a comment on Lexi's post:
in an American context, white and nonblack people of color are almost always allowed a second identifier than whatever racial category they're placed in.
and even though a lot of people make ignorant assumptions (all Latinx people are Mexican, all Eastern Asian people are Chinese) the individuals are still allowed their identities in a way black people are not. because as offensive as it is for someone to assume that all of x people are the same, when you're black you're black and there's no chance for you to be anything but African-American unless you have an accent that they can mock you for. the number of forms that I've had to mark 'African-American' on while they give a wider categories for other nonblack PoC identities for is kind of amazing because uh, hello.
and I mean, at least I'm both African and American. for someone like my sister who is an American citizen but a Nigerian immigrant it's more frustrating because unless she's in a genuinely culturally sensitive environment, she's never going to be seen as Nigerian. she's black. that's all she gets. and that's an experience that a lot of immigrants are taken aback by because in our home countries we are our ethnic groups. we're not allowed that here.
the experience a black person who is African-American has is similar but also dissimilar to the experience a black person who is Kenyan might have, but there's no room to acknowledge the differences because antiblackness wipes out the complexities of our identities.
