THE AFRICAN VS THE AMERICAN

            Nnamdi Ifejuka

            Professor Bleyle

English Composition

20 March 23

THE AFRICAN VS THE AFRICAN AMERICAN

In the 18th century, ships from Britain took manufactured goods to Africa. They took slaves from there to the West Indies and took sugar back to Britain. This was called the Triangular Trade. Even though slavery had already been a prominent issue in the world by this point, this specific period could be said to have been the catalyst that caused the huge divide between the African group and the African American group. Africans and African Americans have been seen to have a sense of animosity towards each other. This can be seen in everyday lives, especially of African children. To us Africans, African Americans are the bad crop, the ones that always get in trouble with law enforcement, end up in the ghettos, and live life with no care in the world with only weed and alcohol in hand. These are but a few of the negative connotations attributed to African Americans. 

As a first-generation African child, I have seen the different lives that both African and african americans have. I’ve been to their homes, lived with them, eaten with them, and even talked with them about some of our cultural differences to the extent that it could be said that I've studied the differences in our lives over my life. One of the main differences to note between these two cultures though, is greeting. To Africans, respect is the most important value is respect, especially to elders, and the simplest most common way to show that respect is by greeting.

I walked to one of my closest friends' houses and stood at the second most familiar door frame that I knew, waiting for him to answer the door. “ Yo wassup twin,” (Corbin) greeted. I responded as I walked into his house, much different compared to mine. The lack of spice in the air was a slightly refreshing scent to me, a blender that wasn't full of peppers and other various spices sat on the countertop full of frozen fruits ready to be blended, and loud music that I could only assume was RnB coming from his grandmother's room. All these familiar yet foreign aspects of his life were like a refreshing breeze washing on me on a hot summer day. 

“My grandma in her room if you wanna say wassup”(Corbin) This was always the sentence that followed after he greeted me. He knew that I would never walk into his house and leave without greeting his grandmother. We made our way into her room after he announced that I was there and I greeted her “good evening ma” I greeted her and she responded in hand asking me how I had been after so long and that led to a lengthy conversation on gang violence and staying safe while I moved about whilst also touching on the subject of school and the importance of staying educated.  After a lengthy conversation Cam and I went to his basement to talk.

“Do you remember when we first met and I asked you to greet my parents whenever you walked into the house and you would always ask me why? What was going through your head, an

d how did this stick with you through the years?” I asked.  “Not even gonna lie bro I thought that was weird. I mean picture this, we like fourteen right, and you bring me to your African home and all I’m smelling is spices. Before I even make a comment on that you tell me to greet your father and that I should never come in and not greet him.” (Corbin) I then went into detail explaining to him that out of all his siblings and all my other African American friends that had been over to my house or that he knew about. “Nearly every day, I had to tell my father who I was going to hang out with, where they were from, and where their parents were. To a younger me growing up, these were normal questions that any parent would ask their child as they went out to play on the street. But as I got older I started to pick up on keywords. He would often in his heavy Nigerian accent make comments like, “don’t let these Akata’s confuse you. These American Hoodlums, you better stay away from them. Did I send you to school to come home and act like an Akata? Nonsense.”(Father) “This was but the brunt of the things he would say towards the African American community. To my relief though he did respect the ones that had greeted him upon entry into his home and even more so those that fully and respectfully greeted him as “sir” or “uncle”.To him, it was give respect and I’ll give it back.” I told Cam as we ended the interview.

A few days later, I called one of my African friends Ephraim and told him I would be interviewing him for my English class. I asked him the following questions.1) When did you move here and how was your experience when you first moved? 2) What are your thoughts on the African/American Diaspora war? 3) Has it affected you? To the first question he responded, “I moved when I was about twelve years old. Starting off in a new school was rough let alone in a new country. The teaching was different, the food at school was different and the students were different. There was definitely a lot of bullying when I first got here. I got told to go hunt a lion before so there was that, honestly I was very confused simply because to me those kids and I looked the same, the only difference was our background”(Ephraim). After this I asked him, “Do you have any comments to make on the Diaspora war between Africans and Black Americans?” he replied “I wouldn’t be able to tell you much but I will say this. It's stupid and it needs to end. We all came from the same place, yeah there are major differences in our cultures now but that does not nullify the fact that we are from the same roots. Now would I say that either side has made it easy for the other to accept them? No. But there is definitely room for either side to wiggle through and make it happen”. Finally I asked the last question and he replied as such saying, “Personally, I haven't been affected. I have seen it around me and witnessed its effects. But it hasn’t affected me.” “Could you please elaborate on that?” I questioned. “OK. I have seen how my parents talk about the way Blacks behave and how they are compared to Africans and I've also heard my Black American friends make fun of Africans themselves. The thing is though all these things have been said to me or around me, I’ve always gone ahead and made my own decisions on my own based on what I saw in the people I interacted with. Instead of using predetermined stereotypes made by my parents or my friends. I hope that was good enough ” he finished off as he chuckled.

 I wanted to ask more but time had elapsed and we had to part ways. I’d hoped that our interviews had shed enough light on the two sides of life that were really on the same coin. 

A few days after the interviews, I happened to overhear a talk about the BSU in one of my classes and they were talking about how the ASA community and the BSU didn’t want to make any plans with each other because of how the African Student Association didn’t want to or were making it difficult to make plans with each other. To them, this was very confusing and probably felt like a petty refusal to work together. But as an African American it felt unnecessary but I also knew that it wasn’t unwarranted. I was rushed with memories of being called an African booty scratcher at the age of thirteen. Being told “go kill me a lion so we can eat for dinner” mocking my heavy African accent all whilst my classmates laughed at the jokes and I stared down at my feet. But even with this memory, it’s still important to realize that the African American versus African diaspora war goes way back.

 Even before our current times where ignorant African Americans call us African booty scratchers and Africans call African Americans Akata’s. This issue trails its origins back to the time of slavery and even before then. One can even say that the cause of this divide between these two cultures stems from the same root. Racism and white supremacy. In Ohimai Amaize’s article about the diaspora war, she cites a professor saying “Citing the work of Rhett Jones, former director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, Nigerian-born scholar Tunde Adeleke argues that slavery “accomplished the destruction of the ethnic identity of African-Americans:” They bought slaves, put them in a foreign environment and separated them from any access to their roots making it even harder for them to connect with their ancestors. Hence the ignorance in today's time. If that wasn’t indicative enough, let’s take a look at this quote. “For a very long time in the twentieth century, during the Jim Crow years in particular, African-Americans were encouraged to shun the idea of a connection to Africa, to think poorly of Africa—to celebrate traits in themselves, which supposedly distanced themselves from Africa, in other words, to think of themselves as more cultured, more Christian, more White, more civilized than Africans and therefore to look at ‘Africanness’ as a matter of shame or a kind of taint that needed to be avoided.”(French) These are all attestations to the white supremacists causing an internal war between Africans and African Americans. 

French Howard, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism that speaks in an interview held by Ohimai Amaize.

Ohimai Amaize, The “Social Distance” between Africa and African-Americans. The JSTOR Daily online publication

Adeleke, Tunde. “Black Americans and Africa: A Critique of the Pan-African and Identity Paradigms.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 1998, pp. 505–36. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/221474. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023.

Corbin, Cameron. Interview on 3/19/23 on the topic Africans VS African Americans.

Father, Dearest. Comments made towards African Americans as I grew up.

Ephraim, Doe. Interview on 3/21/23 on the topic Africans VS African Americans.

"Slave Trade (Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves)" by George Morland, English, 1763 - 1804 is marked with CC0 1.0.

"African Boy" by whiteafrican is licensed under CC BY 2.0.