“The tendency to pathologize Black American’s self-discovery into specific heritage and lineage as ‘self-hatred’ is intellectually reductive esp as we move away from the neoblack/flatblack identification despite having been the originators of that construction. While I acknowledge the reality of internalized anti-Blackness (a phenomenon I witnessed frequently during my upbringing) conflating the desire for distinct history with ‘identity escapism’ is a diagnostic error.
Ironically, the demand that Black Americans accept a monolithic ‘African’ identity perpetuates the very Eurocentric taxonomies of race it claims to dismantle. It reinforces a colonial framework that erases distinct cultural histories in favor of a generalized racial categorization.
Accusing Black Americans of “self-hate” for questioning their relationship to the continent often projects the very Afrophobia it claims to call out. It utilizes a racist paradigm—specifically the colonial imposition of a monolithic “African” identity. Furthermore, it retroactively applies the label “Black” (another colonial construct) to describe cultures that existed long before that terminology was ever weaponized.
Furthermore, the discourse is rife with inherent contradictions.
Many who argue for a pan-African identity simultaneously assert, “We do not see you as Africans,” and have developed specific exclusionary terminology to reinforce that boundary. I understand the context but its an example of the conflated and bloated language game we are all forced to play.
Fundamentally, both groups are reacting against a forced homogenization which is a structure each one struggles to articulate because the relevant vocabulary shifts meaning depending on the geopolitical context.
We are witnessing a collision of cultural appropriation and misplaced xenophobia, accelerated by globalization. It is a reaction to the global export of American administrative taxonomies, which use broad, clinical language to flatten distinct ethnicities into singular racial categories.
“African” itself switches meaning constantly just like Black. But these are two different categories historically.
Africa is used as a geographical term, a racial term, a political term, etc just as “Black” absorbed multiple racial classification systems within a Political Correct culture propagated by academic capture by Deweys looking for a place to call home that was outside of America.
