I think both sides have legitimate issues.
Some African Americans have completely bought into Westernized thinking to the extent that some stereotype Africa and talk about a whole fukking continent like it’s a country. Some African Americans want to associate themselves with white Western wealth to the extent that they talk racialized shyt about groups of African like they are colonized themselves. Ignore the realities of geopolitics like our current quality of life isn’t contingent upon the current enslavement and destabilization of many African economies to ensure access to natural resources that allows us to have the latest iPhone 23.
But
but…
Let’s also not lie and act like some African immigrants don’t try to ingratiate themselves to whiteness when they get to America by joining in on the let’s gang up on America’s red-headed stepchild: the African Americans…all while trying to gentrify our culture.
I’ve encountered attitudes among certain African diasporic communities that made me wonder if they forgot the color of their skin when they stepped foot on American soil. It’s like bootstrap mentality 100x. Attitudes like
“I’m a poor immigrant and I made it in America, so why can’t you do it?”
They’ll completely ignore the effects of unique historical realities African Americans endure in this country that make success difficult in ways that many diasporic communities don’t get. Like having to establish a culture, history, sense of community, traditions from scratch for a speck of darkness in a whitewashed society. Or how even in spite of having no motherland culture to gird us against the harmful effects of racist social conditioning, we STILL took up the banner of civil rights and self love and forged a path to equality for everybody else and the only thanks we get is for other immigrant groups to come over here and arrogantly claim we should do better.
I ain’t down with none of that shyt.
If we can be honest and get past these issues, I think a Pan-African movement could be established. Hell I honestly think a pan-everybody getting shytted on by TPTB movement could get popping (whites included) if we stopped and really looked at who is benefitting from the division amongst all races of people.
Because around the world in every nation, only a few at the top are eating off these divisions. Historians have speculated that both Malcolm X and MLK’s shift to a poor man’s populist platform combating poverty is what REALLY pulled the trigger for these leaders.
Yeah I do think a lot of this shyt is orchestrated but I also think there are legitimate gripes. However I don’t think they are insurmountable AND I think self-haters in all camps are used to misrepresent both ADOS and Diasporic communities.
Because for every African American I’ve heard claiming Africa is a shythole, there’s like 80 Ari Lennox’s that love and have great respect for many different African cultures and wanna learn more about their history.
And for every African diasporic immigrant that plays dumb about African American issues, I know a shyt ton who stand in arms with us.
I think there needs to be a clear line in the side on both sides delineating themselves from ignorant counterparts who seem to have louder microphones than others of their respective groups.
