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posts tagged "blackness"

When a historical moment gets completely ignored 2

This disdain and total lack of concern for a major event such as Haiti becoming a full member of the African Union, speaks volume about the current state of Pan-Africanism or rather the imposture pretending to have anything of Pan-African today. 

I thought that a historical brief was needed to understand how we got to this point, well this is my take on things: While the 50’s and 60’s marked the uprising of people of African descent on both sides of the Atlantic with the African-American civil rights movement and the wave of independence in Africa, the 70’s and 80’s were dark years during which important setbacks took place. In the USA, the Reagan years were absolutely catastrophic, with measures specially targeted against the African-American community. The oil crisis of 1973 marked the end for good of hopes of economic prosperity and independence for many African nations who had to weave back old links of dependence with former colonial powers.

Today, a lot can be said about blackness and Pan-Africanism. In my opinion, Pan-African is either on life support or already has been pronounced dead. Why? Because the version of it we have today is a total, complete and utter fraud that can be potentially dangerous for the most powerless black folks. Today’s claims for ‘Black Unity’ are in most cases utter substantial BS.

Pan-Africanism’s goal was to unite all the people of African descent (and this included ‘non-black’ North-Africans, please remember Nasser’s legacy) to tackle down the white supremacist power structure, in other words, dismantle that hierarchical system and build a community based on equality, solidarity and reciprocity. These last notions are key and sadly today’s fallacious take on Black unity is totally devoid of any of them since it is built on the hierarchical system of white supremacy that the fathers of pan-africanism fought against. It DOES follow the structure of power set by whiteness: Firstly American hegemony at the core center, secondly, the western world at large (minus Japan), thirdly the rest, the periphery. We, those at the periphery are the non-western people of African descent - African, Caribbean, Latin American - and just like within white supremacy, within this fallacious take on black unity, WE DO NOT MATTER. Our voices, struggles, identities and realities, are neither worth knowing, nor worth acknowledging or discussing!! This is why that imposture that pretends to be ‘Pan-Africansim’ today and pro-blackness does not give a flying fuck about the historical adhesion of Haiti to the African Union. Blackness is only considered of value as long as it is closed enough to the core center and far enough from the periphery! This is why this ideology is dangerous! This gets to the point where propelled by the arrogance of benefiting from such ethnocentrism, many at the core have the audacity to proclaim themselves the voices and definers of blackness. Isn’t it blackest blackitty blackos blacker-than-thou morons and Henri-Louis-Gates in the making?? They take their authority straight from white supremacy!!

If as a westerner, your blackness is NOT colored by the reality of Maputo, Kigali, Sao Paulo, Port-au-Prince or any other cities from the Global South with large black populations, yet you are tempted to open your big mouth and do any of the things I just mentioned and on top of that you have the audacity to claim that you stand for ‘Black Unity’, and sincerely believe that your experience is in anything comparable with the experience of black people not shielded by western citizenship in terms of violence and poverty, I invite you to urgently grab any of these


and SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!

Yep, none of us get to choose their privilege or lack of, but one can choose whether or not / to what extend, with the privileges one is afforded, to either sustain and maintain an oppressive structure or not! Fallacious ‘Black Unity’ does sustain and maintain white supremacy, making it highly prejudicial for those of us at the bottom of the very bottom.

I am about to go personal here. Waking up from the delusions of US and western-centric blackness was a huge emotional and intellectual shock for me because it was then that I fully realized that it has alienated me from myself just like white supremacy. While I was caught up fighting battles that were not mine and never will be I was completely disregarding my own struggles, identity, reality and people! I was caring more about things far far away from me than things close to home, that define and make me who I am and my people; those who with whom I share a language, a nationality, a tribe, a continent, a status of non-westerner. Because at the end of the day, they are the ONLY ONES who have my back. They are the ONLY ONES who can really understand me. They are the ONLY ONES who fight and care for me as a black woman, a Cameroonian, a Bamileke, and an African, well a non-factor from the periphery of this oppressive world. Unfortunately, far too many of us are still caught up in this fallacy that leads us to loose and forget about ourselves.

