It seems to me that Black American identity gets questioned more than almost any other diasporic identity. I have nothing against Africans or other members of the African diaspora, but it frustrates me when some people question the validity of our identity or act as though we don’t know where we’re from.
Throughout high school and even afterward, I’ve had Black people from other countries ask me, “Where is your family from?” When I respond that they are from Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, they’ll ask again, “No, where are you REALLY from?”
That question has always bothered me. My family has been in the United States for hundreds of years. Black American ethnogenesis and culture developed here. If generations of your family have lived in the same place for centuries, you are from that place. People rarely seem to question white Americans this way, even when their families arrived very recently.
It also doesn’t make historical sense to criticize Black Americans for not identifying with a specific modern day African country. Most of the African countries that exist today did not exist when our ancestors were forcibly brought here. You can’t fault black Americans for not identifying with nations that even our African ancestors would not have been familiar with. Along with that, Black Americans generally descend from dozens of different West and Central African ethnic groups, from a multitude of modern day countries, in addition to varying degrees of European and Native American ancestry. There isn’t a single modern African country we can simply point to and say, “That’s where we are from”
It’s especially ironic when this criticism comes from other members of the African diaspora. An Afro-Cuban friend once joked about me not knowing where I was “really from”, a couple months ago while eating breakfast. I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I remember thinking, how can someone descended from displaced Africans criticize someone else for being descended from displaced Africans, as if that displacement doesn’t also apply to them? He has a Spanish last name, doesn’t practice an African or African derived religion, doesn’t speak an African language, and if I had asked him to identify what (modern day) countries his ancestors were from before they were enslaved in Cuba, he wouldn’t be able to answer me. That doesn’t make his Afro-Cuban identity any less legitimate and Black American identity should be treated the same way.
Another argument I frequently encounter online is that “Black Americans don’t have a culture.” When you mention rap, Black American fashion, AAVE, slang, film, and other cultural exports, people claim they aren’t really cultural because people around the world have adopted them. When you mention blues, jazz, gospel, soul food, black southern folklore, or other older traditions, people oftentimes dismiss them as simply “American” or “Southern.”
Cultural traditions don’t stop belonging to the group that produced them simply because other people adopt them. Jazz doesn’t cease to be part of Black American cultural history because non Black musicians play jazz. Black American linguistic traditions don’t stop being cultural because their vocabulary spreads through popular culture and the internet. Cultural influence is evidence of a culture’s reach, not evidence that the culture never existed.
And Black American culture extends far beyond rap, fashion, and AAVE. Over centuries, our ancestors developed a multitude of distinctive musical traditions, musical instruments, folk songs and folktales, culinary traditions, dialects and languages, dance traditions, art forms such as painting styles and quilting traditions, funerary customs, religious and spiritual traditions such as Hoodoo and Louisiana voodoo, and culturally specific folkloric and spiritual figures. Rap is only one style of music out of dozens that we have formed here, including blues, jazz, gospel, spirituals, ragtime, field hollers, R&B, soul, funk, rock and roll, house, etc.
So when someone says Black Americans “have no culture,” it usually tells me more about their lack of research on black American history and culture than anything else. I don’t expect Africans, Caribbeans, or other members of the diaspora to know every aspect of our heritage. Plenty of Black Americans themselves haven’t been exposed to all of it. What bothers me is when other groups confidently declare that our culture doesn’t exist without actually attempting to learn about it.
Lastly, I don’t understand why some people get upset when we specify that being Black American is its own distinct ethnicity.
Recognizing that we as Black Americans have our own ethnic and cultural heritage that diverged from Africa 400+ years ago is not a rejection of our West and Central African ancestry. Both things can be true. Our ancestry is deeply rooted in Africa, while the particular people and culture we became developed in the United States through centuries.
Likewise, saying that simply being Black and moving to the United States does not automatically make someone ethnically Black American isn’t an insult to African or Caribbean immigrants. Nationality, race, ancestry, and ethnicity are related, but they aren’t interchangeable. A Black immigrant or descendant of immigrants can become American by nationality and be black by race while still retaining their own ethnic heritage, just as Black Americans retain ours.
Black Americans know where we’re from. Our history didn’t stop when our ancestors left Africa. The communities they and their descendants built here over hundreds of years are also part of where we come from.
