5 ms·

I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their home

by godmode2019 6y ago

I have a pretty good idea, its about investing in Africa. America has a lot of assets, in the black population, they should encourage people to visit their homeland, on a paid trip. Helping the African economy and helping African Americans create business connects to Africa. Then there should be a programme where African Americans get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land in Africa. France is doing something similar but Americans have a much higher advantage something like 30 million people of African decent. After visiting Africa I think will also help people expand their mind set about the world and that Africa is not a bad place and has lot of opportunities. Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. Taiwan does something similar with a paid trip to visit Taiwan to learn about the culture and history and create business connection between the people. It would not cost anything as well, you just reallocate aid money. To a degree European Africans have been doing this for a long time, plenty of YouTube videos about people moving to Africa to start a business. Fun to watch too. Many of these European Africans have positions of power in the government or private sector. Thoughts?

zozbot234 6y ago
It's not a new idea - it was tried in the newly-made country of Liberia. The country has a very screwy subsequent history where, to put it short, the former U.S. slaves became a new oppressing elite and there was all sorts of backlash from the natives.
winter_blue 6y ago
> to visit their homeland This might trigger some people. If you used a term like "ancestral region(s)" or something, it might've been less triggering. Firstly, the word "homeland" is not one typically associated with one's country of ancestry. I've rarely ever heard someone use that term. On the contrary, I have heard people say "my ancestors came from X country", or like "my great-grandparents came from Italy". The term "homeland" is usually used for the region where a person's current home is. And this not to mention that even a first-generation immigrant who has lived in X country for a long time, could consider X country to be his true homeland. Secondly, there's an implicit assumption here that "Africa" is the "homeland" of African Americans. I don't need to explain why that's troubling. Thirdly, many of my "African American" friends are of thoroughly mixed ancestry. One such friend did a 23andMe test, and it turned out he had 54% European ancestry (even though physically "he looks black"), 30-something% African ancestry, and a smattering of other ancestry groups (including Native American) for the rest. It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to consider him as someone "of African ancestry" (even though he looks somewhat so). The phenotypes a person's genome expressed do not necessarily correspond to a person's actual genetic ancestry. I could go into more reasons as to why it's not a great term to use, but I think these three reasons make a good case. ---- > get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land While the underlying motivation behind your idea is pretty decent (and a fairly lofty goal I might add); I, for one, would rather prefer direct foreign aid (not loans, but literal foreign aid grants with no expectation of return). There's too much of a risk of corruption with your idea, and bad incentives are baked right into it. Just increase the current foreign aid to developing countries across the board. Do something like the Marshall Plan, where in exchange for free-market economic policies, we directly invest in education, infrastructure, and other things in developing countries. On a secondary note, domestically, I would rather focus on just getting some kind of actual, concrete, meaningful (maybe financial) reparations bill passed through Congress. That alone seems like a huge and almost insurmountable political challenge, and I want to see that tackled somehow. We want to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for the poorest economic classes in the US, so they can pursue their ambitions and dreams from a similar starting point as more well-off Americans. Achieving this alone would be a huuuge deal in and of itself.
- engineer_22 6y ago
  Does money equal wealth? A famous quote: "broke is temporary, poor is eternal" Tongue in cheek, if we had a program of cash payments I suspect that TV manufacturers and car dealers would have record years.
rwcarlsen 6y ago
Yeah - And I should invest specifically in Mexico because my grandma happened to be born there. African Americans - are Americans. They often have their own American subcultures, but the U.S.A is their home. Sure they have history connecting them to somewhere. But they can invest wherever the heck they want. No need to limit our generosity to our many generations removed ancestral roots.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Black Americans typically have deeper roots in the United States than white Americans: https://news.gallup.com/poll/4621/majority-americans-identify-themselves-third-generation-americans.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4621/majority-americans-identif... > Black Americans are more likely than either whites or Hispanics to be the third generation Americans. Seventy-five percent of black Americans indicate they are at least the third generation born in the United States, compared to 58% of whites and 13% of Hispanics.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Those numbers are very hard to believe. I bet most if not 100% Hispanics have American ancestry going back before pre-Colombian times while literally 0% of White and Black have such roots.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      The meaning of "American ancestry" used above is "United States ancestry", not "North-or-South-American continent ancestry". Hispanic Americans certainly have plenty of deep American ancestry in the latter sense, but for relatively few of them this American ancestry is from United States.
    - bsanr2 6y ago
      Black Americans whose families go back far enough have substantial Native American ancestry, actually, having been treated similarly as an underclass during the early years of English/Dutch colonization of North America. It's harder to find connections because of anti-miscegenation and one-drop rule laws and customs, and the relative nascence of reliable genetic testing (which themselves may be misleading due to their reliance on statistical proximity to controls).
engineer_22 6y ago
You may be interested to find out that in the 1800s there was a similar program pursued. The country of Liberia was originally founded by black Americans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Societ... Later Marcus Garvey motivated another 'Back to Africa' movement. As I understand it the, the movement did not send very many blacks back to Africa. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey We have to wonder, do Africans want Black Americans to come colonize their homelands?
- bsanr2 6y ago
  Depends on where in Africa (which is, famously, not a single country). Ghana has encouraged immigration with the promise of citizenship; Mauritania is not quite so hospitable. Liberia's situation is interesting in that it was one of several examples of America's export of colonialism coming back to bite us (one other being Japan, which went from staunchly isolationist to trying to take over half the world in the scant few generations following Perry's opening).
marci 6y ago
Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? Most of African Europeans a)know what country their ancestors are from, b) have direct links to their relatives in Africa. > Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. I think this is exactly Africa's main issue: being seen first foremost as a land of resources and economic ventures. You go to the Americas/Europe/Asia/Oceania to visit, and Africa to make money/for "humanitarian aid". Things may evolve when they change to "X has invested a lot in Africans".
- peteretep 6y ago
  > Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? I would say — from a European perspective — a baffling number of white Americans cling on to a European cultural identity. It feels to an outsider like many Americans want to be American + something else. Many/most black Americans don’t have this luxury, and my hot take is that Kwanza and other pan-African neo traditions seek to fill this gap? As a counter-example, I lived in the anglophone Caribbean for many years, and it always felt like there was a strong sense of national identity there, very distinct from trying to associate with Africa in any way. I guess I’d also expect 2nd/3rd generation African immigrants to America to maintain their cultural identity — I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone with Ethiopian heritage describe themselves as anything other than Ethiopian whatever their passport or recent ancestry
  - RuggedPineapple 6y ago
    Its not really a hot take, but an express intent. Slaves had their culture and traditions aggressively stamped out in order to further the disconnect and reinforce their place as property. Their original tribes and homelands that they could hold on to as a touchstone were repressed almost totally. This is more or less exactly why there's a 'black' culture instead of Nigerian or Ghanaian or whatever tribes existed before national boundaries were drawn. White Americans can generally point to an Italian or Irish or Swedish heritage or whatever, a luxury that black americans often don't have. At least didn't before modern DNA genealogy.
Chris2048 6y ago
"visit their homeland" - good luck marketing that. Would this go any better than if any American visited?
madengr 6y ago
By all means, write a check to pay for it. Or do you want other people to pay for it?
tomcam 6y ago
> Thoughts? Sure—why not set an example by starting your own fund?
dsohn0 6y ago
How about we stop treating black different because they are black? Is that in the year 2020 too much to fucking ask for? Why would we subsidize African Americans investing in Africa but not white Americans? Racist nonsense.