Pan-Africanism should never have a center, if it does, it is probably following the hierarchical structure of an oppressive system, hence is most likely white supremacy in disguise! 

i agree we need new concepts/systems of uplifting the black self for the sake of the black self, not as a direct response to negate the superiority of whiteness/reverse the psychological damage done by slavery, institutionalized racism, n white supremacy. but u often attack these outmoded concepts angrily, as opposed to critiquing them constructively/offering suggestions as to what new psychological concepts of self definition would be more effective, which i find problematic, even if i feel u

@exallamsehtfes

You are right.

The thing is that most do not understand that our different settings do shape MOST of our relationship with white supremacy. While I can understand that most black people living within majoritarly white societies have a reformist and integrationist appraoch, for a non-westerners like myslef it doesn’t make sense AT ALL.

I will NEVER understand what it feels like to grow up and develop in a white society because I didn’t have to go through that. That reactionary approach DOES make sense in a western setting and is beneficial on some aspects, when trying to make it in a white society. So reappropriating blackness may be beneficial for AA or other black westerners in Europe.This not the path I choose to take personally but still, I RESPECT IT!

My main issue however is the fact that the re-appropriation of blackness is made mostly at the expense of the diversity of African cultureS and peopleS’ historieS and identitieS. From the cultural appropriation to Kemet or all the ‘Kings and queens’ garbabe. This is extremely hurtful and harmful to me!! This DOES hurt me and most of my attempts to voice it calming on this site which is mostly American centric as a whole, not only in black circles, were firstly taken with ridicule then I WAS ATTACKED IN THE INTEGRITY OF MY IDENTITY AND ACCUSED OF ‘ANTI-BLACKNESS’ by buffoons unable to conceive Africa as nothing but a monolith.

Like I said earlier, being a westerner and an American confer you power hence oppressive potential over people like me and I have distanced myself from people who have shown NO FUCKING RESPECT for me, my identity and my culture! Consequently, I do not feel obliged to “critiquing them constructively/offering suggestions”. In other words, I do not owe niceness to people actively oppressing and deriding me.

“

We were KINGS and QUEENS before the white man came.

Says the ultimate Negro, once again proving that he is TOTALLY unable of conceiving and detaching himself from the white man he claims to hate so much. 

One can NOT build an empire in a cell.

There is no liberation possible through codes and concepts exclusively built for oppression. I hope many of you will one day understand this!

And that ‘king and queen’ garbage is seriously getting on my nerves as an African! The annihilation and romantisation of our deep and complex histories solely to feed falsely liberating fantasies to get back at whiteness is extremely harmful and disgusting! 

We were NOT ALL KINGS or QUEENS and we never needed to be. UGH, this site!

how broken we are

vagabondaesthetics:

Sometimes I just feel like the Negro would die without white people. We can’t look at ourselves without thinking of white people be it positive, negative, love, hate, compare, or contrast.

The reason being that the Negro is NOT a person but the product pf whiteness. The negro only exists and was created in white consciousness as the ultimate non-white, the non-human.

All the characteristics that constitutes the essence of the negro, who he is and what he stands for are DIRECTLY created by whiteness. For instance, while something as superfical as phenotype constitutes the essence of blackness, whiteness can escape such reductive and primitive definition. For instance being/looking ‘white’ doesn’t make one ultimately white but being/looking ‘black’ does. Because whiteness is complexity, depth, hence humanity while blackness is in essence caricaturization, stereotypes, dependent on what it is opposed to i.e. whiteness, with notions so reductive and small that in my opinion, they could NEVER capture all the complexity of human nature. Well, this is my opinion and I know that most disagree with me on this point!

 A person exists in themselves, the Negro can only exist within whiteness as the ultimate negation, opposite, other against which whiteness affirm its humanity and superiority. 

I would leave it to those who still think that re-appropriating blackness can ever truly be liberating because they have motives that I may not undestand but I respect!

Anyway, Malik, your intellectual sophistication is dazzling and way too above most of Tumblr crowd, please down try and downgrade your thought process for them. Keep thinking and providing me with food for thoughts (^_^)!

My PSA

ramennoodlestoodles:

So, I was just going to ignore Riley’s accusation claiming that I’m not black. But I just want to show that I am actually black for those who aren’t Riley with doubts.

I’m only showing my eyes because dealing with Riley has opened a flood of potential stalkers. I know the writing is backwards but I can still read it.

