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We see this intersection between the American Black community and Africa again today in the growing sentiment amongst certain Black Americans to not only visit

We see this intersection between the American Black community and Africa again today in the growing sentiment amongst certain Black Americans to not only visit Africa, but consider moving there as well. Many youtube videos you can look at on this, but the biggest issue that comes up is how Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here. There is genuine shock registered at how much many Africans are simply disinterested in explicitly raising questions around White privilege, how it even continues to be catered to in even typical hospitality settings. Two articles made the frontpage of HN within the last 4 weeks whereby African writers in Britain and Africa, respectively, write to disparage the export of the Black American anti-colonial perspective, one going so far as to indicate an element of typical American cultural exceptionalism. It seems the Black American community is alone both in its experience and response to the uniquely intensive and thoroughgoing racism of America, no matter how pervasive its cultural influence in the arts globally. Too American to ever be (any one of the ethnicities identified as...) African, too "other" to ever be more than a second-class American, left alone with hundreds of years of cultural ressentiment at de facto segregation and disenfranchisement that has only recently found popular expression in the liberation of social discourse and media from establishment institutions. I'm suddenly reminded of a joke a comedian whose name I can't recall told about how a white person is more comfortable with Africans from Africa than they are with the Black Americans that've been here for over 300 year, something like, to paraphrase, "You tell em your name is DeShawn, that's a wrap, but if you're 'Oluwafemi' they love you". The Cameroonian Joel Embiid, the famous NBA player for the Philadelphia 76ers, famously recalls being able to convince students at the University of Kansas, where he played college basketball, that in Cameroon he lived near lions and had to fight with them constantly. Joel Embiid grew up in an upper middle-class suburb in his home country.

