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"Racism" against Africans in Black Community: Why is that?

v1lla21

Member
Yep. Not a true Latino because my skin is White af and it needs a certain Brown to count. Keep in mind the majority of Latinos only town were Mexican while I am Cuban.
My sister got told she couldn't be part of some Mexican thing at school because she wasn't Mexican enough and didn't represent the community as well as the others. All based on the fact that she's white. These motherfucking kids at her school come from money and their parents got here legally. they take vacations in Mexico yet they can barely speak Spanish properly much less write and read it.


But yeah, my sister's boyfriend told me about this as well. Guy is from Nigeria with an English accent so he got treated differently within the black community at school.
 
Even if we all looked and sounded exactly the same, we'd still find something.

Light skin blacks are hated on by darker skin people because "they think they cute". It's the other way around for some other stupid reason. Light skin Mexicans and Asians hate on the darker ones.

Africans are black but they aren't American black, therefore they aren't the same. They may as well be from Pakistan, Japan or any other country. That's enough for someone to hate on if that's what they intend to do.
 

Hopeford

Member
Yep. Not a true Latino because my skin is White af and it needs a certain Brown to count. Keep in mind the majority of Latinos only town were Mexican while I am Cuban.

Yeah, I get that a lot too. I think I get that more from white people than from Latinos though. Most Latinos I've known get it. But occasionally there will be some white dude who thinks he understands the Latino plight better than me, because he read something on the internet and therefore knows more about it than me haha.

Latino communities though...they tend to treat me pretty well. Occasional exception, but my personal experience is a bit difference in that regard.

But yeah, you'll always find splits in communities if you look for a bit. It always happens.
 
Yep. Not a true Latino because my skin is White af and it needs a certain Brown to count. Keep in mind the majority of Latinos only town were Mexican while I am Cuban.
So stupid. I worked with people that were from South America and if you saw them on the street you'd think they were just regular white dudes. Ignorance.
 

Metroxed

Member
Yep. Not a true Latino because my skin is White af and it needs a certain Brown to count. Keep in mind the majority of Latinos only town were Mexican while I am Cuban.

This is actually a very interesting phenomenon and I have heard about it before. Most Latinos in the US are mestizo, meaning that they have mixed European and Amerindian ancestry; the level of mixing is variable and so are their looks in consequence, but it usually involves having a skin colour within a brown range.

As brown-skinned mestizos Latinos are the immense majority, they have in a way appropriated the term Latino (also Hispanic) to refer to themselves, often ignoring or excluding non-mestizo Latinos (black Latinos, Asian Latinos, Amerindian Latinos and white Latinos) from the mix.

I often read and hear self-described Latinos talking as if Latino or Hispanic were races and differentiating themselves from "white and black people", which in my opinion means erasure for black Latinos and white Latinos, which are black/white but also Latino.

Latino and Hispanic ARE NOT RACES.

Part of the fault though lies within the general (non-Hispanic) American public though, which also have come to associate the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" exclusively with a certain type of people (brown, black hair, etc.)
 
prejudice exists in all forms, nothing surprises me anymore. people can be just so fucking dumb and judgemental.

well to be honest, i WAS surprised to learn that us Finns were once considered so inferior by the Swedes (who ruled over us for ages), that they measured our skulls and shit to “prove“ we deserved to be subjugated. who knew? goddamn Swedes and Finns. who the hell can even tell us apart?? we ourselves can't!
 
Bruh, everybody gets roasted in the Black community. LOL I remember I rarely had hair cuts when I was in highschool, and when I finally did and got on the bus the next morning, everybody on the bus gave me a standing ovation.
 

Enzom21

Member
My take on this phenomena is that it is one part resentment towards African immigrants freely deciding to immigrate to the US just like any other immigrant and living the perceived "American Dream".

Americans resent that because their ancestors did not chose to immigrate and bulit up a culture.

IMO, there needs to be empathy on both sides and just get along.

What are you basing this belief on? Are you black and do you feel this way?
If you're not black, have black people from American expressed this perceived resentment to you?
 
