Thread by @tjAmandla

I don't think it's anyone's place to claim a monopoly on Blackness in the Americas when an estimated 40% of African captives to survive the middle passage arrived in the Caribbean and 45% in Brazil. 4-6% made it to the United States. (Thread)

What would US Black culture be without its Black immigrants? They've been at heart of every major epoch of politics and culture.

Harlem Renaissance: Hubert Harrison (St. Croix), Claude McKay (Jamaica), Arturo Schomburg (P. Rico), Marcus Garvey (Jamaica), Cyrill Briggs (Nevis)

Interwar activism: George Padmore (Trinidad and Tobago), CLR James (Trinidad and Tobago), Claudia Jones (Trinidad and Tobago) Amy Ashwood Garvey (Jamaica)

Civil Rights/Black Power: Louise Little, mother of Malcolm X (Grenada), Stokely Carmichael (Trinidad and Tobago), Harry Belafonte (Jamaica). Sidney Poitier grew up on farm in the Bahamas. Louis Farrakhan, a former Calypsonian, US-born to Caribbean parents.

These migrants brought with them an assertiveness that came from living in majority-Black contexts and a cosmopolitanism - and even a disregard -for the nation as they moved freely between the islands (and later the world)

Pan-Africanists/anti-imperialists, they saw the US struggle as an important theatre in a wider, interconnected Black freedom struggle, that included the liberation wars in Africa and Asia and the anti-racist struggle in Britain.

Claudia Jones and CLR James went on to make lasting contributions to political activism in UK while Padmore, mentor to Kwame Nkrumah, is sometimes called the father of African nationalism.

Even in culture, it's hard to ignore Black immigrants. Of the founding holy trinity of Hip hop, only Afrika Bambaataa was born in the US - to Jamaican and Bajan parents. DJ Kool Herc was born in Jamaica and Grandmaster Flash was born in Barbados.

Notorious B.I.G and Busta Rhymes both have Jamaican roots. Foxy Brown, Nicki Manaj, Cardi B have Trini roots, Rihanna is Bajan. (Shout out to all the folk I've missed out - Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, Nigerians, Ghanaians etc.)

My point is that it's nonsense to trash immigrants when you can't talk about Black American culture without mentioning them. But also that framing our struggles in national terms is plain dangerous when white supremacy, racial capitalism and imperialism are global.

More Black people - mainly from Africa - have arrived in the US since 1990 than ever arrived during slavery. Blackness continues to be shaped and reshaped. It's not an absolute.

Latin America, East Africa, Mid-East, Pacific are all places we don't talk enough re Blackness.

At the same time, it's important to remember that Anti-Blackness in the US operates so that migrants - including Black ones - can easily define themselves against or separate from African-Americans.

Without questioning anyone's right to be here, but as a Black migrant to the US myself (British-born Caribbean), it's crucial for us to also think about how we can contribute to struggle.

Those who came before us have set a fine example.