Africans and African Americans

Most Africans arrive in the United States ignorant of this country’s racism. We arrive here ignorant of the horrors of slavery, the terror of Jim Crow, the history of the civil rights movement and the present state of post-racist racism. Lacking analysis of how African Americans have borne most of the brunt of this racism, we buy into stereotypes depicting African Americans as lazy, deviant, and criminal. For their part, most African Americans have little to go on besides the racist depiction of Africa(ns) prevalent in the American education system and in the media. So African Americans end up thinking Africans are a bunch of emaciated petty-tribalists and rapist-polygamists. ….Brother, we haven’t met in over 400 years and this is how you want our reunion to be?