For a few moments I was somewhat upset by people’s behaviors, but they’re invested in not respecting me and creating lies. It’s not even personal, I just symbolize taking down their power. A perfect example of how this group of black tumblr is practicing groupthink is for a moment I thought I was the crazy one (for a nanosecond).

I’m tired of other people acting as if they’re the gate keepers of blackness. I don’t need AAVE or culturally appropriating African cultures to feel secure in my blackness. I speak AAVE because it was how I raised, I eat soul food because that is what was fed to me. These actions or behaviors aren’t proof of my blackness or to show how black I am. Nor should it be used to prove anyone else’s blackness. My skin color nor do my actions are qualifiers for my blackness. I’m tired of people thinking they need to use AAVE or twerk to somehow prove that they’re black now. I am very comfortable in my blackness and I don’t need someone to tell me when I’ve had my “nigga wake up call”.

People need to take their problems with white folk up with white folk. Y’all killing me creating a heirarchy of who is opprresed the most amongst POC. You’re blaming other POC for the positions the white man has put them in this whole game. What are you getting across by this? What do you gain by knowing you’re the most victimized of all identities? How is this dismantling this system of oppression? Because I don’t know about y’all but I’m tired of being sick and tired. Knowing if I’m the most oppressed or not doesn’t help me take down this system and make a better world for my generations.

I could care less if white people see me as a loud dirty nigger, I know who I am. For those people who say “oh I’m just a loud, annoying nigger to the white folk” like do you enjoy in wallowing in your low self esteem. The only person that looks at you as a “loud, annoying nigger is yourself. I’m not here for that. I have no time or interested to engage in that circle jerk in the name of black womanhood.

This is my story and I’m sticking to it.

To think that you are only 16 and far more intelligent than that league of dumbasses twice your age claiming ownership over blackness ;_; You are awesome ;_;

Also only the sheep and cattle take those hiveminded trolls seriously. No need to try and justify yourself, with people in a groupthink who totally lack critical thinking skills, mental autonomy and the ability to think for themselves. Really it is pointless.

I must say that most of black social justice Tumblr is a total disgrace, for real. A fucking disgrace!! To think that at one point I was associated with them leave me with a taste of vomit in my mouth. This kind of abuse and silencing of BLACK PEOPLE is widespread and goes virtually unchallenged on this website, everybody stays tight-lipped, say nothing, turn their heads, pretend that they see nothing but when someone throws their shit back at those self-appointed martyrs of blackness all the cattle and their mamas is out there to show how dedicated they are to the hivemind, talking about ‘abuse culture’ and the silencing of ‘black women’. I CAN’T!! I think only few here know what JUSTICE means!

It makes me so ashamed and disgusted that any outsider may linked me to those assholes appropriating my blackness for their personal gain. I have nothing to do with oppressive and abusive fucks!! UUUUGGGGHHH!!

arabstateofmind:

Racism in Israel: People Call Us Slaves

Nearly a month ago, the Israeli government launched the first in its series of mass deportations of African migrants. Since then, 200 South Sudanese have been airlifted to Juba, their refugee status having been rescinded by a Jerusalem Administrative Court decision on June 7. Recently, the deportation of immigrants from the Ivory Coast began.

About 62,000 migrants, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, have come through the porous desert border with Egypt since 2006. Whilst humanitarian agencies claim their right to be recognized as refugees and to be considered for asylum, the Israeli government disputes the argument saying the vast majority are job seekers. The visas given to these migrants doesn’t allow them to work, making their lives very difficult.

In the Southern part of Tel-Aviv, Lewinsky Park has been turned into an open-air refugee camp with hundreds of residents.

Ibrahim explains, “I left Darfur because of the war; my village was assaulted, I didn’t have any other choice. I came to Israel seeking peace. I don’t know why they deny us working visas, so we spend the whole day waiting for somebody to offer us a job. Here the conditions are worse than in refugee camps in Chad where my family is.”

“People call us ‘Eved’ (slaves),” says Abdul-Aziz, “On public transportation, they don’t want to sit next to us; anyway, mostly we are not allowed to get on. So we try to save money to buy a bike. But even though, it’s not safe for us as cars try intentionally to knock us down sometimes.”

