Unity is a tricky thing. Its probably most often misconstrued as uniformity. A well known social media influencer who’s Looking For Freedom wrote something like, ‘now African Americans claiming to be the true Indians of America, [they’re] stupid.
A proclaimed Pan Africanist chimed in having the same sentiment. I get from their comments they hold fast to the idea all heavily melanated people are African no matter the landmass they’ve lived for thousands of years.
I wonder how this actually works. I mean how does a group of people continue to claim a group of cultures they may no longer have memory of, if ever they were in fact ancestrally connected to those cultures.
Like many people of my generation, children of Black people migrating from the south to the west and west coast originally southerners. My parents were both born in Mississippi, however my mother’s parents moved to Memphis, TN by the time she was eight years old.
Whenever she spoke of her childhood it was memories of growing up in Memphis and visiting her grandparents, maternal and paternal, both in Mississippi albeit north of my father’s Mississippi delta home. In her mind she was a Memphian.
If we think along the lines of the aforementioned Pan Africans she would still have to claim to be a Mississippian because claiming Memphis would be a denial of her Mississippi ancestors and their land.
She, in time, moved from Memphis and migrated to California and over time she gave birth to me. At the young tender age of 3 months I was whisked away from California to Memphis for the next 5 years of my young life.
After five years living in Memphis we moved back to Cali and there we stayed for the duration only visiting Memphis and Mississippi for a 2-3 week stay during summer break from school. So, culturally I’m a Californian with slight hints of the south.
I grew up in the culture of southern California. Specifically, Southeast San Diego raised by southern parents. I went to southern California schools from Kindergarten to through into college. I never went to Booker Washington high school in Memphis or Coleman high in Greenville, MS.
I didn’t grow up in the south. I don’t know the culture of growing up in the south. As a teenager and in my early twenties I never partied or hungout in the south with southern cousins and homies. I didn’t grow up with the overwhelming church culture which permeates southern society.
Later in life I migraged to the south first to Memphis then on to Atlanta. I learned of the similarities but great differences in living in the west versus the south. I was well into my 30’s by the time I moved to the south. Yet, after 25 years living here I could in no way claim to be a true southerner.
My children, who like my mother, moving to Memphis at age 8 came to the south at ages 8, 9 and 10. They went to elemenatry school all the way through to college graduation in the south. They’re culturally southern with hints of the West coast in the home.
If I apply the logic of the Pan Africans my children are not Georgians but Californians since thats where they were born even though they have little to no memory of Los Angeles or San Diego.
In fact, per the Pan Africans, their children and coming, grandchildren and great grandchildren will be Californians although they would have no cultural connection to California.
The Pan Africans would say they are denying their ancestral heritage by claiming to be Geogians rather than Californians. Even though they, the great great great grandchildren would no longer have cultural connections to southern California’s culture.
This begs the question. How long does a group of people have to be in a place before they can claim to be from that land mass? Black people have been in the Americas for several thousand years, possibly hundreds of thousands of years and having developed cultures that have some similarities to Africa but not truly African. Why then can’t they be called Americans?
This same question applies to dark, swarthy and brown people of Europe, Asia and the south Pacific islands. Why would it be a denial if they now claim the territory and cultural practices of the lands they’ve inhabited for thousands of years?
Supremeultimate 