The African vs. the African American

Interesting post

My Father is African, my mother is american

I wonder where that leaves me

Asante sana, Kwapi.

So, an African American has to be black?

What about 120 million White African? And those immigrants to the US that are not black and yet African?

Americans are American and may they be of European, Asian, African or Australian decent, they are American.  Europe would not want them back nor would Africa or Asia, they do no longer share the same cultures, languishes nor traditions.

The Native American may want to claim their land back as Israel did and drive out all the immigrants and they would end up like the Palestinian that no one really wants.

The miss conception of African American or rather Black American and Asian or European America or rather Caucasian and Mongolian-American is to make a world that never existed of sorts a fairy tale a la Disney.

The Irish suffered and so did the Chinese that where used and abused and many others.

The greatest Slave trade was in Roman time with European and North African Slaves. The difference is that the Roman went under and where overrun by their former slaves and colonies where as the Slaves in the Americas where freed by their captors leaving a void in their emancipation. 

The history of the Americas is still very young as well and has not yet seen major transition such as Europe and Asia did nor have the Americas know as ethnical war as Europe and Africa and Asia did over the past 6000 years that did wipe out entire groups religions or races with in less then a generation.

Africa is a continent like Europe and Asia and has a multitude of races, religion, ethnicity's and cultures.

Parts of Africa where colonized by the Persian, the Arabs, the Europeans and by African them self and other parts never new colonization or protectorates.

Some Black African Kingdoms where powerful entity such as the Bambara and the Housa and still are, they where also slave traders and breeders since the ancient Greek and Egyptian and still are in some areas today. Same for the Tuaregs that Captured and supplied slaves to the Roman as well as to the American and still hold slaves today of all races and origins.

It is not that simple nor is it as easy as Disney would like to portray it.

In percentage the Roman, and Egyptian counted in certain periods of their history of 80 percent of slaves in their empires population where as the Americas never had more then 15 percent of slaves in their population.

The French and Spanish sold their own people into slavery to the Arabs and Persian or the Tuaregs. It was one way to avoid decent.

To me American are American, regardless of their origins, races or religions just as much as a French is a French and an Algerian is an Algerian. 

I never heard a Libyan call him self African nor would a Sudanese call him self so either. Even those emigrants that came from the African continent to Europe in the past 60 years call them self Algerian, Nigerian Ethiopian... but never African nor Algerian French, they are either Algerian or French but not ever Algerian French. Once they become French Citizen or Italian or the other way around European becoming Egyptian or Libyan then that is it they are French or Italian... no longer Algerian.

Unless you are a cosmopolite and refuse all Nations and religions or Races as some demarcation and shows to be Human instead and forget about being a racist or a nationalist, since that is what it is all about after all, Nationalism and Racism. 

If I call my self Black or White I make certain I separate my self from the rest of Humanity and there for endorse racism. 

I never filled out those US forms asking for once race and just wrote in it "HUMAN". Every thing else would be racist. No matter the race.

Good article and thanks for sharing your perspectives. 

While most non-Asian would not or never notice, but I'd venture to write that there are  tensions that exist and continue to exist between Asian Americans and overseas Asians. To a great extent, it is a subject that most Asians are quite reluctant to discuss to non-Asians, even among college students. 

Late but not absent.

This post is an echoe of the MATRIX mind.

The so-called African-American is you, if you are a person born in Africa that has now decided to become a naturalized American.

The persons born in Africa that have come to America and taken on the moniker African-American for the most part either don't know they were used as pawns in United States racist agendas to further disenfranchise, and convulated the identity, and citizenship, and human rights of Afrimericans.

On the other hand, there are those Africans who have come to the United States with full knowledge of the lie resulting in what's described above, and have used it to further their own ends, while at the same time being willing co-conspirators in perpetuating the lies surrounding African-American nomenclature applied, falsely, to Afrimericans.

The average Afrimerican knows nothing about Africa, speaks no African language, knows very little to nothing about the geography, or tribal settlements. In short, the average Afrimerican knows nothing about Africa except what they see in the news, or read in a magazine, and in recent years those stories have focused on Aids and poverty in Africa, or the romanticized myths about Africa in a manner that sells the idea that Afrimericans born in the U.S. are just as much African as persons born in Africa which is the lie that has been imparted as truth thus creating a MATRIX Mind where the lie is accepted as truth.

The whole of this matter is extensive and filled with lies and myths and agendas, and the basic facts of law and nature are completely ignored.