For most of them, returning home is not an option. Abdallah lost his dad and two brothers, his village was destroyed, the rest of his family lives in a refugee camp in Chad.

Bashir wants to go back, he cannot endure this situation any longer. (x)

(Photos by Eloise Bollack)

Israel, the racist hell!!

“

I do not blame him for being annoyed. But this is a situation that calls for understanding. Being connected to Africa means listening to the people. The name he carries did what it was intended to do - link him to the continent and in this case Nigerians. That means dealing with everything that comes with having that name - the good, the bad, and even the ugly.

Welcome to being a part of an African identity, where it isn’t always daisies and buttercups.

eclecticspectrum (via spawnofhumanbeings)

This This!!

With his name, he is now forever linked to the African continent and precisely to the Yorubas, isn’t that what his parent wanted?? But when people he is now linked to, raise their voices he gets offended, why??

It took me a very very long time to understand this but in US-centric blackness talks about ‘return to the motherland’, the motherland is conceptualised as a place that hasn’t changed at all since the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. That place is desert, there is no one there, only pieces of Ankara and Kente cloth lying on the ground, with some cowries here and there, some Masai necklaces, tribal names, maybe some Ancient Egyptians or Kemetians or whatever running errands (obviously they are all black!!) with some Nubians from wayyyyyyy wayyyyyyyyyyyy back, like millennia ago (Not the current Nubians whose struggles, western blacks do not give a fuck about, they made it quite clear) and yep obviously pyramids and Pharaohs everywhere. This is Africa to them, I am not even joking! Their idea of Africa is just as poor and dehumanising as white people’s in true western fashion. 

We, Africans are non-entities. we do not exist as the people who carry and produce the culture - they claim to love so much, we do not exist as peopleS with historieS far richer and complex than the mental masturbations of kemet, we do not exist as peopleS with identitieS and struggleS worth knowing! We just DO NOT EXIST!! 

THEY DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE OUR HUMAN COMPLEXITY!! JUST LIKE WHITENESS!! This is why I was quick to desolidarise and distance myself from US-centric blackness when I understood this. When they look at me, my apparent blackness is a mirror to them, so they only see me as a black person LIKE THEM!! So I am expected to behave and understand the world LIKE THEM, because, they do conceive themselves as the default blacks!! So I am just this blank canvas projecting back THEIR BLACKNESS. If I do not align, BOOM, I am the anti-black traitor seeking the destruction of African Americans! Me, a Bamileke woman, the history of my people, the genocide of my people, the dictatorship I was born under, me, the African girl, the non-westerner terrified of living a life of misery and destitution that very few of them could ever picture, I DO NOT FUCKING EXIST!!!

This is why they are so fucking shocked and outraged when we raised our voices, BECAUSE WE DO NOT EXIST outside of the cognitive dissonance where they are all stuck in. We are non-entities and the return to the motherland is just like a walk to the park to collect all those ‘African’ artefacts lying there.

Do you think that this man who carries a distorted Yoruba name could EVER consider us his equals despite all his talk about ‘blackness’, the ‘motherland’ blablah blahhhh?? Do you think he can ever sympathise with those his parents’ choices hurt and even try to approach things from their perspectives???

NEVVVVVEEEEERRRRRR

They were all so fucking quick to dismiss our complaints LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO and make it about their pain, their history, the civil right movements LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO!! Seriously who give a fuck about the pain, the history, the opinions of people who do not exist?? Who?

We are not expected to talk back, we are just supposed to sit there, look down and thank them for treating us like garbage because this is blackness, this is unity!! And I use to think they were my people SMH

Baratunde just annoyed me…

eclecticspectrum:

You know what I think people hear these reports of Africans coming to the west to get their degrees forgetting that there are people back home who are suffering. People who are counting on one person to get a degree, get a well paying job, so that money can go towards providing for an extended family. Seems like folks forget that while we’re in the west collecting these coveted degrees we still have to deal with racism, if you’re a woman sexism, or any other kind of oppression. We have to navigate institutions that are racist. 

I know from personal experience because the fortune of having been a part of elite white academia since I was 14 years old. I say fortune because I understand that compared to the lives of my cousins back home I am fortunate to be in the west. I am fortunate because I didn’t die of leukemia like my cousins because he couldn’t get proper medical care. I didn’t lose my sight like my other cousins because she didn’t have the benefit of having access to American doctors.

