate, which very much exists with in the entire African Diaspora on so many levels. You still have people of color giving each other grief about wearing natural hair let alone these larger issues we’re trying to combat. To say hateful things about another group of people is a reflection of self hate. I too believe that to change the world starts with in- maybe the problem has been assuming that we are alike because of skin color hence those ignorant comments such as, “Why do you talk like that” or “Why do you wear that?” and instead think about how we can capitalize on our differences…since clearly we are.An Urban Chameleonhttp://homeoftheurbanchameleon.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-urban-chameleon-came-to-be.html

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  32. Alsace Avatar
    Alsace

    I had a fellowship at Harvard in the mid-90s — about a decade before Henry Louis Gates’s 2004 comment that "75% of the black at Harvard are either of direct African or Caribbean or bi-racial escent." At the time, I was living in a faculty suite in an undergrad dorm and eating in the dorm cafeteria. The cafeteria had an African table, a Caribbean table, and an African American table, and the pecking order was firmly in place: Africans at the top, African Americans at the bottom. And the African Americans were seething with anger at those who had come from outside and taken advantage of the benefits won by the struggles of the Americans’ families. And the anger at being further stereotyped by "their own" inevitably fed into self-doubt. It was a terrible situation.That Harvard dorm was where I learned that Africans, even if they are second generation, did not refer to themselves as African Americans. They described themselves as Nigerian American, Kenyan American, Ghanaian American, etc.. Thus the despised slave past of those with no known national or tribal descent was exaggerated by having to refer to themselves generically as African Americans. And as in all things at undergraduate Harvard, the bi-racials were off to the side in a shape-shifting limbo yet to be named. All further proof, if any were necessary, of how evolved in his thinking our President Barack Obama has become.

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  33. rikyrah Avatar
    rikyrah

    Andrea,I know that we have ‘ issues’, but nobody is saying that you shouldn’t post. I read everything you post. Don’t stop posting.

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  34. rikyrah Avatar
    rikyrah

    Snob,Coates is having this argument over at his blog, and I’ll post here what I did there: I’ve gotten in trouble for saying this, but I still believe it:Black folk are the TRUEST Americans..because we have fought FOR this country. I just don’t mean in every military conflict from the Revolutionary War on..I mean, at the root of progression in this country, over the course of centuries – to live up to its actual creed, is a pile of Black bodies. And, after Black folk did all the heavy lifting, here comes everyone else,to get the benefits, including Black immigrants that have the audacity to look down on American Black folk.

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  35. dukedraven Avatar
    dukedraven

    I’m really out of the loop. I never thought this subject matter would generate dissertations and treatises. Are some people working on their doctorates? Some of these comments are so long that James Michener would blush, if he were alive today. I’m baffled. I think I should have my "Negro Card" revoked.

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  36. me Avatar
    me

    You are on the cutting edge, Danielle. One only achieves success in life if you transcend. I am all for uniting with positive people. The aholes of all races and classes can rot in hell.

    Reply
  37. black girl Avatar
    black girl

    “Black folk are the TRUEST Americans..”Rikyrah – I don’t believe you because if you truly believe that black folks are the truest Americans that laid the ground work of this country then you would not feel threatened by the “everyone else … including Black immigrants” getting the benefits that the truest Americans should have. So I guess Native Americans were not the truest Americans, even though they have always been here, although in much greater numbers before the introduction of disease and the subsequent denial of their land, I hope someone told them. Based on your reasoning the President of the United States walked right in to become the president after the truest Americans did all the heavy lifting, because after all, he is not the descendant of US slaves, and therefore cannot be a truest American. I hope someone told the truest Americans that the president is not a truest American.

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  38. rikyrah Avatar
    rikyrah