troughway 6y ago
In speaking to Africans in the West, in general they share a very traditional view of the situation as many other immigrants do. Namely, to remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland. Some might say well troughway you’re cherry picking anecdotes to fit a point, there are many immigrants who don’t think this way. And that’s okay too - not everyone wants to be connected to their homeland. But it’s worth noting that we are composites of our ancestors, the places they grew up, the food they ate and how it affects our physical and mental health, and host of other things that we carry with us whether we want to or not.
- acephal 6y ago
  > In speaking to Africans in the West, in general they share a very traditional view of the situation as many other immigrants do. Namely, to remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland. The point here isn't to say indigenous Africans are not woke or bear no interaction with (post-)colonialism, but that their cultural circumstances are just too distinct to provide much solace to the specific plight of Black Americans, surprised as some are when they move to or visit Africa and discover a perspective they imagined to be in more alignment with their own, as I mentioned above. This distance is palpable in your own commentary that immigrants "remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland." - such a sentence has little to offer to a Black American whose ancestors were physically and culturally displaced in an intractable way. But this also has another edge to it, which the article also wishes to point out, that the "American-ness" of the Black community can lead to notions of whose perspective is more valid, again, highlighted in the substrate of YouTube commentary I've encountered. It is true that most Black folk, just as in the article wrt Liberia, have zero interest in relocating to Africa and elect to struggle for whats owed to their ancestors' contribution to building this country, however the experience of this smaller community of Black American migrants throws light on an interesting aspect of the discussion from where I'm standing
ChomskyNormal4m 6y ago
> Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here. Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe? Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA? > African writers in Britain and Africa, respectively, write to disparage the export of the Black American anti-colonial perspective Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that. Benedict Arnold ended up not sharing the anti-colonial attitude of his fellow Americans. Nor did Vidkun Quisling of his fellow Norwegians share anti-colonial attitudes. We are not unaware these people exist.
- ChomskyNormal4m 6y ago
  Also, if anti-colonial feelings in Africa are a black American export, I guess that means the 1879 victory of the Zulus over two British columns in the battle of Isandlwana were a black American export.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    Because obviously nothing changed in 141 years in Africa's relationship with colonialism.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      There is strong anti-colonialist sentiment still in Africa today. Again, I believe ignoring it and putting our heads in the sand is not the right way to go. You have to face down ethno-nationalists, or you end up in a very bad place. Just as you have to challenge ethno-nationalists in the US, you need to challenge them in Africa. In the end, they are bad for societies they operate in.
- acephal 6y ago
  >Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe? Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA? We're talking ground-floor interactions from what I've seen that obviously do not speak to any kind of unanimity but a surprising extent nonetheless. One such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKi1vC_IEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKi1vC_IEA > Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that. The writers in question weren't criticizing the modern anti-racism movement in America, however, but the form of its response and its presumptions. Perhaps a minute difference but one nonetheless.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 6y ago
Too American to ever be (any one of the ethnicities identified as...) African, too "other" to ever be more than a second-class American, That's an unfortunate way to put things - as if there was a generic America. "White America" and "Black America" are each inextricable parts of America. If Black American culture is taken a "second class", and it often is, that is because of the continuation of white supremacy. Edit: And blanket statements on the attitudes of African Americans generally are unfortunate. What is visible as the supposed attitude of group X is by no means the universal or even predominant attitude. Your post is interesting for describing some ironic contrasts but problematic for trying to universalize them.
paganel 6y ago
> are simply disinterested in explicitly raising questions around White privilege Most probably because many of them haven't seen a white person in their entire life, so we should stop making it about the "white man" only. I have a close friend who happens to be "white" and who went to teach in Burundi this start of the year and he told me that people were stopping him on the street to take photos with because they had never seen a white man in real life (or not from that close, anyway).
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Most probably because many of them haven't seen a white person in their entire life. Any African who is intellectual enough to possibly participate in the international debate mentioned above, will almost certainly be part of a cosmopolitan class that has interacted with white people. Also, West African countries have a prominent Lebanese population that runs import–export based businesses like supermarkets, Senegal has a huge community of French retirees, and Zimbabwe and South Africa still have their white populations. So, no, Africans are not as isolated as you suggest.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > intellectual enough to possibly participate in the international debate mentioned above Non-intellectual people can and do question white privilege stuff in the United States, saying that you have to be "intellectual enough" to have that type of conversation sounds very classist to me (am not native English speaker, maybe that's a better word for it). That Lebanese population will most probably not be labeled as "white" in most of the Anglo world, first of all in the United States, while South Africa is only one country among many dozens of African countries (I choose to ignore white presence in Zimbabwe because Mugabe). There is indeed a sizeable French expat community in many African countries but they are afraid of physically getting out of their bubbles, usually located in a posh district in the respective country's capital city. My friend (also French) was not afraid of getting out of that bubble hence his direct interactions with people who had almost never interacted directly with a white person before.
    - 6y ago
dynamite-ready 6y ago
I don't know if I can entirely agree with this point. The truth is, Africa is a continent, and not a country. Individual countries have completely different political and economic priorities. And as recently as, well... now... the South African government are working towards the implementation of a land ownership reform policy which appears to be remarkably similar to the one Robert Mugabe was famous for. As anti colonial / western sentiment goes, it doesn't get much more concrete than that.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  I agree. I think acephal is ill-informed on this subject. I've seen rising anti-Western (and anti-asian btw) sentiment across the continent, especially throughout sub-saharan Africa. As a matter of full disclosure, I think it's a problem. Africa was the last place in the world where ethno-nationalism hadn't swept through, and the past year or so has seen it sweep the continent with a vengeance. Even white South Africans, I think, would admit that there are serious problems in this regard. Panafricanism is a thing, to ignore it and say it doesn't exist is just sticking your head in the sand. (Pan-Africanism in the traditional sense is not bad btw. It would even be helpful. I'm talking about the brand of pan-Africanism that demands a harmful kind of ethno-exclusivity. No one has an issue with the pan-africanist tenets of strengthening links between African nations and inviting slave descendants to move to Africa. Which I support as keys to Africa's development.) Acephal is also mistaken in thinking young Africans do not think like American blacks. Their exposure to the West, and unfortunately, to the US, has given many first hand experience in, for instance, police behavior. The ones who return to Africa to tell the tale are, if anything, more radical than American blacks. The good news is that I think the rising ethno-nationalism in Africa is very much a reaction to the rising ethno-nationalism in the rest of the world. If it could be checked elsewhere, it may tamp down in Africa as better stories about treatment make it back to the populations of the various nations in Africa. Right now, the stories of what happens outside of Africa have turned decidedly negative. That's the issue driving sentiment in my opinion.
dmix 6y ago
The real "American cultural exceptionalism" today is making everything both about a) America and b) race.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dynamite-ready 6y ago
  Sorry. There's nothing objective in this comment. It's potentially inflammatory too.
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
    But it's true? American cultural imperialism is trying to sneak in to every corner of the world and people rightly refuse it.
    - dynamite-ready 6y ago
      It might well be. In fact, I agree to a certain extent. But that comment presents a sweeping generalisation. And Hacker News is not the place for comments like that.
morelisp 6y ago
If you look at what happened to popular anticolonialist African leaders you should get a clearer picture of why the surviving options seem to be either ambivalence to the topic, or paranoid totalitarianism.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> The Cameroonian Joel Embiid, the famous NBA player for the Philadelphia 76ers, famously recalls being able to convince students at the University of Kansas, where he played college basketball, that in Cameroon he lived near lions and had to fight with them constantly. Joel Embiid grew up in an upper middle-class suburb in his home country. As opposed to Dikembe Mutumbo, who has actually killed a lion. (It was asleep when he did, but still...)
- shaunn 6y ago
  > As opposed to Dikembe Mutumbo, who has actually killed a lion. (It was asleep when he did, but still...) Manute Bol did the same!
rbecker 6y ago
> the liberation of social discourse and media from establishment institutions. Liberation? Establishment institutions drive social discourse, there's no need to be "liberated" from them. From the New York Times 1619 project, to Hollywood movies like 12 Years a Slave or the Watchmen series, to the various grievance studies in schools and universities. Please don't pretend you're the plucky rebels when giant corporations cloak themselves in BLM logos.
- kikokikokiko 6y ago
  The level of cognitive dissonance on the left today is amazing, they really still think they are the anti-establishment guys. Add HackerNews to that. Any comment on the right side of Mao is downvoted to oblivion around here.
pessimizer 6y ago
> Many youtube videos you can look at on this, but the biggest issue that comes up is how Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here. You have to blame a lot if not most of this on a lot of wholesale slaughter during colonialism of the elements who resisted it, and a lot of the elevation of particular ethnic groups into elite classes to serve as local middlemen for foreign business concerns (mostly extractive industries.) The elites of those countries are the people we see on youtube. Their families did pretty well under colonialism, and they think of the people who complain about it (in their home countries probably other ethnic groups, or non-Christians, or Sunnis) as Luddite terrorists who need to be killed. Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war, and those sentiments still exist. Those are just not the elements we elevate. They, like black Americans, are usually the subject being discussed, not the people who get to be part of the conversation. This isn't unique to Africa.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war. However, the political problems and impoverishment that accompanied the most drastic efforts to throw off colonial ties, did scare some other countries into not going that far. For example, after other West African countries saw Guinea become the first nation to completely end French ties, but then fall into poverty and have no one to turn to but Maoist China, they reflected that perhaps France’s role in the region was not so bad after all. At present, it is not at all unusual to hear a Senegalese person expressly point to Guinea-Bissau as an example of anti-colonialism gone wrong.
charlescearl 6y ago
“the American Black”. Yes, there Black people from Africa, from all over Africa that are still thinking about decolonization. Today. A couple of interesting pieces: https://abebabirhane.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/the-algorithmic-colonization-of-africa/ https://abebabirhane.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/the-algorithmi... “ Decolonization has reemerged as a compelling vision of a better future. Once again, the broader issues of colonialism, capitalism, racism, Euro- centrism, and patriarchy have been pushed onto the public agenda as the incomplete business of an ongoing decolonizing project.” — Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni from “ African Decolonization’s Past and Present Trajectories”, 2020

