Everytime there is a diaspora war on here, I truly want y'all to remember that the damaging effects of anti-blackness are global and widely spread. Africa may be the "motherland" but it is not this safe, cozy, "kings and queens" bearing "home" you dream it to be.

And I say "motherland" loosely because Blackness is indigenous to all spaces it occupies. We've got to let go of this idea that ancestry begins and ends in Africa. It doesn't. And it's okay to recognize that and be proud of it.

And my understanding has developed but I truly don't think there is a Black person that hasn't experienced displacement because to be Black is to forever and always be enslaved to something or someone. We are all displaced when anti-blackness is involved.

I want us to stop fighting over who is allowed to call somewhere home because as a Black person, your "home" is everywhere, even if your lineage exists in a specific region.

Now, even with this understanding of indigeneity to everwhere as a Black person, it's still really important to ensure that your afro-futuristic or ancestral takes of a space don't overshadow the very real anti-Black violence that Black people experience in that space.

To dream of Africa as this place where Blackness is safe and not held underneath the violence of slavery does a disservice to those that are still experiencing the effects of that, which, in this case is everyone.

I’m not one to tell someone what to dream of but if you are going to dream, try dreaming of the spaces your lineage currently exists in as spaces that birth these “kings and queens” you wish to be, that move us forward to freedom, that birth new realities where we all thrive.

The issue is definitely partially the “wakandification” (thank you @divanificent) but it’s also the fact that it seems that Africa is the only space that people assume these utopian realities can exist, and to be specific, it’s only ever west Africa.

In short, I want y’all to know Blackness as indigenous to everywhere. I want y’all to celebrate the lineage you know right now and dream of futures where Blackness doesn’t have to be attached to a specific region to thrive.

Your Blackness doesn’t have to be attached to this false “kingdom” in Africa to be valuable and worth celebrating and ideating around. The idea that it does is actually anti-Black. That’s important to know.

For me, it’s like y’all are making a gravesite a place where anything except Death is the reality and that’s really weird sometimes. People die in Africa too — from anti-Blackness that shows up as famine, as inadequate healthcare, as inaccessible wealth, as government brutality.

And if you’re not willing to acknowledge and mourn over the ancestors that have died without even a whisper or a step towards “justice” then I don’t know how comfortable you expect people to be with your ideologies of the spaces they must occupy and die in.