    I don’t believe you because if you truly believe that black folks are the truest Americans that laid the ground work of this country then you would not feel threatened by the “everyone else … including Black immigrants” getting the benefits that the truest Americans should have. So I guess Native Americans were not the truest Americans, even though they have always been here, although in much greater numbers before the introduction of disease and the subsequent denial of their land, I hope someone told them. Based on your reasoning the President of the United States walked right in to become the president after the truest Americans did all the heavy lifting, because after all, he is not the descendant of US slaves, and therefore cannot be a truest American. I hope someone told the truest Americans that the president is not a truest American.Who said that I feel ‘threatened’. I’m telling it like I see it. Black folk do the heavy lifting in this country, as they have done, throughout history. I admit that we didn’t have a choice, but still, while the rest of this country went around saying, ‘ what a wonderful place’, Black folk were like, ‘ come on now, you know you haven’t lived up to your creed’. We put the mirror up to America and showed her underbelly, and fought continuously for it to be what we believed it could be. And, for our troubles; for our fighting and telling folks ‘ ah ah ah, you really AREN’T this great place —you have the potential to be, but aren’t,…for our troubles, Black folks WERE and continue to be DESPISED for it. And, afterwards, everyone else, after Black folks have done all the hard work, they come in, yelling ‘ where’s mine’, all the while never acknowledging what Black folks have done for this country. Africans don’t want anything to do with ‘ Black folk’ unless they can use it to get something. Otherwise, they don’t want to be considered like ‘ those Black folk’. Seen it once. Seen it a hundred times. And don’t be denial. Barack Obama was able to do that ‘ I’m not like the rest of those Black folks’ too. It’s why they clung to his White Mother, and AFRICAN father. It came up routinely during the campaign season, but best articulated by Chris Matthews, of all people. " He( Barack Obama) doesn’t bring all that messy stuff with him. "That ‘messy stuff’ is the whole 300 years of SLAVERY and 100 years of Jim Crow with him. Don’t be naive. Don’t be delusional. It’s part of why White folks voted for him. And, I know I’m about to get it now. But, no, I don’t believe Native Americans are the truest Americans. Native Americans FOUGHT America – and lost. Black Americans FOUGHT FOR America -fought for its soul…fought FOR its creed…and it’s why we’re despised.

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  39. dukedraven Avatar
    dukedraven

    I hate to do this, but I have to psychoanalyze this quote, which is an oxymoron to me: "I am all for uniting with positive people. The aholes of all races and classes can rot in hell." (anonymous post) What is positive about wishing people to rot in hell? Why even say such a hateful statement? What would possess you to even say such a thing? What words incited this anger? How is this statement performing any type of uniting? Does this person have any idea how judgmental and incendiary such a quote is? Does this person even have a sense of humor? I just want to know because I’m baffled by hateful comments that I sometimes encounter online, and I wonder what caused them. Perhaps this person is a teenager and in that case, he or she is excused on the basis on immaturity. BTW, I personally give people proper and deserved praise all the time. Danielle knows she is a gifted and I’ve told her numerous times myself. I’ve been following this blog for a year now, which is more than many people here.

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  40. dukedraven Avatar
    dukedraven

    Typo corrections: "on the basis of immaturity." "is a gifted writer." Oops, there it is.

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  41. Court Avatar
    Court

    "And, after Black folk did all the heavy lifting, here comes everyone else,to get the benefits, including Black immigrants that have the audacity to look down on American Black folk". -RikyrahSo what of black immigrants like Shirley Chisolm, Stokely Carmichael and Marcus Garvey? Were their contributions to America less worthy, their loads lighter?The difference is that they did not consider themselves a group apart, they did not look at black peoples as some justifiably fragmented race. They unified for the cause of ALL black peoples. Reading through alot of the comments it really makes me sad because quite a few posters justify divisions between native africans, immigrant west indians and african americans due to bad experiences in the past. In the same way that slave masters utilized black slaves to whip and beat other blacks down, we carry the practice forward to this very day. Our fragmentation benefits only the white power structure.

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  42. Diana Barry Blythe Avatar
    Diana Barry Blythe

    @Danielle In your photo up top you seem extremely pleased with something. Am I seeing more to the photo than what is there?

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  43. Danielle Belton Avatar
    Danielle Belton

    @ CourtI get annoyed by it as well. I can understand discussing cultural differences like music, food, language, views on religion and other issues, but those are cultural differences. I don’t get the need to separate or the hostility. It doesn’t bother me when I see African students on scholarship at universities. It’s not like America has been this great buddy to Africa (only recently have we cared about AIDS and malaria), and while it’s usually the best of the best who make it out here, considering how the western world basically has raped/is presently still raping the continent I’m not going to quibble over some scholarships. We’ve all been wronged in some kind of way. In America, we just have to have a different attitude because we’ve had to live, as minorities and as a servant class, in the bowels of American history. Of course, we’re going to have a different view than someone from the West Indies where the British left years ago and you’ve been governing yourself.And it sounds horrible, but racist people hate all of us. None of us are special to them. Hating each other doesn’t get us anywhere. Fighting over petty differences doesn’t get us anywhere. In Bakersfield, I hung out with a ton of Senegalese and Jamaicans. At a college graduation they brought a drum and we all danced. I never felt left out. Hell, half the dudes had crushes on me so they treated me quite nice. It was easier to just be laid back and talk shit out, than get upset over how they were all there on scholarship. I liked that they were trying to cut a rap record in French and had me sing on it in English. Some of the Senegalese guys had seen shit in life I’d NEVER seen as a Westerner and they thought I and other Americans were pretty soft (and I was). So I’m not really gonna tell someone who survived the diamond wars shit about struggle.@ Diana Barry BlytheAs Roots can attest (as she was the young woman I was talking to), we’d met earlier at the luncheon and she was pleased to find that she’d already discovered my blog and enjoyed a few entries. Then when she heard me talk passionately about the Diaspora we shared more on that afterward. I was pleased to be talking to someone educated and informed on her own culture as well as American culture … that, and I LOVE talking about history … that, and I think Haitian history is especially fascinating for the fact that they were the only colony able to execute a successful slave revolt in the history of slavery. And we were talking about the impact that revolution had in America (re: white slave owners became INCREASINGLY paranoid about their chattel going homicidal on them … maybe old Uncle Remus didn’t love dem kids AFTER ALL!)I was just happy to be there. I think I smiled a lot those two days. The students were all great. They put on a great conference and had great questions. As you can see, I got a lot to report out of it. I STILL have unreported items I need to write up!