I've always noticed it being more the other way around, honestly.

Africans tend to think themselves above black Americans because, as they see it, their ancestors weren't enslaved.

It's pretty backwards, but, humans gon human. Niggas ain't exempt.
 

Bleepey

Member
lol at least you didn't have the accent, I was born and raised in Nigeria but came to the states at the age of 12, naturalized this year. 29 now but back in high school I really didnt think much of it. hell, I joined in with the fun, if someone made the clicking noise, I made it back to them and everyone just laughed. or the running with lions joke i got a lot when i joined the football team. looking back now, I still dont take it as anything but kids being kids...maybe I just have a thick skin and stuff like that just doesn't effect me knowing where I came from. i think Africans born here will be more affected by what you described op unlike ones that know what life is like back home and know what to look forward to. my son is 3 (African american mom) and I'm teaching him my native language igbo. because hes american doesn't mean he should know his roots, also has an igbo name even tho he goes by his middle name to everyone else but family members

lol and Africans do hate on African Americans cause they see them as having all the opportunity in the world but always looking for excuses not to act on them. That also comes from the hardship they face back home and seeing all the opportunities and ways to make a living in the states

At least you're teaching your kid, I am still bitter about not being taught Igbo and i warned my mum to speak to my brother only in Igbo but she didn't listen to me because I assume she just wants to piss me off.
 
What are you basing this belief on? Are you black and do you feel this way?
If you're not black, have black people from American expressed this perceived resentment to you?

Yeah, I have no idea where he got that from, as if somebody puts that much thought into it. As an African American that grew up in a predominately African American environment I've never heard this.

Africans get made fun of in predominately African American elementary and high schools because they're DIFFERENT. That's it and kids are stupid.
 

Infinite

Member
It's not just Africans. black Americans talk shit about West Indians, West Indians and Africans talk shit about black Americans and let's not even get into the beef West Indians have with each other. My mom who's Trinidadian told my stories about here coming here to America and getting called "coconut" by the kids in her elementary school. My mom called those kids collardgreens in return. Likewise I know a lot of West Indians and African born people who view Black Americans as lazy. It's just dumb ass shit
 

Viewt

Member
Yep. Not a true Latino because my skin is White af and it needs a certain Brown to count. Keep in mind the majority of Latinos only town were Mexican while I am Cuban.

For sure. I grew up constantly being told I wasn't really Latino because my mother is a white Jewish lady. But I got it from the other side, too - not being able to hang with the Jewish kids because I have a Cuban father.

Yeah, I get that a lot too. I think I get that more from white people than from Latinos though. Most Latinos I've known get it. But occasionally there will be some white dude who thinks he understands the Latino plight better than me, because he read something on the internet and therefore knows more about it than me haha.

Latino communities though...they tend to treat me pretty well. Occasional exception, but my personal experience is a bit difference in that regard.

But yeah, you'll always find splits in communities if you look for a bit. It always happens.

This is probably true in my case, as well. Every once in a while, I'll get a Latino Pride dude who gets irate when he hears my (admittedly poor) Spanish and calls me a gringo, but more often than not? It's white people telling me, "Oh, but you're not REALLY Latino - you act white." The most frustrating thing in the world is hearing someone else tell you what you are above your own truth. It gets me really upset.

I don't have anything to add to the specific topic at hand, not being black or African. It's insightful to read about all of your experiences, though.
 

Cyframe

Member
Up until now I am always wondering why people accept the term "African Americans." It's like saying "Asian Americans" or "Italian Americans" or "European Americans" or..., well, you get the idea. Why the necessity of using "African" and why is it accepted widely? Why not just "Americans"?

Eh...humm, this is off-topic I suppose, sorry.

Because Black people don't share the same history as the colonizers who created America. African denotes where my ancestors came from.

On topic though. There can be a lot of intraracial discrimination. Native Africans come to the states and being unable to view the systematic oppression of Black people here, believing that we all have equal opportunities. While African Americans can harbor certain levels of ethnocentrism because an accent is the only thing a person needs to other someone.

I think we've gotten better when it comes to having an open intraracial conversation about differences history and commonality but we have a long way to go still.
 
The whole "African Americans are lazy" thing is not just exclusive to African immigrants, but seemingly all immigrants. Speaking from experience, some Indian/Pakistani immigrants think African Americans are lazy and ungrateful as they are perceived of being of a lower SES than the majority (white) population. In the mind of these immigrants (who themselves have worked hard to immigrate and establish themselves), these people have a lower SES because they believe they didn't work hard enough.

It has everything to do with every minority group taking for granted all the rights and laws African Americans have fought and died for that has helped every other group, but didn't specifically address the inequities towards African Americans and other groups being in a better position to take advantage of them.

Another reason is almost all of them including White Americas don't fully know the history after Reconstruction to now on how systemic racism that has fucked up African Americans and their communities. Even integration had an unintended negative effect.

The other reason is White supremacy and Anti Blackness. The more you assimilate in this White Supremacist society the more you'll unconsciously value "Whiteness" and devalue "Blackness" and it affects everybody regardless of race including Blacks.
 
My friend works in the refugee center in Atlanta. I think its the biggest one in America. Lots of African refugees. The racism from African Americans towards Africans is really brutal actually. A few years ago a Somali child was beaten to death on basketball court by a mob of African Americans.

My African friends and African American friends have different theories as to why this happens. But it's quite real, and very stark, from what I am told.
 
My friend works in the refugee center in Atlanta. I think its the biggest one in America. Lots of African refugees. The racism from African Americans towards Africans is really brutal actually. A few years ago a Somali child was beaten to death on basketball court by a mob of African Americans.

My African friends and African American friends have different theories as to why this happens. But it's quite real, and very stark, from what I am told.

Woah, I'm going to ask you to unpack things a bit instead of making wild assertions. Please don't take an anecdotal example and extrapolate it to some major issue. Did they beat the Somali child solely because he was Somalian? What other variables were at play?

I'm from metro Atlanta by the way. Been here for 30 years now.
 

trixx

Member
Never had this issue tbh, maybe once or twice back in childhood. I'm Ghanaian but I also live in Canada so maybe it's different around here

My cousin said he had some experiences of some sort in New York though.
 
No worries man. I'm black and born in the U.S., but apparently I'm not "black" enough for some people in the black community. Don't spend much time thinking about why some of these people are the way they are.
 

akira28

Member
Bruh, everybody gets roasted in the Black community. LOL I remember I rarely had hair cuts when I was in highschool, and when I finally did and got on the bus the next morning, everybody on the bus gave me a standing ovation.

why do our people do us like that. organized roasting like I dont know what
 

tkscz

Member
Lemme preface this by stating I am a Nigerian guy who was born in America to immigrant parents. Growing up in a majority black community for most of my life, I feel as if I've seen/experienced enough of this to talk about it: "Racism" against Africans in the Black community. I'm not 100% sure if this could even be called racism or prejudice or whatever, but it's an issue none the less.

My intention isn't to generalize or anything. I've just noticed that, growing up that kind of "African booty scratcher" mentality was somewhat prevalent amongst my black peers (I'm 20, so take from that what you will).

Being made fun of and bullied for having an African name, the "click click" noise, making fun of the accent, "Nigerian scamming" I've heard it all. I dunno why, but I feel like this kind of "racism" is somewhat swept under the rug in our community. Even Dear White People, a show I loved, dropped the ball when it came to their one African character.

But why is that? I've never really thought this much in depth into the situation until just now, and how much it low-key gets under my skin.

What do you guys think about this? Anyone is free to leave a comment on the topic, but I am eager to hear from Africans with similar experiences or blacks who have noticed this in the community.

Happy to hear your thoughts.

Growing up in the hood, we see Africans as less fortunate than we are, so it's ok to look down on them. It's not ok, but just what we did as kids. When we get older, some of us stop, but others keep doing it for a multitude of reasons.

Though the Africans who lived in our hood told us WE were seen as loud and obnoxious and disrespectful. So I always guessed it was like white people and Europeans.
 

