On the relationship between “African Americans” and black immigrants

Now, the elephant. This relationship has been described as strained, volatile, formative, cooperative—all true. It would be foolish to close one’s eyes to the differences between black immigration and “native” African Americans in how the two “groups” relate to each other and how they each relate to Americana.  As much as this issue is sometimes unnecessarily sensationalized, there are countless historical and contemporary examples of collaborative projects. The fundamental differences are, in fact, a matter of historical perspective.

Picture a wall.

Historically all black people in America have faced a wall to their achievement of the American dream. Over the centuries, through the sweat and blood many African Americans, windows have gradually been broken in that wall; windows large enough for people to jump through. Nevertheless, there are still huge chunks of wall remaining. Many African Americans still feel a responsibility to break down what remains of the wall. That probably partly explains why, as one student observed at the University of Chicago, many African Americans tend to go into fields such as political science, sociology and African American studies. Some will call that the African American project: TRANSFORMATION.

Enter The Neo African Americans. Most of them come from places so dark and full of walls that when they enter America and they encounter this thing they don’t see a wall; they see windows. In fact, they come here looking for windows, so their main objective in America is to figure out how to jump through those windows. In that regard, they are more immigrant than black. Call it the black immigrant project: EXPLOITATION

It is this dialectic that creates what some see as a tension between black immigrants and African Americans. The key to deepening the relationship is to understand the factors that have shaped the other’s perspective. Whether you see a window or wall depends on the accident of your birth and your socialization? Looking ahead, whether you see a window or wall is also a question of strategy—should black people spend energy breaking down the rest of the wall so everyone can just walk through, or jumping through the windows in such masses that the rest of the walls crumble?