Notes to Brittnay: Why I'm *Slightly* Less Pan African Than Before I Left (as of 1/20/2019)

Brittnay is a friend of mine that I have begun sharing my raw thoughts with over Twitter. She listens and gives me her feedback and then I ramble some more. I’ve been told that my blog posts are rather long and that sometimes people just want to read quick blurbs, thus “Notes to Brittnay” is born. These are quite literally copy and pastes from Twitter.

Why I'm Slightly Less Pan African Than Before I Left (as of 1/20/2019)

African Americans, I feel like, have this languishing desire to be apart of some mythical ancestral community. A community that was intentionally stripped away from us - and that "community" is “Africa”.  But not Africa as a living breathing place, but a mythic Africa that only serves our own purposes. We've been separated from Africa for 200-500 years, and it's foolish and selfish to claim dominion over an entire continent just so we can feel like we have a proper home in the world. After the odd interaction with the Ghanian pimp I began to become very pro African Americans, or rather pro African American identity, and fully seeing America as our home and respecting our past and present in the U.S. because it's what we are (for better or for worse).

In talks about Pan Africanism, far too many African Americans fail to see the privilege that we have as Americans, I sure didn’t. Particularly as the wealthiest people of African descent on Earth (barring the Bermudans) most talks of American Pan Africanism are still very African American centric. Maybe because we have the money, leisure, and social infrastructure to sit around pondering these ideas for the sake a global community building, but I thought we mostly did this as a way of placating the vast injustices we’ve faced in American and the loss of our mythical homeland - not out of altruistic reasons. I think that's selfish. (This is to say that I think African American Pan Africanism is different than Pan Africanism from most parts of Africa). Africa is a growing and thriving continent with people that live in the present and I think we are wasting our mental efforts in trying to almost force a connection with a continent while ignoring the people that are already there.

There are between 40-50 millions African Americans in the U.S. and one of the reasons I think we are still behind where I know we could be is that many of us don't see ourselves as Americans (for obvious reasons) but as some sort of displaced Africans. While I think that this train of thought is comforting, I also think it is foolish and ignores both our and Africans' past and present.  We have the luxury of doing so because we're wealthy Westerners (whether we choose to acknowledge this or not). There are a little less than twice the number of Black people in the U.S. as there are people in Ghana, and I think we should focus on nation building, and fully growing as a people because we're special and unique enough to do that.

I think in the process, we'll also be able to passively help Africans because:

1. We will be in a better place to do so, and we are still descendants of most of Western and Central Africa, and we still share many cultural ties to various ethnicities in those places.

2. By better understanding ourselves as African Americans, I think we will be able to help many Africans who look to us and our culture to understand themselves in the post colonial world. Rather this than doing a forced comparison to African Americans who, by in large, either don't care to think about Africans as present individuals. (ie talking about “Nubian Queens while both not knowing where Nubia is and even more probably not caring about the deadly civil war happening there right now or thinking that most Africans still live in huts).

There are obviously many reasons outside of African American’s control why these false narratives have permeated in our community, but we must look to ourselves to rectify them.

Thus, at this point in my trip I'm far less Pan African than I was before I left because I've also found myself not looking at Africa as a present place with present people, but through these mythical goggles and that comes from a place of both ignorance and privilege. And two, because African Americans aren't doing as well as we should be considering all we contribute to the world and I think we should focus more on African American nation building within the U.S. instead of trying to force a global community which should form more organically though individual social, political, economic, and cultural growth.

I’ve always heard the only thing that separates an African American from a Trini, a Haitian, or a Jamaican was a boat stop, but people from those countries have no qualm expressing their African roots while espousing their current culture and homeland. I think African Americans can learn from this.  I think we are African Americans constantly have one foot in the U.S. and one foot in mythic Africa, and this may be one of the reasons why we tend to do less well in America when compared to recent immigrants from other black nations - they know where they come from and I think we as African Americans must acknowledge where we come from as well.

African Americans contribute so much to this world, and I think it’s time we stay rooted in that. Anything less is doing ourselves a disservice.