zozbot234 6y ago

It's not a new idea - it was tried in the newly-made country of Liberia. The country has a very screwy subsequent history where, to put it short, the former U.S. slaves became a new oppressing elite and there was all sorts of backlash from the natives.

winter_blue 6y ago

> to visit their homeland This might trigger some people. If you used a term like "ancestral region(s)" or something, it might've been less triggering. Firstly, the word "homeland" is not one typically associated with one's country of ancestry. I've rarely ever heard someone use that term. On the contrary, I have heard people say "my ancestors came from X country", or like "my great-grandparents came from Italy". The term "homeland" is usually used for the region where a person's current home is. And this not to mention that even a first-generation immigrant who has lived in X country for a long time, could consider X country to be his true homeland. Secondly, there's an implicit assumption here that "Africa" is the "homeland" of African Americans. I don't need to explain why that's troubling. Thirdly, many of my "African American" friends are of thoroughly mixed ancestry. One such friend did a 23andMe test, and it turned out he had 54% European ancestry (even though physically "he looks black"), 30-something% African ancestry, and a smattering of other ancestry groups (including Native American) for the rest. It would be inaccurate and inappropriate to consider him as someone "of African ancestry" (even though he looks somewhat so). The phenotypes a person's genome expressed do not necessarily correspond to a person's actual genetic ancestry. I could go into more reasons as to why it's not a great term to use, but I think these three reasons make a good case. ---- > get a lump sum, if they start a business or invest in land While the underlying motivation behind your idea is pretty decent (and a fairly lofty goal I might add); I, for one, would rather prefer direct foreign aid (not loans, but literal foreign aid grants with no expectation of return). There's too much of a risk of corruption with your idea, and bad incentives are baked right into it. Just increase the current foreign aid to developing countries across the board. Do something like the Marshall Plan, where in exchange for free-market economic policies, we directly invest in education, infrastructure, and other things in developing countries. On a secondary note, domestically, I would rather focus on just getting some kind of actual, concrete, meaningful (maybe financial) reparations bill passed through Congress. That alone seems like a huge and almost insurmountable political challenge, and I want to see that tackled somehow. We want to improve the quality of life and access to opportunity for the poorest economic classes in the US, so they can pursue their ambitions and dreams from a similar starting point as more well-off Americans. Achieving this alone would be a huuuge deal in and of itself.