I make it my business to try and learn about African-American history because I would not be able to do so much without the struggles of the people who came before me. 

Seems to me, like folks are forgetting that Blackness is a global phenomenon. And whether or not they wish to believe it, leaving here means not having many privileges.

My cousins here support TENS of people living in TOTAL POVERTY back home.

I have said time and time again that my life DOES NOT belong to me!! That a lot of my depression is due to the crushing weight OF DUTY TO MY PEOPLE. For my grandma to have her meds, for my little cousins to go to proper schools or simply to fucking eat enough! But geez who give a fuck about this?? Who??

 African migrants are rich as hell!! I mean we have so much money and shit and we keep it all to ourselves and swim in it!

They just DO NOT GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT MY STRUGGLE AND EVERY SINGLE THING MANY OF THEM DO OR SAY IS JUST AN ADDITIONAL PROOF OF THIS!! Oh my Goodness!! THEY JUST DO NOT CARE ABOUT ME AND JUST WANT ME TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!! Sadly for them, I have a big ass moth :/

(via ahenfo)

I sometimes wonder if I am the only person who fear non-black POC as much as I fear white people. 

I have never been in a situation where I could have been oppressed by non-black POC but after living in France which has an important North African community and living in the UK which has an important Asian community, I know for sure that it is better to be black here in the west than be black in any other parts of the world at the exception of sub-Saharan Africa of course. 

eclecticspectrum:

eclecticspectrum:

dreams-from-my-father:

b-sama replied to your post: eclecticspectrum replied to your post:…

I try to not speak badly of anyone, but I absolutely agree about so-treu. Used to follow her but her and her kind don’t deserve to ever step foot in Africa!!!

THANK YOU!!!

They are the worst of the worst! I used to follow her too and I am even ashamed to admit that I looked up to her at one point but her and her crew are just a bunch of manipulative, bully, imperialist, entitled twats!!

She even bullies AA and attacks their blackness for disagreeing with her. The last thing Africa needs is some fake ass self-centered black ‘feminist’ -I use this word lightly - from America who claims to speak in our name, yet has no fucking problem appropriating the reality of South African women and make it about her!

I’m sorry you looked up to her. I never did. (Sorry folks on Tumblr but I don’t look up to nobody on the internet. There are a handful of people that I look up to and I’ve spoken to them irl)

All that woman has done is drag my url threw the Tumblr Groupthink Mud. 

Strange how my archives are available for folks to look through. I’m also very good at tagging things to make searching easy.

Strange how folks don’t say a peep about the posts I do about blackness and how I get heat for it. Just check my inbox tag. 

I don’t like hypocrites. I don’t like people who can’t take it when someone has something negative to say about something that they are a part of. Whenever I talk about how my experience has a 1st generation Ghanaian woman isn’t just infringed on by white people - that diasporic people do it too, no one wants to own it.

I get a list of reasons - sometimes valid reasons, that get thrown around so much they turn into excuses. 

Saying that not all Black Americans do xyz to Africans and their children is one of the biggest derailments I see. I’m sorry but I thought we righty jumped on white people who say that not all white are racist? 

You want me to give you a cookie because you claim to not be silencing while you’re silencing.

if I wasn’t an atheist I’d say a prayer.

This taught me a lot:

