Being Black in America is living with the constant awareness that you can die for simply existing. The unjust, unfair and senseless killings of Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and many more have once again brought to light the dilemma of Black people living in America. Social media has been a catalyst for much needed discussions on race relations and discrimination not just in America but around the world. From Minnesota to London to Abuja to Paris, there have been protests and chants of #BlackLivesMatter. 

Along with the protests, there have been a lot of discussions on conceptualizing Blackness- who is Black and who is not. On social media, I’ve seen African Americans call out African immigrants in America for not supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement and Africans blame African Americans for police brutality. 

These discussions have led me to step back and think about the conceptualization of Blackness and the politics of identity. In the course of my deep reflections over the past few days, I have come to the conclusion that the issue is incredibly complex. 

Any attempt to analyze this issue must first consider this question- what does it mean to be Black? This question presumes that all African Americans and Africans identify as Black. 

On the surface, this question may seem silly and nonsensical but on further probing, one realizes that the norms and morays governing Blackness in African and African American communities are different. Thus, the performance of Blackness and impression management in both communities is guided by rules that may have similarities, yet are different. 

African Americans are the descendants of enslaved Black people. Unlike the African immigrant who travels to America in search of a better life or the “American Dream”, African Americans have had to and continue to fight against various obstacles including slavery, segregation and disenfranchisement.

The African immigrant’s ability to desire and come close to the “American Dream” has come on the back of various movements and protests by African Americans and it is important to acknowledge this. 

The media has played a huge role in the friction between African immigrants and African Americans. The representation of African American men as thugs and drug dealers and African American women as single mothers with children from multiple partners has done more good than harm. The mainstream media portrayal of Africa and Africans is not better. The depiction of Africa as a country not a continent that can be saved with just one dollar a day, perpetuates tropes of poverty, disease and death. The result of this jaundiced portrayal is that African immigrants come to America with Hollywood colored lenses of African Americans as unserious and unwilling to work hard and climb the wealth ladder while African Americans view Africans with pity and skepticism- a type of Blackness they do not aspire too. 

African immigrants raise their children to be as far away as possible from their Hollywood colored view of African Americans. So, they encourage their children to distinguish themselves from the “Blacks”, and name their kids names such as “Bryan or Amanda”- names that distance them a little of their Blackness and put them in the circle of whiteness. For them, the hope is to be the model minority, to work hard, succeed, repatriate their earnings and achieve the “American dream”.

The stories of the struggle for equality and elevation from second-class citizens that African Americans grow up hearing are not told in these homes. Rather, stories of war, poverty, famine and an escape from total oblivion to a place of plenty and hope is told. Both stories are valid and reflective of specific individual experience. However, they influence the performance of Blackness and thus make it difficult for both groups to relate with each other. 

But the distractions created by internalized myths do nothing to help the Black people in America. The big question is: how do you tell an African and an African American apart? When a racist cop sees a Black man walking in the street and mistakes him for a criminal based on the description he’s been given –  a Black man- 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighs 250lbs. Does he stop to ask if he’s African or African American before kneeling on his neck? Does he stop to ask if his name is Adewale or Anthony before firing the gun? Does he stop to ask if he speaks Ewe or English before he wrongfully arrests him for possession of drugs? 

The notion that people have the ability to tell Africans and African Americans apart and so one of them can be exempted from racism is false. A lot of African immigrants have no idea what it means to be Black in America until they come to America. They know what it means to be from a different village, a different socio-economic class or a different ethnic group. So, when an Igbo person in Lagos is denied a job for being Igbo, they can process it and trace the roots of that incident to the colonization and the amalgamation of Nigeria. But what happens when a cop stops them for being Black or their child complains of racism in school? They lack the ability and social skills to comprehend and immediately respond to it. 

African immigrants are forced to learn about the “joys” of being Black in America.

They learn not to question the police, learn not to raise their voice so they are not called “angry Black women”, learn to smile when they’re angry and not openly show emotions. They learn that frankness is not appreciated and as a  6 feet 4inches Black man, you can’t spend too long in the store because all the security cameras are focused on you.

When racism rears its ugly head, it does not ask for the root, identity or conceptualization of our Blackness. It affects all of us. Therefore, it is imperative for both communities to educate themselves about each other. It is important for Africans living in America to read about slavery, the civil rights movements, desegregation, systemic racism and examine how these systems exist, define, and affect African Americans, in particular and blacks in general. Equally, it’s important for African Americans not to “other” African immigrants but to see them as compatriots in the fight against racism and the struggle for equality. 

After all, we’re all fighting against the common enemy that is racism.