The Problem with Black American Identity

By Emon H. Green

I think of ‘Black’ as signifying a condition we all share as people of African descent. A condition where we are dehumanized for the (re)production of this anti-Black world. A condition for us Africans and our nations to build solidarity around in the struggle against global anti-Blackness.

I am aware why many of us use ‘Black American’ to identify ourselves and our histories as Black people in the “U.S.” I used this term for years, and much of my family still does.

I remember, in seventh grade, the local NAACP chapter visited a youth mentorship program I was in to present on ‘African American’ history (it was February). I do not recall the presentation well, but the memory of one particular interaction I had with the chapter’s president in the discussion at the end is still vivid.

I said, “Why do you say ‘African American’ history when we are just Black? We suffer because we are Black, and we have progressed here [in America] as Black people. Our culture and history as Black people is here [in America]. If you are gonna say we are American, why not just say ‘Black American’?”

Of course, I knew little to nothing about Africa, about the many cultures and histories of our people on the continent and across the diaspora, about the ways we suffered and the struggles we engaged in across the globe as African people, nor about how any of that had anything to do with me or Black people in the U.S. specifically, beyond the cliche “We were sold away by the Africans” narrative. I was ignorant in the true sense of the word.

Regardless, my comment stumped the president at the time, as he has told me and others on a few occasions over the years. I do not take pride in the type of “thinking” it may have incited in him, and (hopefully not) in others, that day. Such “thinking” is reactionary. Today, I would argue it requires no thinking at all.

Interactions like this were regular for me until about midway through high school. But the (very Amerikkkan) “thinking” underlying them stuck with me through my early college years, and it would only be seriously called into question once I began trying to live in intentional alignment with my budding Black radical politic.

‘Black’ is not a national identity. It is the name imposed on us through the genocidal violence carried out against our people globally. It is what serves to justify our condition of ongoing death and dehumanization under colonial, carceral, and capitalist systems in the social orders we live under. It is the mark that signals our position as ‘non human’ in this anti-Black world to political actors (apparatuses, institutions, and people) that deprive, cage, rape, and kill us just because.

Asserting “human rights” as their political program, they show us that ‘human’ means white. If white nations and their societies are any indication, it is clear that such ‘human’ nations are structurally depraved. And Amerikkka is the most depraved of them all.

My commitment to Black liberation struggle (beyond my politic and prior work) really started when I stopped identifying with Amerikkka in any positive way. At this point, I was strictly calling myself ‘Black’, and would check anyone who added the settler empire’s label behind ‘Black’ when referring to me.

I knew I was African. I admired the many histories and cultures of our people on the continent. I felt the interconnectedness of the struggles there with ours here in my body, and acknowledged it in my speech. Still, it just felt off to say “I am African”.

I had trashed ‘American’ (mashallah), but I was wary of what I may lose by embracing ‘African’. I did not want to flatten the specificity of our histories, culture, circumstances, and struggle here by folding it all into a broad (trans)national identity.

My conversations with some BAP and AAPRP folks changed this. These folks held a hard Pan African line. They were firm in their identification with Africa and alignment with global African struggle. There was one thing they clarified for me: We are African and discounting that fact is harmful to our struggle.

‘African’ is a (trans)national identity. It was constructed and is imposed on us through colonial and imperialist oppression perpetrated against our people on the continent and across the diaspora, namely, in Amerikkka’s internal Black colonies (‘the ghettos’). Our varying nations share in the colonial and imperialist oppression we face (there is lots of nuance here I am not going to get into). As such, we each have a shared stake in the struggle for Pan African liberation.

To erase our African identity is to turn a blind eye to the colonial and imperialist oppression our people face. It is to ignore the material stake we have in the outcome of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles for the liberation of African nations (both on the continent and across the diaspora). It is to treat Pan African solidarity in our shared struggle as optional when it is not.

It took some time for me to internalize this, but after a while, it felt like common sense. So I started embracing it.

When asked “What are you? Where are you from?”, I would say, “I am African”. But as we all know, especially with Africans who (rightfully) embrace their specific nationality, it is never that simple. The next thing was always, “Oh cool, where about?”.

