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I feel like the discourse around the views, experiences, and sensibilities "the black community" among Americans is almost always incomplete. It almost always centers around the experience of the descendants of black American slaves.
This isn't a problem in and of itself. That is the dominant black experience in the USA, so it makes sense the experiences and cultural evolution of black Americans would be the center of the focus.
This does become problematic when this experience is universalized onto the experiences of black Americans in general. I don't mean this in a trivial "all people are individuals" sort of way.
What I'm referring to are the real differences in sensibilities, social standings, and outlooks between, for example, the descendants of Black American slaves and the masses of Caribbean immigrants who migrated to the USA for opportunities.
The way I usually see people talk about "the Black American life", seems to erase the real chasms between the outlooks of different groups of Black people, that emerge from the experiences that are common to each of these groups.
This isn't a "white people, even if well intended, can be naive and stupid in terms of their attitudes towards the black experience, and they need to work on that" thread. While that's obviously true, that point has been beaten to absolute death and doesn't need me to repeat it.
This really is a thread based on my own first and second experiences of the chasms between the black community, and how this is never reflected in discourse about the desires and outlooks of the black community from Black or white people, and how this only furthers the divide.
"Oi, but eco bruv, what makes you think you have anything meaningful to say on this topic, hmmm???" you may ask
Well, I'm no expert but I will be speaking based on my experiences as a black child of two "West Indian" immigrant parents (thanks for being a dumbass Columbus).
Well, I'm no expert but I will be speaking based on my experiences as a black child of two "West Indian" immigrant parents (thanks for being a dumbass Columbus).
My mother is Jamaican, and my father is from the Bahamas. Both of my parents grew up in abject poverty and immigrated to the USA for school. Both have master's degrees and well paying jobs. This is an important fact.
On top of that, I've lived in an overwhelmingly Caribbean and very tight knit community for my entire life (Caribbean and "West Indian" are not synonymous for those wondering. The Bahamas is "West Indian" but not Caribbean)
The vast majority of people I know by name are Jamaican or the children of Jamaican immigrants, and definitely identify as Jamaicans before anything else (a VERY important fact for later). When I die, my funeral will be filled with an assortment of hymns, reggae, and jerk chicken
I spent my school weekdays surrounded by a diverse cast of Americans, born to American parents. On the weekend, I spent time with my family. Not just my parents and brother, but my brothers and sisters in church, who had been with me since I was a child.
Through the massive difference between these two sets of experiences, I began to observe the disparities between the sensibilities of Caribbean immigrants (and their children) and Black Americans.
The Caribbean community I grew up in was a fascinating combination of harsh, yet extremely gregarious and warm. There was an extremely high premium placed on educational attainment, married to a distrust for universities as institutions.
The outlook on education was particularly central to my experience growing up. I remember how strange it was that my school friends thought high honors in high school were impressive. Getting high honors was extremely pedestrian among my Caribbean friends in church
This is unsurprising since most of these people immigrated to the USA out of abject poverty for education. My grandmother (father's side) was illiterate, and he grew up without basics like electricity. His academic performance allowed him the opportunity to come to the USA
Academic excellence transformed into an "upper middle class" career. My mom had a nearly identical experience. Both of my parents also have seen countless loved ones either die prematurely or be locked in prison or poverty for life. The difference maker seems to be education
As a result, a mindset which elevates education above any and everything else emerges naturally, for worse sometimes (extremely harsh punishments for minor academic infractions) but usually for better in terms of long term outcomes.