  1. Never look up blindly to people just because you do not believe in your voice. I have a voice too and I ought it to myself to make it heard. I think it was because I was too scared of making mistakes, I now understand that making mistakes is an indispensable part of learning and growing and that instead of trying to avoid it. If I really want to learn, my ego of losing face should never stop me. You need courage and humility.
  2. Never ever trust people who tell you they are your people yet do not respect you, attack you when you have diverging opinions and try to manipulate you. They expect everything from you yet get offended when you ask for something back. I do not care about AA from now on. I know only THREE of them who have ever shown genuine concern and interest in my culture and have been truly respectful, the rest ewwwwww
  3. Never lose yourself in groupthink and cult like stuff. If you are among people who chastise you for questioning something that is as essential to you as it is to them, they are dogmatic and there is no growth in dogma!! Being around people like that is like being in a place where oxygen id rarefied. It will kill who you are and ltimately you wont stand for anything you believe in at the beginning.
  4. We are all privileged in one way or another!!! ALL of us!! We should never forget that and not take the ugly sides of our oppressors when people we oppress are calling us out!! I am really really really scared of become an arrogant caricature of social justice like most of the assholes on this site who spend their time calling others out yet bully those they oppress. Always check yourself, your motives and your actions. No one is perfect and make sure never to become like your oppressors. So I beg all of you to chastise me when I do wrong and call me out when my privilege is showing, I will be forever grateful! I need it to be a better person and would have no problem apologizing and paying my dues. The worst thing I can lose as an oppressor is face, while those I oppress may lose their lives. Feelings are worth nothing in comparison to a human life.
  5. Speak for thyself. Never forget that you represent the interests of a group yep, but ultimately, it is your voice, your experiences, so some of your peers will disagree with you. And do not try to silence them. I realise that I can’t speak for African women or Cameroonian women or Bamileke women. I can only speak for myself. The best I can do is do my best for my peers’ voices to be heard. For them to have a voice like me here in the west. 
  6. Never instrumentalise, use someone else’s pain, oppression, struggle to make your point. This is vile, disgusting and dehumanising!! I am really really scared of falling for this cheap trick at times and please don’t hesitate to call me out. Thanks in advance!
  7. Never ever believe the hype!! Follower count, reblogs all of that is hot air. Many of the Tumblr famous people here are extremely stupid fucks - I am speaking especially about WESTERN feminists of color - who get gassed  and end up believing their hype. They become the caricature of what they claim to stand against , which is just gross. Also they would rather save face that really question the system, which is what most of us stand - at least claim - to stand for. Some follow the crowd and enjoy its safety and others take risk and explore more adventurous and revolutionary paths. I want to be the latter.

(via ahenfo)

The ignorance argument from fellow Americans is dumb. There are 120k libraries in this country. There are issues with funding, but the information for ANYTHING is vastly more easy to fine in comparison to the world and even most Western countries. We know those Nigerian writers because English is the official language there! Speaking/reading in English is a privilege considering everything gets translated into it! All those authors mentioned spent a considerate amount of time in the US too...

@vagabondaesthetics

…Like people all across Africa have been welcoming Black people from across the Diaspora in for almost a century. I’m sure it has soured a lot considering the Black Americans who have been coming in the last few decades are mostly exoticizing tourists rather than Du Bois, Garvey, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, etc.

I know a lot of fellow Black Americans don’t know how how different the US colonialization was from places in the Caribbean and throughout Africa where class is DEEPLY embedded similar to the same Western European countries which is where a lot of the hatred for supposed laziness comes from. Not even getting into the fact that “divide and conquer” in many African countries literally means European sponsored genocide or based on you’re ethnic group you’ll NEVER be allowed into certain job institutions, get proper hospital treatment, certain schools, etc.

___________________________________________________

ALL OF THIS!!!

Lesson learnt: Never again associate with some western, hypocritical fucks in the name of racial unity, when they have ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING RESPECT for my dignity!!

They are no better than the same white Americans they spend their lives complaining about!! Just as entitled, egotistical, self-centered, imperialist with a coloniser-like mind!!

To think I once was foolish enough to think they were my people. I want to vomit when I think about that western bitch claiming that she is a black feminist yet making the endemic sexual abuse of South Africa all about her wack western ass despite the fact that women like me, non-westerners from poor countries are the most at risk. And it disgusts me to know that they have to audacity to speak on my behalf!! Obviously she doesn’t give a fuck about what we, African women, are going. No one cares about us, about our safety, yet this basic bitch and her minions called us anti-black for non kissing her western ass. 

This generation of AA is just western wasted really. They are only interested in Africa when they can exploit us just like white Americans to fill that big ass pain, they like talking about, as if we are not in pain too. No they don’t give a fuck about my pain, they don’t give a fuck about living under dictatorship amid horrendous poverty, people fleeing wars, genocides all of that. They are only there for Kemet, Nubia, cultural appropriation blabla blah!!! What a bunch of losers, who would even question my discretion on my own identity and culture in the name of their pain. FUCK THY PAIN!!! I don’t give a fuck, you are nothing to me, I am sick of them pushing on me their cult-like doctrine!

