Unpopular Opinions: Diaspora war edition 🧵
Vicious Diaspora wars aren’t unique the black race. Whites Europeans and their descendants have them. Italians that live in Italy don’t like Italian Americans & perceive them as low class.
Afro Americans view the African continent through the westerns gaze. They see the continent as country. This problematic for an obvious number of reasons. Afro American believe that when they are referring to Africans they are referring to other black people.
But the term & generalization of Africa includes non black North Africans indigenous to the region. Referring to Africans ≠ black inhibitants of the contient. Americans really need to understand this concept (& remember that race is literally a social construct.
in reference to Africa they never refer to the region (north, east, or central). Many Afro Americans don’t know the construct of race is different on the African continent you’re race has to with your tribe and that feeds into a larger group of tribes that group is considered an
Ethnicity. The reason that many continental Black Africans do not consider you one of their own is because they regard Afro American as it’s own ethnicity or race. They also view you as Americans 1st.
Also Afro Americans are majority west and Central African. The majority of Africans can tell this immediately from your facial features. A dna test can also confirm this as well as history books. Which means you have no business claim the history or culture of East Africans.
Or invalidating their blackness which I’ve seen a lot of on Tik Tok. East Africa is home to the darkest ethnic group in the world the niloties also known as south Sudanese people. It really rubs me the wrong way when Americans say south Sudanese women have
Eurocentric features considering the amount of Racism and Discrimation they faced from the North Sudanese government and People that were literally trying to kill them off for being too black and non Muslim.
South Sudanese people to do not have Eurocentric features they just don’t have west African features. Saying that their features are Eurocentric is a result of many Americans narrow worldview of Africans.
There are too many black Americans that think that every single Africa has have the same phenotype as them or else they will call them mixed are so ignorant. I’ve seen this happen in real life with Ethiopians and Somalis. Even though the majority of Ethiopian have kinky hair &
The majority of Somalis have dark skin. Ethiopians and Somalis obviously look different because they belong to an entirely different region of Africa. Think about this do black people expect a Russian & a British person to look exactly the same.
It’s also extremely offensive to Somalis and some Ethiopians when you tell them that they are mixed with Arab or Indian. Being mixed on the African continent with a different tribe is look down upon.
Somalis are also notoriously known on continent as being extremely tribalist and taking pride in their ethnicity & ( never being mixed with anything else historically ). So of course going to be pissed off when a black American that is likely part white is telling them that they
are mixed. Also I’ve noticed that rarely anyone call the distinct East African feature of a large forehead as Eurocentric. Somali peoples features would look weird on a white person large forehead larger eyes even down to the nose shape.
Also the diaspora war is largely oversimplified. A lot recent African immigrants don’t understand American racism or the American construct of race. They don’t identify as being black not out of anti blackness but because they think being black & African American is synonymous.
They find it weird to identify with being African American because they know that isn’t their culture. They know that racism & anti blackness exists but they aren’t aware of the way American racism operates AT ALL.
When parents decide to come American in the 90s they believed that racism their didn’t exist at all because in comparison they came from a country that had the large ethnic genocide of the 21st century.
My dad told me that his African American co workers has to explain micro aggressions to him when he asked them why his co workers of no color kept telling him how articulate his was. He literally thought it was compliment.
My dad said to me “why are Afro Americans so afraid of the cops?” He genuinely didn’t understand that until very recently.
Recent black African immigrants are not going to be on the same page when it comes to racism but some African Americans except them to know all the nuances of racism in this country. That being said they face a lot xenophobia from all Americans and that doesn’t African Americans.
*That doesn’t exclude African Americans I have heard just as many ignorant comments about Africa from Black Americans as I have from white Americans. Recent black African immigrants identify exponential more with being a recent immigrant to American that they do to blackness
That being said it doesn’t mean that they think of themselves as black because most black Africans that live in America do but they simply identify with their own culture primarily and being black is somewhat of an afterthought.
I think this is the primary point of contention of between black Africans and Black Americans. It’s a LARGE disconnect that cause a lot of contention. Most black Americans think Africans are self hating because this.
Black Americans & black Africans do not have the same relationship to the blackness AT ALL. Black Americans relationship to their blackness is so much deeper than an just an after thought. Black Africans need to recognize this about black Americans.
Many black Africans can hop on a flight home and take a vacation from being black. Black Americans have never known what that has felt like ever. My parents even tell me that they felt raising me in caused me to have low self esteem and to be hyper conscious of my race
In reality I’m way more aware of the different facets of racism and how they’ve affected me psychologically and mentally as well as my larger community (the Sudanese community). That being said they think a lot African Americans are hyper vigilant about racism and use as a crutch
Or an excuse. They do believe that African Americans were are oppressed and are oppressed but they also believe that black Americans do not take actions as community to combat or over come that trauma specifically when it comes to out of wedlock children.
They believe that the black community refuses to help itself in this regard. Since Africans are known to be obsessed with marriage & socially much more conservative this a large factor in them regarding the black community badly.
A lot of older African men also do not like American black men at all. They think that they are mentally weak and immature because of their life decisions as well as their attitude towards black women. They think that BA women out achieving them academically is proof of that.
You can follow @thebestnegress.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: