Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land

[cyrano]

So Debra Dickerson is on the Colbert Report saying that since Barack Obama (blessed be his name, and also the name of his mother) is not descended from West African slaves brought to the United States, then he's not really Black. He's not really African-American, he's an African African-American.
From my position of White Privelege, I say this sounds like complete bullshit. But I'm also tired and cranky.

Comments

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Of course, I suspect that since prejudice based on skin color is so common, African immigrants take a lot of the same shit that American-born Black people do, which is one commonality.

I think this was one of those things that I was tripping up on. Dickerson was never a slave. She doesn't possess some sort of racial subconscious hive memory of being subjugated. To my knowledge. I don't think that a well off middle class woman whose parents came from Kenya twenty years ago is going to have a significantly less-Black experience than a well off middle class woman whose parents came from Detroit twenty years ago.

Also, it still amuses me to realize that if PW Botha were to move to Birmingham, he would be an African American.