US-centric blackness is an imperialism which carries the same oppressive potential as white supremacy!!! It does silence, oppress, police, erase and exotify non-westerners like me!!

Anyone who disagrees, take your ass far fucking away from me ASAP ewwwwwwwwwwwwww I have nothing to do with privilege-denying oppressive fucks! 

The buffonery on this site is fucking astounding!! Astounding!! Grade A fuckery!!So AA women, get sexualled harrasemed more when they are in South Africa because they are AA??

O__________________O

Some of my brain cells, committed suicide after reading that shit!!!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH I feel like dying man, this shit must be surreal, like WTF!! XD

They are more targeted by street harassment than those poor girls roaming the streets that no one protects right?? Is the fact that they are AA written on their foreheads or something?? 

Then look at them, denying that they are totally incapable of discussing racism and blackness without making it about THEM!!

SMH

Leave Africa alone!!!

yepdeesaidit:

dreams-from-my-father:

aranyerdinratri:

I pretty much just want to scream at 90% of the discussion about African diasporic identities on my dash because it’s predicated on this (rubbish) idea that black Latinos have ‘more’ of a culture or ‘more’ of an identity or sense of belonging than black Americans. Speaking as someone who sits on both sides of that, we’ve got tatters too. I’d say we have even less. In Brazil, there’s nowhere near as much black consciousness as there is here. Half the black people there won’t even say they’re black, it’s morena clara or some shit. It honestly reeks of ‘we suffered MORE, we lost MORE’ when that’s not even the point because colonialism fucked us all over.

The biggest fallacy of US-centric blackness: “Other black groups have more culture or identity or deal better with their blackness or are not just black, or have other cultural ties … etc.” All of that is once again a fallacy which makes it seems like, as Daniellemertina said, African Americans have it worse when it comes to identity crisis and are the bottom of the totem pole. Sadly, this feeling is far to often used to justify entitled, imperialist and oppressive shit like we have sadly seen with the debate on cultural appropriation

People just CAN’T compare how different groups deal with their identity because the terms and circumstances are totally different. It irks me when people do that and I just don’t know what to tell them. Like seriously are you really convinced that being AA, your identity crisis as a black person is worse than anyone else’s?? Like for real?? Then let me take you to my country where the youth is torn between a notion of blackness shove down their throat by either white westerners or by black westerners through the western media; And where colonisation and christianisation erased a good chunk of my culture. But who cares about this, really?? Who cares about the identity crisis of an African kid??


With all due respect, I don’t see how you don’t recognized the emphasized points as commonalities among Africans and AAs. Yes I realize you are not western-centric and in fact anti-Western. I get that. But I cannot help but liken the identity crises as one in the same. So no, I wouldn’t say AAs have it worse. But we too struggle with identity crises, do we conform to the notions of blackness as fashioned by our media or do we forsake it all together. I mean, I’m sorry but I honestly see them as more alike than different. I can’t articulate it without sounding entirely argumentative.

There are many many commonalities resulting from our shared history with white supremacy and the status assigned to blackness. However, in my opinion, the identity crises diverge more than they converge. One major reason being that blackness is alien to indigenous African cultures. So while AA are trying to reclaim their blackness to uplift themselves, many of us are trying to preserve a reality and culture that existed prior and/or outside a race-based system. I said this time and time again, from my experience as a Cameroonian, people do not ID with their skin color, NEVER!! Blackness is just a fact of life like breathing, because everybody is black. What defines the African is the tribe and there are many tribes in Africa, especially in the Sahel, of indigenous African from the same tribe where people can be black with very dark-skinned and others, have a white skin with blond hair and blue eyes. This is the case of the Amazigh people and many fulani groups.

The tribe makes the African! Reclaiming blackness as the base for an African identity in these conditions can only have adverse effects on many indigenous cultures and create a lot of division between Africans already, for instance, west Africans thinking that they are more African than African from the horn of the continent, because they fit the stereotype of blackness; Some Eastern Africans thinking they are better than West Africans, division such as these are a product of white supremacy and ID with blackness.

