Unpopular Opinion but Van & Rachel being from the south explains a lot.
Unpopular opinion, but I think Van and Rachel’s insistence on blurring the distinctions around what it means to be a Black American is partly a product of where they grew up. They’re both from the South, where the Black population is predominantly made up of Black Americans. In contrast, I was raised in NYC, where there are large, distinct Black immigrant communities (Haitian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, Guyanese, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and many others) living alongside Black Americans (though our numbers are dwindling in NYC with a lot of us getting fed up and moving to the south).
Rachel even said on her Morally Corrupt podcast that many of the distinctions we make in America are unnecessary because “we’re all Black.” In my experience, that’s a sentiment I hear far more often from Southern Black Americans than from people in places like New York, where the Black diaspora is much more diverse and those distinctions are part of everyday life. K Michelle (a southerner) said the same exact thing on the most recent episode of RHOA.
So when Van gets on the pod and argues that Haitians deserve an open pathway into this country, they deserve easy access to becoming citizens, and that we should simply provide whatever they need without asking difficult questions, I find that both unrealistic and intellectually shallow.
Living in New York my entire life has given me a very different perspective. Many immigrant communities don’t come to the United States looking to merge into one shared American identity. They come here to build a smaller version of the country they left behind, centered around their own language, culture, businesses, religious institutions, supermarkets, and social networks. And really have no interest in including Black Americans in any of it. My mother has stories for days on how some Nigerians act in the workplace once they find out she’s a Black American — and she’s their boss! Also have heard of stories of Filipinos only looking to hire other Filipino’s in hospitals. Same goes for Indians. It’s all very calculated.
And look there’s nothing inherently wrong with preserving your culture. But we also shouldn’t pretend that solidarity across communities is automatic because people share the same racial category.
In fact, many Black Americans have experienced the opposite. I’ve personally known Haitians, Africans, and other immigrants whose parents explicitly told them not to associate with Black Americans because they viewed us as being at the bottom of the totem pole. I had a Haitian friend, told me her parents said exactly that. Now imagine. People from a 3rd world nation, telling you in your own country that you’re actually the bottom of the bottom. Interesting.
Experiences like those are why I push back when people insist that “we’re all just Black” and therefore have identical interests or experiences. Southerners need a reality check. And I do remember Van discussing having his Black American wake up call on an old episode but hey like it or not: race matters, but so does someone’s ethnicity, culture, history, immigration status, and national origin. I’m over people pretending those distinctions don’t exist. It’s silly and doesn’t create solidarity. It just ignores the very real tensions and differences that people experience every day.
Edit: and for what it’s worth, I’m not moved by labels like ADOS, FBA, “xenophobic,” or “racist” being used as shorthand in these conversations. They do not scare me lol.
2nd edit: and this is part of why some of the core issues within the Black diaspora remain unresolved. Yall are reluctant to engage in honest, substantive dialogue. Instead, you’d rather derail conversations into misinterpretations or arguments about points that were never actually made. Y’all don’t actually want real unity. You just want Black Americans to shut up and not shake the imaginary unity table all of y’all are eating off of except for …well you know who.