I know these are muddy waters, but is anyone else wondering why we can’t have an understanding that descendants of slaves in the US is a different and distinct group from Black America generally?
I ask because I realize the ADOS movement is xenophobic, and heavily criticized for it, so much so that I can’t find an article on my feed that doesn’t laugh off the concept as a bad movement that divides Black America, essentially as bad as Russian trolls.
However, most of the discrimination I’ve received from white people is because they associate my darkness with descendants of slaves, not Africa. I’ve had African immigrant friends who did not want to be associated with Black Americans because they noticed it would tarnish their reputation with white peers. I’ve been told by white men that Africans can be just as good as “everyone else” but that descendants of slaves are inherently worse, either because of our culture, generational poverty, or the idea that slavery lowered the IQ of our population. They hate not just Blackness, but us in particular. Most positive Black representation I’ve seen is steeped in Pan-African positivity- think about the hype Wakanda got with it’s African excellence and bitter ADOS villain, and the Back to Africa movement birthed so much of “Black is Beautiful”. I didn’t see stories about how influential Black American culture is by itself until Trevor Noah, didn’t hear that freedmen were given the opportunity to go back to Africa and collectively said no until maybe 2 years ago.
I don’t think nativism or xenophobia is at all acceptable and wouldn’t want that associated with this thought. However, I think it’s worthwhile to actually talk about this. It’s not divisive to talk about colorism, because we need to reckon with that to heal our community. It’s also not divisive to talk about how this experience needs to be addressed (sometimes in conversations about colorism! I’ve seen descendants of slaves called privileged (seen people pick out an ADOS individual and say they’re tired of seeing “this” as representation) for being “brown skinned” as opposed to dark skinned, as if the sexual violence and generational trauma of slavery disqualifies them from speaking on the Black experience?)
Is there a way we can talk about this openly? I feel like every conversation I’ve seen around this is either immediately shut down or pretty toxic, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to acknowledge this as openly as we do colorism.