Ironically the only people having this discussion are Blacks. The White Africans from Chad, Libya, Egypt, and other caucasic African nations remain silent because like Whites, not all, some, many, around the world, they get a big laugh from the fact that Afrimericans are misidentying themselves, and Africans that know their tribe, tribal language, tribal history, and tribal geography fuel a debate on points that are of little relation to them with the ironic exception of their desire to want to be part of, or just like the misinformed, uninformed Afrimerican that has accepted the White self appointed master, and their House Negroes lies.

A very informative and interesting article

Great article!

Thanks Kwapi.

Great piece and very informative. I appreciate your candor and honesty.

I trully understand what is being said here. I was born in Puerto Rico but at the age of two my mother moved us to the states. We lived with my aunt who was beyond determined to keep our culture alive in us. It wasn't till my cousins and I started school that we were allowed to speak english and then it was only when we were doing homework and studing for school. She made sure we could speak,write and read both languages but our Puerto Rican culture was the most important thing to learn and keep alive.  Yet when we would go back home to the island we were treated like out siders by our own people because we had embraced another culture. We were even given a new name "New York Ricans".  I see what you mean  because I've lived it.

okay, this may not have to do with the whole article, my question is more on the part of the African Americans not getting along with the Africans. To be honest who cares to explain the dislike that most africans like myself get from African americans in the U.S. Not to sound racist, but we are alot more accepted by other races( ie. hispanics, caucasians, europeans etc..) than by those who we are supposed to have the same heritage with; "African"Americans. i wonder what I as a person, has personally done to an African American just because am African. One of my brothers, as I call them( an african american) was kind enough to tell me that africans are disliked for selling their own people, who are now african americans into slavery. Good, i agree thats hurtful, bad, horrible etc...BUT did I do that????????? I feel like its high time, people as whole realize that the past is there to help us know where we come from, inorder to know where we are going, not to make us live on/in the past! What does it matter if i come from a different continent, country, speak with an accent etc....these things does not qualify me to be treated differently aka.. badly..lol.

If u read this, I really am not following this article to the T, just wanted to say what was on my mind.., u can punish me 4 that..lmao.."No one is perfect"

Ouote from "Just never understood this!" 16:13, 7-13-09:

<<Not to sound racist, but we are alot more accepted by other races( ie. hispanics, caucasians, europeans etc..) than by those who we are supposed to have the same heritage with; "African"Americans. i wonder what I as a person, has personally done to an African American just because am African. One of my brothers, as I call them( an african american) was kind enough to tell me that africans are disliked for selling their own people, who are now african americans into slavery. Good, i agree thats hurtful, bad, horrible etc...BUT did I do that?????????>>

So now you know how INNOCENT whites feel.  Some in my family (Caucasion) came to the US as indentured servants during it's infancy.  That means non-paid "slaves" until their debt, whatever it might have been, was paid. Some were shipped here because of political dissent, or so their lands could be stolen in the "old country".  Others in my family came from a fishing culture in Wales...never having owned very much of anything, much less a SLAVE!  So WHY should I, as a Caucasian of mainly European descent, be required to bear the burden of wrongs never done by me or my ancestors?  If black African Americans won't forgive their very own race in Africa who sold them to Caucasians, why should that taint be passed along to another race?

But welcome to the USA, and especially to the southern USA where we've been the "whipping boys" for rascism in this country.  But you might be surprised where the REAL racisim is in the USA.  We have a saying down here in the south and it is simply this: "Yankees" (those not born in the historical southern US) many times love the African Americans as a group but HATE them as individuals, while Southern whites many times hate African Americans as a group but LOVE them as individuals. 

I've seen more racism, many times covert but no less real in the northern US states, than in my own southern state.  Ask any black American how hard it is to catch a cab after dark in New York city.

Racism, but lets' call it by a more proper name, bigotry, isn't confined to one race of humans, one nationality of humans, or indeed one group of humans within a race.  The lighter skinned Japanese have been historically prejudiced against the darker skin Japanese.  What is more, physical characteristics, such as skin color many times doesn't even figure into bigroty!  The Prussian Germans have historically considered their more bucolic Germans as inferior.  Heck, even the collective assessment of the people in my central region of our state seems to be that the eastern and western parts of my state are less sophisticated and less educated than we are!  That's a blanket bigotry which does injustice to the individual   It is human nature to be prejudiced.  It's how we learn to be civilized and respectful of our human kind as INDIVIDUALS, no matter their DNA we never seem to master.