Deepwater

Member
I personally haven't seen any discrimination against Africans in my adulthood, but i have seen some disparaging attitudes towards african americans from Africans.
 
It's everywhere. Get with it with whites here, with all the council estate and chav bollocks.

All just a bunch of fools desperately trying to fit into some sort of perceived superior class.
 

Harmen

Member
I come from a predominantly white rural village in the Netherlands and some people hated and bullied Polish immigrants. Technically not racism, Polish people are Caucasian as well, but it shows that people will always find a way to discriminate between groups of people. Offcourse our idiot politician Geert Wilders knows his racist/xenophobic fanbase well, and made a website where people could complain about Polish people specifically back in 2012 (which thankfully shut down quickly). Unfortunately there are many shitty people out there that are incapable of treating different kinds of people as equals.
 
You guys are all talking like accepting different people is the natural state of the human race.

It isn't. People by nature are distrusting of the other, no matter how much that other might look just like them to a foreigner.
 

Steel

Banned
It's weird. I had a family friend, african-american, who basically complained every time we met her that her son dates african american women with big lips, saying that they're below him. She also voted for Trump. People are shitty.
 

Africanus

Member
There's a duality to it.
In school I got the common African booty scratcher, run with lions, click click, you're so dark treatment that comes with being Nigerian.

But at home, in the same breath that my dad would be telling me I have to work twice as hard as any white man, I was told that I shouldn't end up like the black people I see around me.

It's tragic, but a lot of it comes from that disconnect. My parents survived a civil war, worked their way from abject poverty in not 1 but 2 countries and made something for themselves. Then they saw the opportunities out of context that black Americans had and squandered and look down on it. My dad would always say "If I had 1/10th of the resources back home that they have here I would never have had to leave".
 
Maybe it's part of some perceived non adoption of American "culture"

My wife's family immigrated to Australia from Singapore and Malaysia in the 70s and are Chinese Malaysian background with Australian citizenship.

They have a complicated relationship with china. The common language the two of them speak is actually English so they have found it quite easy to assimilate. Also my mother in law was raised loosely catholic so Christmas etc.

If you asked them where they were from they would say Australia and they are Australian, unless you started talking family then they'd say "china" despite literally never having been there.

Which brings me to how this is related- they absolutely go off at "china Chinese" or "mainlanders" coming to Australia and "ruining asians good names"

Lots of talk about off the boat or rudeness or arrogance etc. it's brutal.

In the end everyone can be dicks :(
 

ApharmdX

Banned
The whole "African Americans are lazy" thing is not just exclusive to African immigrants, but seemingly all immigrants. Speaking from experience, some Indian/Pakistani immigrants think African Americans are lazy and ungrateful as they are perceived of being of a lower SES than the majority (white) population. In the mind of these immigrants (who themselves have worked hard to immigrate and establish themselves), these people have a lower SES because they believe they didn't work hard enough.

I hear this a lot but the thing is, these immigrants don't understand the black experience in America and the shit that we went through/are still going through. They identify or try to identify more with white Americans, even the African/West Indian immigrants. It sucks but I actually feel a little sorry for these people. Many of them get a rude awakening in the end. Racist white Americans don't care what country you are from, or what your perceived superiority is. In the end you are a just another n*****.
 

Aiustis

Member
I've been around a lot of really white spaces where there were just us black people. Never hand any any issues with Africans since all of us were treated the same; generally they were welcome in our circles and we helped each other out.

Then I got older and spent more time around, less educated black people who'd spent most if not all their lives in the same hood, town etc and they were like that.
 

Deepwater

Member

lmao forreal, I've never met an adult american black who was any sort of pressed about Africans.

What I think it is, is that (black) american kids are ruthless as fuck and african kids, new to a country and society aren't used to playing the dozens with people who look like them so a lot of them hold onto that bitterness into adulthood. But I'm not here to downplay anyone's lived experience, but I would be interested if most of these feelings come from a person's adolescence experiences rather than adult ones.
 

