Identity matters…
…Now, more than ever!
We live in a country where after decades, a person can find out about a long-lost ancestor from an ethnic affinity group and begin to identify with that culture and it is likely that person will be embraced. A person can have lived forever feeling like their gender assignment was labeled improperly and now that person can live a successful life with their full identity and for those of us who care about people, it will matter and that person will be celebrated by all of us. A person can be from an immigrant group and have pride in the flag of their country of origin though a person must grapple with the good and bad that came with building the reputation of the flag. White folks all over America can celebrate their American identity boldly and nobody will bat an eyelash… How is it then that when Black Americans assert pride in their identity and the land and flag of their ancestors, they are vilified?
It seems wild in my opinion. There is backlash from other affinity groups to include ethnic identities because the assumption seems to be, that when this identity is asserted other people cannot appropriate Black American culture or use Black Americans to further their goals. But how did we arrive in this space? IMHO, for this we must go back to the end of the Civil Rights movement and the beginning of the Civil Rights Act.
When Dr. King was nearing the end of his life He began to speak heavily about reparations and a Black agenda that was based around descendants of American chattel slavery specifically, I do not believe that he was being discriminatory; I think he just knew that America needed to pay a debt but also, that the country also had an obligation to ensure that immigrants shouldn’t face suffering either. Faced with discrimination in the neighborhoods they were allowed to live in, inevitably immigrant students began joining these demonstrations. When a Howard University student by the name of Stokely Carmichael, who was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago entered the scene, he quickly emerged as a leader amongst the youth, he began to usher in a new type of Black identity in America. By the time he moved to Africa in the late 1960s, Kwame Ture’s (changed his name in the 1978), message of diaspora blackness and a disdain for non-violent activism led to a Pan-Africanist movement like never before seen. He quit the Black Panther Party (mostly descendants of chattel slavery), because of their work with white liberals and not being separatist enough for his Pan-African views. Under his guidance people began to drop their “slave names” in lieu of African names, speak Swahili, wear dashikis, listen to African music (his first wife was Miriam Makeba, South African recording artist) and denounce ties to the American flag for strict allegiance to the Pan-African Flag (pictured), whose colors are, Respectfully, Red = Blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty; Black = The color of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong; Green = The color of the luxuriant vegetation of their Motherland.
As the Black power era of Black politics came and went, the leaders were split into two groups. Those that were demonized in media for fighting for descendants of slavery SPECIFICALLY, because they were still facing the same problems as their ancestors and the leaders who were meeting with the government to discuss how systemic racism toward people with melanin SPECIFICALLY is just as effective as captivity in creating trauma around the world. IMO, a Pan-African identity suggests that African descendants are a monolith and that their culture and identity that is wrapped up in the land of their immediate ancestors (wherever it may be) is of no value and should not be accepted if it was co-authored by white civilization. This would be a wonderful idea to get on board with, except it is a terrible idea to get on board with.
This understanding would first be undermined by the fact that Africa the continent is named after a white man and several of the countries are in fact named for other white people. His descendants and the descendants of his friends and acquaintences gave everyone permission on their own continent to assert their “Africaness.” Based on this, would it not be prudent to say that in the spirit of shucking the names that come from colonizers you cannot call it a Pan-African identity, you would have to call it the Pan-Alkebulan identity, as Alkebulan was the name prior to this white dude discovering someplace where people lived and naming it selfishly.
As youth I wondered, “how the largest Continent on the planet, home to at least 52 countries full of people, with melanin and all of the most important natural resources on the Earth; could not have the power to say Black suffering everywhere is over and we will all return to the “Motherland”, but has never conspired to make that happen?” Well, the problem was that it has always been in Africa’s best interest to ensure that there are Black people who remain in America and other countries that they sold people to. For you see, if these descendants of captivity make gains in government and have decision authority, then it leads to assistance with favorable policy. If they make gains in social space, it affords the opportunity to bolster African identities while downplaying American influence and if there is economic empowerment or restorative justice, then it is assumed that melanin and the facing of discrimination in that country are the ties that bind to be included in the justice claim.
These ideas have been harmful for years and have presented a disconnect in the Black community. Several people I have spoken with, who are not of direct African descent claim to not have any ties to Africa and identify with the American flag as the flag of their ancestors. Because of this and the contribution that the descendants of American chattel slavery had in building and maintaining the country, it seems prudent to allow them to identify themselves ethnically how they see fit. Anyone telling them how they must identify because of their own selfishness, is guilty of the same selfishness that caused slavery to persist for so long. Asserting a claim that somehow the existence of my identity as an American Descendant of Slavery (ADOS) is divisive, is to tell me to not embrace the years of toil and sacrifice that our ancestors put in to see us become full citizens.
You may not have descended from people who took their own lineage from livestock to citizenship. You may not have descended from people who had their young stripped from their arms and sold to other people or tossed to alligators. You may not have descended from people who saw attacking injustice as a way to prove that G-D exists! You may not have descended from a people who cared about everyone else so much that they shared their victories for Civil Rights, Affirmative Action and Brown V. Board of Ed., only to be put at the end of the line for their portion. You may not have descended from people who built the Democratic party for progress, but were then cut out of the process by a government that ensured that both parties had campaign funds by sharing their profits from slavery. You may not have descended from people who always hold legislators accountable to the words and doctrine that they claim to operate by. You may not have descended from people who gave the world the idea for “Sunday’s best”, because they wanted to look nice on the only day they could fellowship with their family and friends. You may not have descended from people who understood that the civil war was about being in slavery on both sides, but economic slavery offered more opportunities than physical slavery. You may not have descended from people who were forced in peonage slavery after chattel slavery. You may not have descended from bootleggers and sharecroppers and folks that were part of the great migration. You may not have descended from people whose first generation of FREE children in their home country were born in 1965. You may not have descended from people who are proud of this heritage…
…But I have!
Just think about it, there was no Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) prior to 1971, during the height of the Black Power politics why was it created? It seems that because of the behavior momentum, the fight for justice for the descendants would have been carried into the annals of congress during this time, but instead they were co-opted for an opportunity to use melanin and Pan-Africanism as a vehicle to group Black people for further exploitive practices. Phrases like “Afro-American” and “African-American” became commonplace and for those folks that either were not from the Continent but from other “melanated” nations or who didn’t like the phrasing, you had simply “Black.” In preparation of the crime bill that CBC sponsored and received kickbacks for until 2016, there was a campaign of “minorities”, which would be used to group the aforementioned people, mixed race people and poor non-Black immigrants. Recently there has been a shift in grouping to now be called Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). This term suggests that any of the affinity groups mentioned in the previous sentences, immigrant groups that have melanin and Native Americans are involved in the same fight for social justice…They are not!
Though they may be tied together by “White Supremacy”, they are all nuanced by their own struggles. As an ADOS, my view is that every single other identity’s justice claim has been asserted on the backs of ours and backed by all, while all of America chooses to disregard our claim because the conversation about slavery makes everybody uncomfortable but us. That reality alone makes us an ethnic group, which is defined as a community or population made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent. Thusly, asserting my argument that America and the world should see ADOS as our own ethnic identity and disaggregate our numbers from others for restorative justice.
Thank y’all for listening. These thoughts are my own and have been influenced by lived experience ONLY. Any attempt to associate these thoughts with any person or persons that is/are not myself or who has express permission to act on my behalf will be considered libelous and slanderous.