troughway 6y ago

In speaking to Africans in the West, in general they share a very traditional view of the situation as many other immigrants do. Namely, to remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland. Some might say well troughway you’re cherry picking anecdotes to fit a point, there are many immigrants who don’t think this way. And that’s okay too - not everyone wants to be connected to their homeland. But it’s worth noting that we are composites of our ancestors, the places they grew up, the food they ate and how it affects our physical and mental health, and host of other things that we carry with us whether we want to or not.

acephal 6y ago
> In speaking to Africans in the West, in general they share a very traditional view of the situation as many other immigrants do. Namely, to remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland. The point here isn't to say indigenous Africans are not woke or bear no interaction with (post-)colonialism, but that their cultural circumstances are just too distinct to provide much solace to the specific plight of Black Americans, surprised as some are when they move to or visit Africa and discover a perspective they imagined to be in more alignment with their own, as I mentioned above. This distance is palpable in your own commentary that immigrants "remember who you are, where you come from, who your people are, and many other things from homeland." - such a sentence has little to offer to a Black American whose ancestors were physically and culturally displaced in an intractable way. But this also has another edge to it, which the article also wishes to point out, that the "American-ness" of the Black community can lead to notions of whose perspective is more valid, again, highlighted in the substrate of YouTube commentary I've encountered. It is true that most Black folk, just as in the article wrt Liberia, have zero interest in relocating to Africa and elect to struggle for whats owed to their ancestors' contribution to building this country, however the experience of this smaller community of Black American migrants throws light on an interesting aspect of the discussion from where I'm standing

ChomskyNormal4m 6y ago

> Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here. Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe? Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA? > African writers in Britain and Africa, respectively, write to disparage the export of the Black American anti-colonial perspective Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that. Benedict Arnold ended up not sharing the anti-colonial attitude of his fellow Americans. Nor did Vidkun Quisling of his fellow Norwegians share anti-colonial attitudes. We are not unaware these people exist.