Malakai

Member
I don't understand how any person of color that immigrates to the U.S. look down upon the U.S. African American population as lazy if it wasn't for the African American in 50's and 60's and even before then that fought for the rights that those immigrants enjoy now. It doesn't compute at all.
 

Deepwater

Member
I don't understand how any person of color that immigrates to the U.S. look down upon the U.S. African American population as lazy if it wasn't for the African American in 50's and 60's and even before then that fought for the rights that those immigrants enjoy now. It doesn't compute at all.

I've talked about this before on here and I agree, a lot of that "american blacks are lazy" come from Africans not having context of our history of oppression, as well as Africans being somewhat "other-ed" when they immigrated here post 1964. It's the model minority phenomenon.
 

PixelatedBookake

Junior Member
lmao forreal, I've never met an adult american black who was any sort of pressed about Africans.

What I think it is, is that (black) american kids are ruthless as fuck and african kids, new to a country and society aren't used to playing the dozens with people who look like them so a lot of them hold onto that bitterness into adulthood. But I'm not here to downplay anyone's lived experience, but I would be interested if most of these feelings come from a person's adolescence experiences rather than adult ones.

Yeah for me this is where I noticed most of that sentiment, during my school years. And I get why happens due to people of any race making fun of each other for their differences and even in black and African communities where people do look the same and may have a similar background, we will create/find differences between ourselves to fight over. It's human nature.

The point of this, for me anyway, was to find the root of the issue so that in the future, African kids (including my future kids) won't have to get the same treatment as I did. Being black in America is already a struggle and I just didn't want an extra dose of that struggle for kids in my family growing up now, and in the future.
 
why do our people do us like that. organized roasting like I dont know what

This is something that happens to all races. I'm a white guy and I never once got away with coming into school with a new haircut without some piss-taking, and god help you if you tried out a new style...
 
In my own personal experience in life, it's seemed to me like black folks NOT from the U.S. don't particularly care for U.S. black people/culture.
 
This is something that happens to all races. I'm a white guy and I never once got away with coming into school with a new haircut without some piss-taking, and god help you if you tried out a new style...

It's similar for all races but it's also different too. The Dozens can be an eye opening experience for those that have never had to experience it, whereas for a lot of African Americans it's normal.
 

dbztrk

Member
Tribalism. Every group is subject to it. Many African's look down on Black Americans as does West Indians and vice versa.

It is what it is.
 

Deepwater

Member
Yeah for me this is where I noticed most of that sentiment, during my school years. And I get why happens due to people of any race making fun of each other for their differences and even in black and African communities where people do look the same and may have a similar background, we will create/find differences between ourselves to fight over. It's human nature.

The point of this, for me anyway, was to find the root of the issue so that in the future, African kids (including my future kids) won't have to get the same treatment as I did. Being black in America is already a struggle and I just didn't want an extra dose of that struggle for kids in my family growing up now, and in the future.

I dunno, it's hard. Kids are basically walking sponges, so they'll pick up manners and behaviors from what's around them. There are definitely problematic behaviors that black adults (both african and american) exhibit around their child which is part of where they get that from. And even if they don't get it from home, they'll get it from a friend or three.

All you can do is just prepare them for it and explain to them the differences & nuances in culture. Kids will pick up on any sort of differences just to roast someone about it, and they're rude as fuck. I wish there could be an action plan to change all that in the next 30 years or whatever but it's not so easy.
 
I don't understand how any person of color that immigrates to the U.S. look down upon the U.S. African American population as lazy if it wasn't for the African American in 50's and 60's and even before then that fought for the rights that those immigrants enjoy now. It doesn't compute at all.

I've seen this first hand. I worked with Asian immigrants and African immigrants and both groups would work really hard and took pride in doing a good job. Then they would turn and look at the African Americans working, then turn to me and say, "why are they so lazy/slow/dont care/have pride about their work".

I was surprised when the Africans said it. In my mind at the time, I was like "They're black and you're black how can you look at them like that". The Africans were like "They are not black. They are something else... but they aren't black." I went to speak to the African Americans for their take on the subject. They said, "Oh yeah, they have never accepted us". It was a real eye opening experience for me.
 
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