engineer_22 6y ago
Does money equal wealth? A famous quote: "broke is temporary, poor is eternal" Tongue in cheek, if we had a program of cash payments I suspect that TV manufacturers and car dealers would have record years.

rwcarlsen 6y ago

Yeah - And I should invest specifically in Mexico because my grandma happened to be born there. African Americans - are Americans. They often have their own American subcultures, but the U.S.A is their home. Sure they have history connecting them to somewhere. But they can invest wherever the heck they want. No need to limit our generosity to our many generations removed ancestral roots.

rayiner 6y ago
Black Americans typically have deeper roots in the United States than white Americans: https://news.gallup.com/poll/4621/majority-americans-identify-themselves-third-generation-americans.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4621/majority-americans-identif... > Black Americans are more likely than either whites or Hispanics to be the third generation Americans. Seventy-five percent of black Americans indicate they are at least the third generation born in the United States, compared to 58% of whites and 13% of Hispanics.
- tasogare 6y ago
  Those numbers are very hard to believe. I bet most if not 100% Hispanics have American ancestry going back before pre-Colombian times while literally 0% of White and Black have such roots.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    The meaning of "American ancestry" used above is "United States ancestry", not "North-or-South-American continent ancestry". Hispanic Americans certainly have plenty of deep American ancestry in the latter sense, but for relatively few of them this American ancestry is from United States.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    Black Americans whose families go back far enough have substantial Native American ancestry, actually, having been treated similarly as an underclass during the early years of English/Dutch colonization of North America. It's harder to find connections because of anti-miscegenation and one-drop rule laws and customs, and the relative nascence of reliable genetic testing (which themselves may be misleading due to their reliance on statistical proximity to controls).

engineer_22 6y ago

You may be interested to find out that in the 1800s there was a similar program pursued. The country of Liberia was originally founded by black Americans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Societ... Later Marcus Garvey motivated another 'Back to Africa' movement. As I understand it the, the movement did not send very many blacks back to Africa. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey We have to wonder, do Africans want Black Americans to come colonize their homelands?

bsanr2 6y ago
Depends on where in Africa (which is, famously, not a single country). Ghana has encouraged immigration with the promise of citizenship; Mauritania is not quite so hospitable. Liberia's situation is interesting in that it was one of several examples of America's export of colonialism coming back to bite us (one other being Japan, which went from staunchly isolationist to trying to take over half the world in the scant few generations following Perry's opening).

marci 6y ago

Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? Most of African Europeans a)know what country their ancestors are from, b) have direct links to their relatives in Africa. > Africa has a lot of future, plenty of growth. China knows this and has invested a lot into Africa. I think this is exactly Africa's main issue: being seen first foremost as a land of resources and economic ventures. You go to the Americas/Europe/Asia/Oceania to visit, and Africa to make money/for "humanitarian aid". Things may evolve when they change to "X has invested a lot in Africans".

peteretep 6y ago
> Would you say that white Americans homeland is Europe? I would say — from a European perspective — a baffling number of white Americans cling on to a European cultural identity. It feels to an outsider like many Americans want to be American + something else. Many/most black Americans don’t have this luxury, and my hot take is that Kwanza and other pan-African neo traditions seek to fill this gap? As a counter-example, I lived in the anglophone Caribbean for many years, and it always felt like there was a strong sense of national identity there, very distinct from trying to associate with Africa in any way. I guess I’d also expect 2nd/3rd generation African immigrants to America to maintain their cultural identity — I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone with Ethiopian heritage describe themselves as anything other than Ethiopian whatever their passport or recent ancestry
- RuggedPineapple 6y ago
  Its not really a hot take, but an express intent. Slaves had their culture and traditions aggressively stamped out in order to further the disconnect and reinforce their place as property. Their original tribes and homelands that they could hold on to as a touchstone were repressed almost totally. This is more or less exactly why there's a 'black' culture instead of Nigerian or Ghanaian or whatever tribes existed before national boundaries were drawn. White Americans can generally point to an Italian or Irish or Swedish heritage or whatever, a luxury that black americans often don't have. At least didn't before modern DNA genealogy.

Chris2048 6y ago

"visit their homeland" - good luck marketing that. Would this go any better than if any American visited?

madengr 6y ago

By all means, write a check to pay for it. Or do you want other people to pay for it?

tomcam 6y ago

> Thoughts? Sure—why not set an example by starting your own fund?

dsohn0 6y ago

How about we stop treating black different because they are black? Is that in the year 2020 too much to fucking ask for? Why would we subsidize African Americans investing in Africa but not white Americans? Racist nonsense.