ChomskyNormal4m 6y ago
Also, if anti-colonial feelings in Africa are a black American export, I guess that means the 1879 victory of the Zulus over two British columns in the battle of Isandlwana were a black American export.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  Because obviously nothing changed in 141 years in Africa's relationship with colonialism.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    There is strong anti-colonialist sentiment still in Africa today. Again, I believe ignoring it and putting our heads in the sand is not the right way to go. You have to face down ethno-nationalists, or you end up in a very bad place. Just as you have to challenge ethno-nationalists in the US, you need to challenge them in Africa. In the end, they are bad for societies they operate in.
acephal 6y ago
>Like who, Umkhonto we Sizwe? Patrice Lumumba? The MPLA? We're talking ground-floor interactions from what I've seen that obviously do not speak to any kind of unanimity but a surprising extent nonetheless. One such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKi1vC_IEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkKi1vC_IEA > Is this new? The South Africans had Buthelezi to go around the world criticizing the anti-apartheid movement, and there were ones before that. The writers in question weren't criticizing the modern anti-racism movement in America, however, but the form of its response and its presumptions. Perhaps a minute difference but one nonetheless.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 6y ago

Too American to ever be (any one of the ethnicities identified as...) African, too "other" to ever be more than a second-class American, That's an unfortunate way to put things - as if there was a generic America. "White America" and "Black America" are each inextricable parts of America. If Black American culture is taken a "second class", and it often is, that is because of the continuation of white supremacy. Edit: And blanket statements on the attitudes of African Americans generally are unfortunate. What is visible as the supposed attitude of group X is by no means the universal or even predominant attitude. Your post is interesting for describing some ironic contrasts but problematic for trying to universalize them.

paganel 6y ago

> are simply disinterested in explicitly raising questions around White privilege Most probably because many of them haven't seen a white person in their entire life, so we should stop making it about the "white man" only. I have a close friend who happens to be "white" and who went to teach in Burundi this start of the year and he told me that people were stopping him on the street to take photos with because they had never seen a white man in real life (or not from that close, anyway).

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> Most probably because many of them haven't seen a white person in their entire life. Any African who is intellectual enough to possibly participate in the international debate mentioned above, will almost certainly be part of a cosmopolitan class that has interacted with white people. Also, West African countries have a prominent Lebanese population that runs import–export based businesses like supermarkets, Senegal has a huge community of French retirees, and Zimbabwe and South Africa still have their white populations. So, no, Africans are not as isolated as you suggest.
- paganel 6y ago
  > intellectual enough to possibly participate in the international debate mentioned above Non-intellectual people can and do question white privilege stuff in the United States, saying that you have to be "intellectual enough" to have that type of conversation sounds very classist to me (am not native English speaker, maybe that's a better word for it). That Lebanese population will most probably not be labeled as "white" in most of the Anglo world, first of all in the United States, while South Africa is only one country among many dozens of African countries (I choose to ignore white presence in Zimbabwe because Mugabe). There is indeed a sizeable French expat community in many African countries but they are afraid of physically getting out of their bubbles, usually located in a posh district in the respective country's capital city. My friend (also French) was not afraid of getting out of that bubble hence his direct interactions with people who had almost never interacted directly with a white person before.
  - 6y ago

dynamite-ready 6y ago

I don't know if I can entirely agree with this point. The truth is, Africa is a continent, and not a country. Individual countries have completely different political and economic priorities. And as recently as, well... now... the South African government are working towards the implementation of a land ownership reform policy which appears to be remarkably similar to the one Robert Mugabe was famous for. As anti colonial / western sentiment goes, it doesn't get much more concrete than that.

