***2/15/06 — Scroll down for updates***
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One of the many reasons I don’t like the term “African American” is that I’m not African, and I doubt any African — black or white — would claim me as such.
Being of African descent doesn’t make one African. It’s strange that we use the word “African” as a nationality when I suspect that true Africans refer to their countries when referring to their nationality, and not the continent.
I read this article about black American bias toward black Africans. Zedueh Doerue, an African immigrant who came to America four years ago, says he’s harrassed by black American thugs because he’s African. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out why:
“As a general trend, the two groups are having tensions,” said Jacqueline Copeland-Carson, a scholar with the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and author of the book, “Creating Africa in America.”
The tensions can be especially raw and violent in urban communities struggling with poverty, she said, as black Americans who feel economically trapped clash culturally with immigrant Africans who have escaped turmoil worse than Hurricane Katrina and may have stereotypical views of black Americans as being lazy or glorifiers of gangster life.
Regarding the lazy and gangster life stereotype, Africans are being rational. In fact, we all use the same reasoning when looking for a place to live or deciding whether to walk down a certain street at night. All people of all colors do it for the same reason: based on stereotypes of urban cities, we know it’s in our best interests to move to neighborhoods with lower crime rates. In America’s “urban communities,” most of the stereotypes hold true. Stereotypes aren’t the same as myths or urban legends, by the way; they’re based on facts.
There are other barriers that create problems, too, said Ms. Copeland-Carson, who studies contemporary immigration issues…These include widespread ignorance about the history of ethnic groups and nationalities and not understanding how others define their identities.
It’s the successful African immigrant v. the underclass black thing. Too bad the disgruntled and envious spend so much time being disgruntled and envious. They could put time and energy to more efficient use by trying to improve their own lives instead of begrudging others. But it’s easier to cry than to try. It’s boring, really.
This black African v. black American thing reaches beyond “poor” blacks. Henry Louis Gates (who just learned that he’s “half-European”) and Lani Guinier are up in arms because Africans outnumber American blacks at Harvard. Clarence Page has a simple explanation for that. Again, no rocket surgeon degree necessary. It’s embarrassing that people born and raised in the greatest country on the planet, with such a dynamic and inviting economic system, lag behind people who fled actual poverty and oppression. 
Americans in general, I suspect, don’t know much about Africa and don’t want to know. On second thought, a lot of people may know about Africa and still form negative opinions. I’m looking for a link to a story by a black liberal journalist who’s since changed his mind about Africa after a visit. (Later…found the link and more. Scroll down to Update.)
Even when I was a liberal and in undergrad, I’d laugh at students talking about Africa as though it were paradise and wearing Kente cloth, as if they had any idea what they were talking about. I can only imagine what the African students were saying behind their backs. Also embarrassing is what passes for scholarship among certain people. I’m glad my skin is brown so the flush doesn’t show. 
Have you been to Africa? Tell us what it’s like. Since I have no desire to ever go…
I think the most workable plan for Mr. Doerue would be to get his precious progeny out of the ‘hood post-haste and move to better area. He may still face resentment from other blacks, but at least he won’t have to come home to them.
Related posts:
- Hard Work and the American Dream (another Tannette Johnson-Elie link)
- The Gospel of Oppression
- Black Immigrants “Work Harder”
- Africans and Black Americans
- Slavery Reparations
Update: Keith Richburg is a black journalist who spent five years in Africa and wrote Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.
Read Part I and Part II of Richburg’s “American in Africa.”
Also see No illusions on next African trip, Black Like Me, African-American Journalist Finds Flawed Africa, and A black writer explores Africa’s murderous depths.
Read his “debate” (debates require cross-examination) with Salih Booker, Executive Director of a non-profit called Africa Action. Booker concedes to Richburg on almost every point.
Bob Bixby (breaks added for easier reading):
I spent the first 14 years of my life in Central African Republic. I ate “bobos†(flying ants), traveled with my father into the “bush,†and squatted on the floor in mud huts with thatched roofs so often that it was a part of normal life for me. I know from experience what it is like to have grown African men talk to a mere boy only ten years old (me) as if I were a seasoned economist about the inconceivable (to them) world where one could work for a living, be compensated, and feel no tribal pressure to distribute his hard-earned pay around the village per the whim of the tribal powers.
I remember one valiant soul that worked for my father who literally pleaded with my Dad to keep his pay in our family safe. Week after week Dad would put the worker’s money in our safe and whenever the man wanted to purchase something he would come to our home and request whatever amount he needed. This was not because he could not save. It was because he lived in a culture that did not respect the entrepreneurial spirit and private property of the individual worker. They were aghast at the possibility that anyone should have more money than his superiors in age or tribal authority. Thus, parents and tribal leaders bilked the free spirits who wanted to work of a living and squelched their hope for release from the grip of poverty that has enslaved that region for centuries.
Men, grown men, dreamed of the real paradise, the US of A, and respectfully listened to an ignorant white kid from America as he told about all that he had seen and heard on his trips to that wonderful place. Even the ignorant ten-year-old knew that at the root of American possibilities was a culture of freedom and an old-fashioned work ethic innate with those who take responsibility for their own lives. The ten-year-old knew it. And the grown toothless men in ragged clothes that had been discarded from someplace in the West knew it as well. With as little education as they had, the ten-year-old and the poor villagers who had never seen carpet or running water would have laughed the “African-American†fantasy to scorn.
What’s that “old” saying? Give me liberty or give me death. Yeah, that’s the one.
Update II (2/15): Unbelievable, but there it is. There’s nothing wrong with teaching African and black American history, but the idea that it will close the achievement gap is ludicrious. If “educators” want to make headway on that issue, they need to get back to basics and demand accountability from parents.
But what do I know?