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  44. black girl Avatar
    black girl

    Rikyrah-I am only going to say two things concerning your post and then I am done.“And, afterwards, everyone else, after Black folks have done all the hard work, they come in, yelling ‘ where’s mine’, all the while never acknowledging what Black folks have done for this country.”In a lot of those situations of scholarship the US goes looking for foreign blacks, not the other way around. And if Barak Obama is not a truest American then why do so may truest Americans claim him?Danielle –Haiti’s history is truly a remarkable one. My husband and I recently watched Amazing Grace and also a documentary about Haiti on the History Channel, and although we did know some of the history we did not know the details. It is unbelievable to me that in 1804 Haiti became the first sovereign black nation and today the nation is still paying the price. It is also interesting to me that the affects of colonization are so universal and long standing that even at that time it was acceptable and unquestioned that skin color within the black race was used as a casting system where mixed raced individuals received better treatment due to them being closer to the white race. As long as there has been colonization there has been means of creating manufactured divisiveness. I mean, isn’t that why the Tutsis and Hutu clashed causing the Rwandan Genocide?

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  45. nyc/caribbean ragazza Avatar
    nyc/caribbean ragazza

    Malcolm X ‘s mom was West Indian. Marcus Garvey was West Indian. Black immigrants are not coming in to "take" things that only African American "deserve." As a first generation black American I think the issue is Americans in GENERAL don’t give a shit about what happens outside her borders. They just don’t. Why would African Americans be any different?We are truly in a global economy. I feel bad for those who wallow in ignorance and believe America is the end be all. It’s not. What I resent is that some African Americans seem to thing all black people living outside of America are poverty stricken, dumb, and would sell their mother to live in America. I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a room with people who don’t know my background and have proceeded to go off on West Indians and Africans.Then I had to deal with some of my own relatives talking smack about African Americans. When I would protest and remind them that I was born in the U.S. they would say "you’re not American" . Uhm okay.Anyway I live overseas now. What is interesting is most of my black female friends here are from the UK (African or West Indian descent), black Italians or 1st generation black Americans. I met this one Jamaican expat who recently moved here and she asked me what was up with the African American women and the attitude? sigh. That said I feel much more connected to the diaspora here then I did in the States. For one thing the news here? I’ve seen more coverage on Africa in 1 year then the last 20 plus years in the States. And it isn’t just about illegal immigration, AIDS, corruption. I’m curious how many African Americans will be going to South Africa for the World Cup next? All other parts of the diaspora will be well represented. I hope some Americans will go.

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  46. politicallyincorrect Avatar
    politicallyincorrect

    There are many cultural similarities between carribeans and african americans. From language to food. Maybe if all those black professors like Dyson and them spent less time being camera whores for Fox News and defending degrading rap culture and did some actual black history research maybe we can close some of these divisions.

    Reply
  47. charlie Avatar
    charlie

    come to england. no gun crime, just lots of stabbings

    Reply
  48. Lisa J Avatar
    Lisa J

    Nice thoughtful post Snob. You hit on many important ideas. We do need to work together more and feel our brother and sisterhood with our fellow blacks in the diaspora and in motherland. Oh and on a totally shallow note, you look AWESOME in this pic!

    Reply
  49. Brigitte Avatar
    Brigitte

    I get overwhelmed and frustrated by the narrow minded ignorant attitudes on both sides. I don’t understand how seemingly intelligent African Americans and Africans can so easily buy into those media stereotypes.

    Reply
  50. Diana Barry Blythe Avatar
    Diana Barry Blythe

    @Danielle Thanks for sharing your journey.

    Reply

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