I will go as far as saying that reclaiming blackness can be very very dangerous for the continent. This is a notion that was forced on us and we cannot strive for agency on our identity by claiming as ours something that erase our diversity. Just an example, even on the physical aspect only, west Africans do not look the same AT ALL!! 8 times out of 10 I can look at a Nigerian and tell if they are Igbo or Yoruba or Hausa. Our diversity is so fucking wide and deep and it breaks my heart because blackness erases all of that. Pygmies, do not look like Bamileke, who do not look like fufulbe and such and such. Thought, every body I meets from either Cameroon or Nigeria is convinced that I am fulani  for some reason :/ 

I know that my skin is dark brown, that my hair has a lot of kink and that my areaolas are dark brown all of that, I know that but I don’t want something as superficial as that, something that represents the violation of my people and our dehumanisation and erasure of our complexity and diversity, to EVER be the fundament of who I am. White people can apply whatever epithet they want to me, however, I decide whomever I want to be!

You see, all of this is erased in US-centric discussions of blackness. All of this, which is why I don’t want to belong in them any-more. 

wretchedoftheearth:

dreams-from-my-father:

afrokidcosmos:

black americans saying they have no culture seems to be to be the result of all conversations of blackness being centered around black americans

so used to being the center, suddenly american blackness becomes default, just ‘blackness’ so when talking about blackness elsewhere, suddenly you have to add an qualifier - afrolatinos and blackness, jamaicans and blackness

and so their own specific american cultural markers become invisible

and then they perceive that as not having a culture

because they are so used to being the be all end all of blackness

it actually reminds me of the way white people see themselves as the default human and then mark everyone as other e.g. ‘this guy bumped into me’ meaning a white guy bumped into me, vs “this black guy bumped into me’

It is exactly how white people see themselves as the default human, they do see themselves as the default blacks and then proceed in the same way in their privilege denial. 

I don’t think it’s so much centering one’s self as default Blackness. If you’re a Black American and just that, you quite possibly have no connection to any other culture so it’s not about making yourself the default “Black person” - that is all you are. If you’re Black and African or Black and Indian or Black and Latin@ - you still have connection to some other history and heritage. Black Americans clearly have a culture, but it’s not upheld as legitimate to many people, so it’s not like saying that you’re African, Dominican, or Black Indian - or mixed race. 

I’m not saying that Black Americans don’t only talk about Blackness with regards to themselves - but other reference point is there? 

And I feel like particularly for Black Americans as opposed to other Black people of the diaspora, American culture itself is quite often made off of appropriating and copying other cultures, so it doesn’t feel as authentic as say, European cultures. 

They’re two totally different issues - being from the West or the US and having no connection to a culture. Yes, being a citizen and living in the Western world is a privilege. Yes, having a connection to a culture is something that everyone deserves - and for those that don’t have it, it’s painful.

The US centrism of blackness is not something that is actively engineered by African Americans, this was neither my point nor OP’s. It is the direct result of American as a super power. It is a privilege in itself, from which AA benefit, just like white people benefit from whiteness and I have yet to meet an AA who would admit that being American afford them privileges that other blacks on the planet con’t have access to can is detrimental to other blacks. 

As for this bit: “If you’re a Black American and just that, you quite possibly have no connection to any other culture so it’s not about making yourself the default “Black person” - that is all you are” 

http://lanomrah.tumblr.com/post/28067018608/daniellemertina-aranyerdinratri 

I am going to link this post who I think brilliantly addresses it. Every group of black people deal with identity crisis of some sort that is directly link to white supremacy. 

afrokidcosmos:

black americans saying they have no culture seems to be to be the result of all conversations of blackness being centered around black americans

so used to being the center, suddenly american blackness becomes default, just ‘blackness’ so when talking about blackness elsewhere, suddenly you have to add an qualifier - afrolatinos and blackness, jamaicans and blackness

and so their own specific american cultural markers become invisible

and then they perceive that as not having a culture

because they are so used to being the be all end all of blackness

it actually reminds me of the way white people see themselves as the default human and then mark everyone as other e.g. ‘this guy bumped into me’ meaning a white guy bumped into me, vs “this black guy bumped into me’

It is exactly how white people see themselves as the default human, they do see themselves as the default blacks and then proceed in the same way in their privilege denial. 

(via kadalkavithaigal)