The language of unity gets deployed selectively, and that’s the first red flag. It’s often invoked most aggressively where it is least practiced. When people insist on universal Black unity, what they’re really asking for is a suspension of boundaries that no other group actually lives by.
Across the USA, people organize into coalitions, not fantasies. Asians organize with Asians. Latin Americans organize with Latin Americans. Europeans organize with Europeans. Africans organize with Africans. Caribbeans organize with Caribbeans.
But why are Black Americans moralized into forming coalitions with groups that have different strategic objectives? Our issues are within domestic policy and not foreign policy but our energy is constantly channeled towards supporting foreign policy and often to our detriment. Our issues go ignored while our communities are fleeced and deprioritized. When we speak out we get finger wagged on how we are being divisive. Reparations were never issued and many outside of Black America feel we shouldn’t get anything for what our community suffered.
What unity is everyone talking about?
Every time someone says “we need unity” or “solidarity with the diaspora” I truly ask myself what unity and solidarity? How do we benefit from this? It never makes sense because globally everyone is in their respective spheres so is the parameter and dynamic only applied to America? I don’t even see them united like talking bout.
What diaspora are we apart of?
If it’s material, where’s the infrastructure, economic cooperation, reciprocity, and tangible support for our goals? Why are our goals pushed to the side for foreign policy?
If it’s symbolic solidarity then it makes it seem like we are being asked to lend our struggle and moral capital to everyone else, while getting little in return.
So I genuinely ask: What global unity and solidarity is everyone talking about? When/how were we ever globally unified?
Because right now to me the unity everyone is talking about isn’t shared struggle or anything I guess it’s shared symbolism.
The shared unity is how everyone wants the image of standing with us just not the responsibility of standing for us.
On top of this: If there was this unity where is it in their respective spheres of influence? I don’t see African or Caribbean nations being moralized to dissolve borders and unite.
Is it a symbolic unity? in which case how does it benefit Black America?
The groups I mentioned don’t move like that are make choices based off arbitrary feel good narratives or choices. They aren’t emotional choices as much as they’re structural ones. Each group recognizes shared history, internal variation, and mutual interest while maintaining clear delineations from others.
They don’t need to pretend they’re one people to cooperate. They don’t erase difference to collaborate. The boundaries are understood, respected, and largely uncontested.
What’s striking is that many of these groups don’t even particularly like one another internally. Rivalries, prejudices, and hierarchies exist everywhere. Yet none of that causes confusion about who belongs where. Coalition doesn’t require intimacy. It requires clarity.
The problem emerges when Black Americans are told that clarity is somehow betrayal.
Instead of being allowed to categorize as Black Americans, we’re pressured into an abstract, flattened identity that collapses Africans, Caribbeans, Diasporic groups and melanated groups, Europeans-by-proxy, and everyone else into a single imagined bloc. This isn’t how any other group operates. It’s a fantasy coalition that supports their community’s development as they would use support from the Black group BUT pivot and channel the benefit to their specific community. Haitians are thinking of how to advance the Haitian community and culture. Jamaicans are thinking the same as well as the various African cultures identities and nationalities but if Black America does the same they get finger wagged.
Fantasy coalitions rely on moral language rather than structure. They talk about shared oppression instead of shared formation. They emphasize symbolism over lived systems. They demand emotional allegiance without offering institutional reciprocity.
Most importantly, they ask one group, Black Americans, to dissolve itself for the comfort or legitimacy of others.
And that’s why the unity talk rings hollow.
In reality, delineation already exists. Africans categorize with Africans. Caribbeans categorize with Caribbeans. Their cultural institutions, marriage patterns, media ecosystems, and internal debates reflect this clearly. No one accuses them of being divisive for doing so. Their boundaries are treated as normal, even healthy.
It’s actually racist to assume that due to phenotypical conflation these distinctive groups should be in one coalition just solely based on phenotype
Black Americans are the only group told that self-categorization is dangerous.
But categorization isn’t hostility. It’s orientation. It’s how groups preserve coherence while navigating a crowded world. Coalition works best when each party knows who they are, what they bring, and where their interests begin and end. When those lines are blurred, power imbalances creep in, resentment grows, and the loudest group rewrites the narrative.
That’s what makes the unity rhetoric feel dishonest. It pretends everyone is already the same while quietly benefiting from the fact that we are not. It asks Black Americans to be universally accessible while everyone else remains selectively bounded.
A real coalition would start with truth. It would acknowledge that Black Americans are a distinct people with a specific historical formation, cultural logic, and internal coherence. From there, alliances could be negotiated honestly—based on shared goals, not borrowed identity.
But that requires letting go of the fantasy.
Unity isn’t sameness. Coalition isn’t erasure. Respect doesn’t come from pretending differences don’t exist. It comes from recognizing them and choosing cooperation anyway.
Black Americans categorizing with Black Americans isn’t separation. It’s alignment. It’s the same principle every other group already applies without apology.
And until that’s allowed without moral panic, the unity talk will remain what it is now: rhetorical, performative, and fundamentally fake.
The WAB and the fake Unity is a device used to moralize Black Americans into supporting policies and politicians that goes against our best interest and have long term harmful effects for Black American development as we are constantly deprioritized and given symbolic items in return for support
When people try to moralize you for being Pro-Black American: Remind them of the rampant tribalism in Africa and how they delineate. Remind them of the ethnic cleansing. Remind them how most countries there are prejudice and seek to deport Nigerians and South Sudanese. Remind them of the same in the West Indies with Haitians
Remind them to Get Real