This always threw me for a bit of a loop because really, how am I, how are we, supposed to respond? “West Africa”? “The boat”? “The plantation”? “The run”? “Amerikkka”?

It is a real brain spinner. And it was really uncomfortable sitting in that tension, even though I was the only one who really made anything of it.

My partner is African and tapped well in with her nationality; she can answer that second question without pause, and point to where on the continent she is talking about. She was affirming when we would chat about these interactions, and always big on me not stressing too much when getting that question. During one of our chats, I said, “I think the stress may be historical trauma from how my ancestors wound up here.”

More recently, I have started reasserting the significance of that trauma and the specificity of our circumstances, cultures, and histories here (in the “U.S.”) more openly while maintaining that crucial line: “I am African”.

This got me more curious about ‘New Afrikan’ identity, which a friend, comrade, and mentor of mine consistently asserts. They have explained it quite a few times in the past, but it never really clicked for me until late last year. Every time I reflect on it now, I am like, “Wow, that really makes things so much more clear!”

New Afrika cannot be understood solely as a nation of Black people descending from Africans stolen and brought to the “U.S.” in chains. New Afrikan nationhood is not ‘Black American’ identity.

New Afrika is an African nation, amongst many African nations, that was forged through our people’s condition of captivity and colonial subjection in the “U.S.”.

New Afrikan nationhood is an African anti-colonial project internal to the Amerikkkan settler State. Its assertion materially requires the settler State to crumble. In this way, New Afrikan sovereignty is intertwined with the sovereignty of Indigenous nations here. It is won through the decolonization of Turtle Island. “Free the Land” and “Land Back” are movements in a shared fight.

New Afrikan nationhood is an African anti-imperialist project within the belly of the beast that is Amerikkkan Empire. Its assertion materially requires Empire to fall. In this way, New Afrikan sovereignty is intertwined with the sovereignty of all of Africa and the Global South. It is won through the collapse of Empire, by striking at its heart till it can no longer stretch its arms across the globe, then delivering the death blow. “Free the Land” makes “Hands Off” an inevitability.

Blackness is imposed on us politically, and we relate to it in political ways. It is not a national identity or cultural heritage, but the national identities and cultural heritages we tie ourselves to shape Blackness’ political horizon.

The problem with ‘Black American’ identity is the political horizon it folds our Blackness into. The U.S. is a settler-colonial, capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist Empire oppressing our people on the continent and oppressing us in our communities here. Amerikkka is a depraved nation built on and reproduced through Black deprivation, Black suffering, Black death.

To allow the aspirations of a nation, an Empire, that requires our ongoing dehumanization for its existence to shape our political horizon is to spit in the face of every one of our ancestors martyred in the struggle for Black liberation. Because to do so is to fold Black resistance, Black refusal, Black struggle, into a project of anti-Black world making. We should be wary of this, and refuse identification with Amerikkka.

The problem with ‘Black American’ identity is the “thinking” it incites and the reaction it invites in our struggle. Reaction that can easily slip into full on dismissal of African suffering and struggles on the continent and across the diaspora. Reaction that has a notable amount of people acting like African immigrants “are not even Black!” (yes, I have heard this numerous times).

As I have studied, conversed, and worked to unlearn this “thinking” and reaction, I have come to think of ‘Black’ as signifying a condition we all share as people of African descent. A condition where we are dehumanized for the (re)production of this anti-Black world. A condition for us Africans and our nations to build solidarity around in the struggle against global anti-Blackness.

‘New Afrikan’ is the term that best identifies our specific stakes in Pan African struggle to end empire and indigenous struggles to bring down the settler State.

In this, our Blackness remains an (anti)political force oriented toward a totalizing rupture that can end this anti-Black world. And Amerikkka remains the devil.

Further Reading

• On the Term ‘New Afrikan’
• Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It
• A Soldier’s Story: Revolutionary Writings by a New Afrikan Anarchist

Emon H. Green is a New Afrikan muslim, organizer, and writer based in Southwest VA (Monocan/Tutelo Land). Originator and co founder of ‘Black Mindedness’, a Black autonomist organization working to meet community needs, build grassroots power, and further Black self-determination in the NRV and Roanoke regions of VA.