A post about a flick called the 'The Neo African Americans' on the blog Shadow and Act, reminded me of an article about an African-American Harvard graduate who found out that a high percentage of 'blacks' on Harvard where from Africa and the Caribbean.
Since she was also the director of the American Association for Affirmative Action, she wanted to know how black immigrant students would fit in that goal of correcting American racial injustices.
In the story entitled 'Among Black Students, Many Immigrants' African-American students were quoted: " Last month, a Harvard Black Students Association message board asked, "When we use the term 'black community,' who is included in this description?" A lively debate ensued, with some posters complaining that African students were getting an admissions boost without having faced the historical suffering of U.S. blacks."
I think this will always be a problem. When the French NAACP, Le Cran, pushed for an investigation into the racial discrimination in France, immediately the French organisation of the French overseas departments (D’outre-mer) made the distinction that blacks from the French Caribbean Islands were different from blacks from Africa, because of their French status.
Maybe it’s time to look at what binds black people from the different countries. Is it race, skin colour, racism, being studied, music, sports, black experience, black men versus black women, slavery, colonialism, segregation, freedom, immigration, identity, selling out, bleaching, crime, ghetto, poverty, struggle, giving back, diaspora, rising, black history, Africa, Caribbean, US, Europe, dislocation, crises, war, Afro, protest, revolution, being the first … ? To be honest, I don’t know.
The documentary ' The Neo African Americans' shows the different shades of black. In a way, a cliché.
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