bilbo0s 6y ago
I agree. I think acephal is ill-informed on this subject. I've seen rising anti-Western (and anti-asian btw) sentiment across the continent, especially throughout sub-saharan Africa. As a matter of full disclosure, I think it's a problem. Africa was the last place in the world where ethno-nationalism hadn't swept through, and the past year or so has seen it sweep the continent with a vengeance. Even white South Africans, I think, would admit that there are serious problems in this regard. Panafricanism is a thing, to ignore it and say it doesn't exist is just sticking your head in the sand. (Pan-Africanism in the traditional sense is not bad btw. It would even be helpful. I'm talking about the brand of pan-Africanism that demands a harmful kind of ethno-exclusivity. No one has an issue with the pan-africanist tenets of strengthening links between African nations and inviting slave descendants to move to Africa. Which I support as keys to Africa's development.) Acephal is also mistaken in thinking young Africans do not think like American blacks. Their exposure to the West, and unfortunately, to the US, has given many first hand experience in, for instance, police behavior. The ones who return to Africa to tell the tale are, if anything, more radical than American blacks. The good news is that I think the rising ethno-nationalism in Africa is very much a reaction to the rising ethno-nationalism in the rest of the world. If it could be checked elsewhere, it may tamp down in Africa as better stories about treatment make it back to the populations of the various nations in Africa. Right now, the stories of what happens outside of Africa have turned decidedly negative. That's the issue driving sentiment in my opinion.

dmix 6y ago

The real "American cultural exceptionalism" today is making everything both about a) America and b) race.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dynamite-ready 6y ago
Sorry. There's nothing objective in this comment. It's potentially inflammatory too.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
  But it's true? American cultural imperialism is trying to sneak in to every corner of the world and people rightly refuse it.
  - dynamite-ready 6y ago
    It might well be. In fact, I agree to a certain extent. But that comment presents a sweeping generalisation. And Hacker News is not the place for comments like that.

morelisp 6y ago

If you look at what happened to popular anticolonialist African leaders you should get a clearer picture of why the surviving options seem to be either ambivalence to the topic, or paranoid totalitarianism.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> The Cameroonian Joel Embiid, the famous NBA player for the Philadelphia 76ers, famously recalls being able to convince students at the University of Kansas, where he played college basketball, that in Cameroon he lived near lions and had to fight with them constantly. Joel Embiid grew up in an upper middle-class suburb in his home country. As opposed to Dikembe Mutumbo, who has actually killed a lion. (It was asleep when he did, but still...)

shaunn 6y ago
> As opposed to Dikembe Mutumbo, who has actually killed a lion. (It was asleep when he did, but still...) Manute Bol did the same!

rbecker 6y ago

> the liberation of social discourse and media from establishment institutions. Liberation? Establishment institutions drive social discourse, there's no need to be "liberated" from them. From the New York Times 1619 project, to Hollywood movies like 12 Years a Slave or the Watchmen series, to the various grievance studies in schools and universities. Please don't pretend you're the plucky rebels when giant corporations cloak themselves in BLM logos.

kikokikokiko 6y ago
The level of cognitive dissonance on the left today is amazing, they really still think they are the anti-establishment guys. Add HackerNews to that. Any comment on the right side of Mao is downvoted to oblivion around here.

pessimizer 6y ago

> Many youtube videos you can look at on this, but the biggest issue that comes up is how Africans in Africa share little of the fervent anti-colonial attitude prominent in the American Black community here. You have to blame a lot if not most of this on a lot of wholesale slaughter during colonialism of the elements who resisted it, and a lot of the elevation of particular ethnic groups into elite classes to serve as local middlemen for foreign business concerns (mostly extractive industries.) The elites of those countries are the people we see on youtube. Their families did pretty well under colonialism, and they think of the people who complain about it (in their home countries probably other ethnic groups, or non-Christians, or Sunnis) as Luddite terrorists who need to be killed. Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war, and those sentiments still exist. Those are just not the elements we elevate. They, like black Americans, are usually the subject being discussed, not the people who get to be part of the conversation. This isn't unique to Africa.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> Africa was a heavy source of anti-colonial radicalism during the cold war. However, the political problems and impoverishment that accompanied the most drastic efforts to throw off colonial ties, did scare some other countries into not going that far. For example, after other West African countries saw Guinea become the first nation to completely end French ties, but then fall into poverty and have no one to turn to but Maoist China, they reflected that perhaps France’s role in the region was not so bad after all. At present, it is not at all unusual to hear a Senegalese person expressly point to Guinea-Bissau as an example of anti-colonialism gone wrong.

charlescearl 6y ago

“the American Black”. Yes, there Black people from Africa, from all over Africa that are still thinking about decolonization. Today. A couple of interesting pieces: https://abebabirhane.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/the-algorithmic-colonization-of-africa/ https://abebabirhane.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/the-algorithmi... “ Decolonization has reemerged as a compelling vision of a better future. Once again, the broader issues of colonialism, capitalism, racism, Euro- centrism, and patriarchy have been pushed onto the public agenda as the incomplete business of an ongoing decolonizing project.” — Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni from “ African Decolonization’s Past and Present Trajectories”, 2020