Since African Americans have not addressed the psychological chains that bind us, it is easy for the dominant culture to keep playing collective mind games on African Americans and other minorities. Let me explain what I mean. Briefly after slavery in the New World –North and South America and the Caribbean archipelago –many governments encouraged emigration from East India and other Asian countries like China, Vietnam, and Japan. In some places, especially in the Caribbean islands, these new immigrants were given contracts for their work whereas freed Black slaves were not. The new immigrants were given pieces of land and were allowed to open businesses that served mostly Black communities. These things were denied to most newly-freed slaves. In the Mississippi Delta, many Asian people were also allowed to vote and send their children to majority white schools –two things denied to Delta's large Black population.
In exchange for their privileged minority status, many Asians and Indians were told simply to work, earn money, get a good education for your children, shut up, and above all, don't mix with Black people socially. And in many places, this worked. However, it often created tense situations in these communities: Indians and Asians stayed away from Black people socially. Newspapers like the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee dangled images of industrious Asian populations before African Americans as if to say, "Why can't you be more like these people? They know how to work for peanuts and shut up" (I'm not sanctioning this. I've always said that instead of punishing immigrants, we should craft policies that would go after and punish those businesses who routinely hire, abuse, and underpay them).
Meanwhile, especially in the United States, Africans were not allowed. African Americans and other Black populations could not travel to Africa, either (especially during the Cold War). Once the immigrants got here, however, Black Caribbeans and African Americans did not experience much tension. As a matter of fact, many of the people who we think of as African American activists had West Indian backgrounds: for example, W.E.B. DuBois, Stokely Carmichael, and Marcus Garvey (DuBois's and Carmichael's parents were from the West Indies and Garvey was from Jamaica). During Jim Crow and segregation ALL Black people in the United States experienced the same oppression. Those people from Africa and the Caribbean, many of them living under colonialism, experienced direct white racism for the first time in the United States. Black Caribbean writers like George Lamming and C.L.R. James wrote about it. They began to make connections between the situation in the United States and their colonial states at home. They eagerly joined their African and African American brothers and sisters in the fight for equality for Black people the world over.
That was BEFORE the Civil Rights Movement. Post-Civil Rights Movement…what in the Hell happened? It seems that African Americans hear a type of condescension coming from our African brothers and sisters that quite frankly chaps my ass. I get so tired of hearing about how we African Americans waste our opportunities and how we are lazy, dumb, and ignorant. What is even more insulting is they don't even seem to know anything about us our struggles. Nor do they want to. Most of the Africans and Black Caribbeans who come here arrive with their eyes wide shut, and make no effort to talk with African Americans on a more intimate or academic level. They let it be known that we're not their brothers and sisters. I once went into a braiding shop where I tried to speak to the young lady who was braiding my hair, and she ignored me. I have never been back and for now, I refuse to patronize any African or Dominican shop. They don't respect me so why should I hand them my damn money?
For our part, we shun our Africanness and can be really rude to African and Black Caribbean brothers and sisters. We often make fun of Africans, talk about how they smell, and ask them silly questions about wrestling tigers and running around Africa naked. Most of us thank God we're not African and we proudly say that we're not African. Often, we don't understand that our Caribbean brothers and sisters have color issues. Period. It's nothing personal against African Americans. Most of us have never heard of the Parsley Massacre, and we certainly don't know of Puerto Rico's long and twisted history concerning Black people. And when African Americans think of slavery and suffering, we want to be unique. We ignore the brutality of slavery in Panama or Jamaica, and are completely unaware that slavery lasted in Brazil until 1889. We suffer from American exceptionalism and refuse to hear anybody else's story.
Now, I'm not writing this to start anything. ALL SIDES ARE WRONG! There's a divide and conquer strategy at work here, and after centuries of enslavement and second-class citizenship, we can't see it. Sadly, many of these tensions begin with ignorance. What do most African Americans know about Africa? Years after the end of the Civil Rights Movement proper, we know less about Africa than our parents. And where do Africans and West Indians see stereotypes of African Americans? The same place other folk learn them from: tv. On television, America is shown as the land of opportunity. If African Americans are not rich, it's our own fault. For some reason, tv fails to mention poverty in America or its long history of discrimination.
Before many African and Caribbean groups come here, they are often required to take an orientation class. Various organizations offer these classes and material is available at websites such as http://www.cal.org/co/index.html. These videos and classes teach groups, before they enter the United States, how to be good American citizens: make money, work hard for less money than your African American counterpart, get a good education for your children, stay away from American politics, and shut up. They also show them the types of citizens they don't want to be. Take a wild guess at what ethnic group is shown as undesirable for imitation.
Sadly, divide and conquer is very effective. Instead of Black beauticians learning the blow-out technique from the Dominicans, they say we shouldn't patronize their shops. Instead of many African braiders and Caribbean beauticians actually getting to know more about the African American clients they serve, they don't say anything to us. Even in my personal life, when I tried to explain some African American history to an African from the Ivory Coast, she said I was being negative. So, here we are in the 21st century divided. And as long as we're divided, we'll always be conquered. Will I ever patronize African or Caribbean businesses or beauty shops again? Maybe. But right now, I'm just nursing my hurt and wondering why Black people can't do something as simple as talk to one another and share our expertise.
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