r/Blackpeople

to Korea, the Chinese back to China, the Jewish people back to Jerusalem, and you give the Indians their land back and you get on the Mayflower from which you come...We all here on borrowed land. We have to figure out how we're going to make things right for all the people of this country." - Fannie Lou Hamer

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/

This is not a diaspora war post. This is a move toward peace.

But peace requires honesty, and I think one of the biggest things hurting diaspora relations is that much of the world has a completely distorted understanding of Black Americans. Black Americans are among the most successful peoples on this planet, yet much of the world has been taught to imagine us as a population sitting at the bottom. I do not mean we are better than everybody else. I mean that across economic power, professional achievement, education, institution-building, business, politics, science, athletics, intellectual production, and global cultural influence, Black Americans are an extraordinarily accomplished people.

The problem is not that people do not know our history. Most people know about slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. The problem is how that history gets interpreted. Black Americans built the country that became the most powerful nation in the modern world, built institutions and professional classes under conditions designed to suppress us, fought to expand American democracy, and created cultural forms that transformed the planet. I look at that record and think: look at everything that was done to us, and look at what we still became. Somehow other people look at the same record and conclude that we are uniquely dysfunctional.

I think one reason is simple: Black American achievement gets Americanized while Black American failure gets racialized. Our music becomes American music, our icons become American icons, our political victories become American progress, and our culture becomes global culture. But poverty, crime, educational inequality, or dysfunction remain specifically “Black American.” Our accomplishments become everybody's inheritance while our problems remain exclusively ours. That is how someone can consume Black American achievement their entire life and still believe Black Americans are lazy, incompetent, cultureless, or unsuccessful.

This is where some immigrants, including some black immigrants, make a serious mistake. They enter an existing American racial hierarchy and discover that “I’m not like those Black Americans” can be used as a claim to respectability: we work harder, we value education more, our families are better. But you are not escaping the hierarchy when you do that. You are accepting it and arguing that another people should remain at the bottom. You cannot climb out of a racial hierarchy by agreeing that Black Americans belong beneath you. Trying to gain white approval through Black American degradation is borrowed status, and it strengthens a racial logic that can eventually be turned against you too.

That is also why I reject the idea that Black Americans speaking openly about our success is somehow a “diaspora war.” We say we built this country, that our struggles opened doors, that our culture transformed the world, and suddenly people hear arrogance or hostility. Why? People are perfectly comfortable discussing Black American hardship, but when we discuss what we accomplished despite it, suddenly everybody wants disclaimers. Black American suffering can be discussed endlessly, but Black American achievement is apparently supposed to be whispered.

So when I call this a diaspora peace post, I mean it. African pride does not require Black American failure. Caribbean pride does not require Black American failure. The success of black immigrants does not become more impressive by comparing themselves to a caricature of Black Americans. And Black American pride is not an attack on anybody.

If your image of Black Americans is lazy, violent, incompetent, cultureless, and dysfunctional, ask yourself where that image came from. Those stereotypes were used for generations to justify our treatment in this country. They do not become objective simply because another black person repeats them. Look at the actual record: a people subjected to extraordinary exploitation and discrimination still became one of the most economically, politically, professionally, institutionally, and culturally consequential peoples in the modern world.

That is not evidence of Black American degeneracy. That is evidence of extraordinary Black American success.

Maybe diaspora peace does not require pretending all black people are one people. Maybe it requires something simpler: stop needing Black Americans beneath you.

We were never beneath you in the first place.

***
TL;DR: Black Americans are among the most successful peoples on Earth, but racism has trained much of the world to see us as failures. Our achievements get absorbed into “American culture,” while our problems stay labeled “Black American.” Some immigrants adopt those stereotypes and try to gain status by distancing themselves from us, but that only reinforces the same racial hierarchy that can be used against them too. This isn’t a diaspora war post—it’s a peace post: stop believing the propaganda, learn the truth about Black American achievement, and stop treating Black American pride like an attack.

Every year, October 1st I wake up in mourning — heavy with the longing and lingering weight of grief. My mind may forget the date, but my body remembers. Last year I couldn’t get out of bed. I cried in the shower, confused, until I looked at the calendar and realized this was the day my mother passed away.

So today, at 2 a.m., I sit in memoriam, writing and listening to Tupac’s Dear Mama. My mother loved music, so there will be a soundtrack to follow.

My cat, who never jumps on furniture, kept trying to curl up next to me. He always knows when something is wrong. My spirit was restless and weary — thinking about my mom. My mother was a beautiful, complicated soul, and she gave me a name in that same vein. She was stylish, stunning, magnetic, and had a walk that rivaled Naomi, Tyra and Miss J. She was a fiercely proud Black woman, that raged against her racially ambiguous look. Strangers would often ask, “Are you mixed or Spanish?” so this first story made sense.

My mom was quiet but loved telling me stories about her life. She wasn’t ashamed or shy about sharing a teachable moment. She told me about running away and her brief stay with a Puerto Rican family that left a special place in her heart — one that seemed to have seeped into my DNA in utero. She always said Puerto Rican people were some of the nicest, most welcoming people she had ever met. She taught me to carry pride in my very Spanish name, and she corrected anyone who didn’t say it right.

Here's the free friend link if you'd like to read the full story - thank you for reading.

https://medium.com/@grownfolkconvo/dear-momma-in-memoriam-ff991ddbbdd7?sk=a9101efe72002373472c1343f3eb142e