Somebody asked why “African-Americans” don’t seem to care too much about Liberia. The link I posted touches on a much larger issue–the enormous gulf between real Africans and “African-Americans”. There is a good deal of antipathy that goes both ways.
http://www.africultures.com/anglais/articles_anglais/44rachid.htm for more details
And go see “Little Senegal” some time. It’s fiction, but the creator seems to have summed up the situation spot-on.
In short, “African-American” listlessness on the issue is really just a larger piece of the great division between Africans and “African-Americans”.
by Rider:
African-Americans face a catch 22. If we choose to adopt African cultures to embrace our pre-enslavement roots–although those exact roots are mysteries to most of us–we are either laughed at for trying to “invent” identities or scorned for not embracing our Americanness enough. But if we choose to see value and promote appreciation for African-American culture, which exists separately from African cultures, people want to know why we all don’t sleep in kinte cloth pajamas or teach our children Swahili.
Well, guess what? Blacks are not a monolith. Some of us are big into adopting African heritages, of “returning to our roots”, of taking trips to the motherland, of studying African history, etc. But some of us also think it is important to see AAs as a group with its own distinct culture and history, and they do not spend a lot of time searching for an identity in a foreign continent. And then some of us don’t give a good googly moogly either way. Just as Average White Man on the Street doesn’t give an extra damn about the goings-on in Germany.
Native Americans–whose origins can be traced back to Asia–are not expected to make periodic treks to their “motherlands”, are they?
That article, the one in your initial reply, refers to first generation African-Americans. In my opinion, there’s a vast difference between first generation African-Americans and those whose ancestors were brought here as slaves.
The article also does very little to underscore your assertion there’s an, as you put it, enormous gulf between real Africans and “African-Americans”, too. It seems to say that some children of Africans who were born in America adopt a ghetto way of dressing and some don’t. The author says s/he can differentiate between those who were born in America (and return to Africa, if I’m remember what I read correctly) and those who weren’t born in America based on what they wear. What about those who were born in American and choose not to adopt that style of dress? How can she tell where they were born, especially if they’re first generation Americans?
As usual, those who don’t dress ghetto fabulous are glossed over.