Stop Using ‘Diaspora Wars’ to be Dismissive

Recently, a post that I made on TikTok gained some traction - I was talking about how Black Americans should be eating and consuming soul food on a daily basis - to my disappointment, but not my surprise, a diaspora war around food, influence, and Black American foodways took place in the comments.

I do not engage in diaspora wars, but the energy in the comments over food makes me think about how the heightened emotions during these conversations about culture and ownership are misplaced. So I dusted off my keyboard and edited this three-minute essay so that we can finally have a conversation about diaspora wars.

Most diaspora wars online are discussions that are confined to food, music, and the realities of interpersonal dynamics. For instance, who makes better jollof rice or oxtail, who makes better music, and narratives around being teased in adolescence (that seemingly cannot be restored or healed in adulthood). I question the utility and importance of these conversations in this current sociopolitical context, where the acronym DEI is being tossed around as a replacement for nigger online (I was told by a troll I have a DEI doctorate). Which is interesting because legislation around anti-DEI and affirmative action efforts has largely been pushed by second-generation immigrants with social and cultural capital, who have no problem doing the work of white supremacy.

So while we discuss how being teased and harassed at the interpersonal level (across all ethnicities and generations) or discuss why we distance ourselves from each other, we are losing an important opportunity to examine how power dynamics shape the relationships between Black Americans, Black immigrants (and their children), and non-white European immigrants in the US. For the sake of this essay, I’m going to limit my conversation to discussing the relationship between Black Americans and Black immigrants (and their children) in the US.

Diaspora Wars: what they are and what they aren’t

If we are going to say that diaspora wars are not useful, we have to name what they are and aren’t. Through my research, I argue that diaspora wars, or the debates that take place among people from parts of the African diaspora, [or often debated across Black people of certain nationality or ethnic status that] aim to establish their experiences, their culture, and/or nationhood as more authentic, more or less oppressed, and/or the most ideal type. This is certainly a working definition, but let’s just go with it. With this definition in mind, it’s important to note that diaspora wars are not one-sided arguments or debates, and the suggestion that one ethnic group participates in them more than another is dubious.

For instance, I have been privy to debates among first-generation immigrants and 2nd geenation immigrants from the same country arguing over who is more authentic and has the right to claim their shared ethnic identity (think a Nigerian woman born in Nigeria debating with a Nigerian woman born in Maryland about who can and cannot claim a Nigerian identity). In my dissertation work, there was a strong sentiment among Afro-Caribbean women that “Jamaicans think they are the US of the Caribbean,” which is connected to debates and tensions around nationhood and how nationality plays out among Afro-Caribbeans living in the US. And most notably, you have debates among African immigrants and Black Americans in the US discussing who has ownership of the “Black experience” and who should or shouldn’t be able to claim Blackness within the US. I share these examples to show how, to some degree, people engage in “diaspora wars” around a myriad of topics that can be examined through a sociological lens to discuss large structural factors and how they shape lived experiences. Now I would argue that the particular vitriol, hatred, anti-Blackness, and xenophobic-rooted comments are far more common in arguments online than debates offline. And that is where I begin to question the utility of diaspora wars and offer a potential alternative.

A common rhetoric to diaspora wars that I see online is that “no one has these conversations IRL”, “offline it’s all love”, and other phrases of that nature - and I want us to consider the importance of having conversations about culture, ethnicity, nationhood, and varying experiences of Blackness with our communities. Because the truth of the matter is that US imperialism, racism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, media propaganda, and, to a certain extent, xenophobia impact us all in converging and diverging ways. To acknowledge how structures negatively impact or benefit us in similar or differing ways isn’t a matter of separatism; it’s a project of exploring how these oppressive systems operate.

I hate when people minimize the valid concerns of various Black ethnic groups by offering the retort that “we’re all Black” because even though we share a racial status, we all carry different ethnicities, cultural histories within the US, class statuses, and in some cases nationality that determine our access to resources and how we interact with structural forces. Now I am fully aware that we cannot detach race and ethnicity if we live in an ethnoracial hierarchy, which is why we all need to get comfortable with acknowledging and understanding that racial-ethnic status and racial ethnic identity are more salient than a shared racial status.

What this looks like IRL

As a Black American, my lived experiences navigating higher ed have been shaped by a combination of factors: my first-generation college student status, my family’s class status, and my racial-ethnic stauts. I will never forget how a professor made a statement that they prefer to work with Black immigrant students rather than Black Americans in their research lab. This was the first instance that made me even think about how my ethnicity would or had the potential to impact my opportunities and access to resources. I learned in undergrad that Black Americans were viewed as less than our Black immigrant counterparts. An example of how white supremacy and anti-Blackness impact us in divergent ways. Now, even though this became a somewhat common experience (unfortunately) as I navigated higher ed, I didn’t let these instances of discrimination that are unique to Black Americans impact how I think about Black immigrants. I didn’t allow these experiences to push me into buying into xenophobic tropes about Black immigrants in the US. It pushed me to ask more questions, have deeper conversations with my friends whose parents migrated here, and it forced me to consider how the media and global anti-Blackness influenced my perceptions of Afro Caribbeans and West Africans. We shouldn’t minimize the potential of these conversations to a term like “diaspora wars”.

I share this anecdote to demonstrate that it is important that when engaging in conversation about how ethnicity and nationality shape access to resources among Black Americans and Black immigrants (and their children), we decipher structural impact and interpersonal dynamics. As I always say, be soft with each other and hard on structures. So when I see African immigrants express their disdain for Black Americans because they were teased in grade school. I have grace for them, but urge them to recognize their experiences are not a pass to participate in anti-Blackness towards Black Americans. That’s how white supremacy wins. If we all get so wrapped up in negative interpersonal experiences that we miss the chance to strengthen a diasporic consciousness, we’re missing a potential opportunity for mobilization and community coalition.

So I hope that after reading this, you think more mindfully when discussing dynamics between Black Americans and Black immigrants. As previously mentioned, I think that diaspora wars have a branding issue and I’m ready to shift the energy surrounding the conversation so let’s start with the name change - when you see true intellectual conversations and debates online or IRL about how white supremacy, US propaganda and imperialism, and anti-Blackness shape the experiences of Black Americans and Black immigrants in different ways - let’s not call that a diaspora war.