Benefitting from a privileged black immigrant status, these migrants often “brought” with them an ignorance of how race/racism operated within the USA (because they assumed that race/racism operated the same here as it did in the Caribbean), and at least initially undermined BAs.
https://twitter.com/tjamandla/status/1486801054440300545
Claude McKay:
“It was the first time I had ever come face to face with such manifest, implacable hate of my race, and my feelings were indescribable. ... I had heard of prejudice in America but never dreamed of it being so intensely bitter.”
(1918)
(Credit to @Much2Blaq)
“It was the first time I had ever come face to face with such manifest, implacable hate of my race, and my feelings were indescribable. ... I had heard of prejudice in America but never dreamed of it being so intensely bitter.”
(1918)
(Credit to @Much2Blaq)
After immigrating to the U.S., Claude McKay was shocked to learn about the conditions of Black Americans and was actually radicalized *IN the United States. McKay’s understanding of how race/racism operated in the USA was not something he brought with him from the Caribbean.
Shirley Chisholm is on record making disparaging comments about Black Americans, describing our responses to violent anti-BA racism as “overreactions,” and while in Congress, Chisholm also undermined and double crossed other members of the CBC repeatedly.
https://twitter.com/guang_lie/status/1342200130846523396
Marcus Garvey collaborated with white supremacists, and in a letter to one of his white supremacist buddies describes my people as “lazy, good for nothing [slumberers].”
https://twitter.com/PeachesJenkins4/status/1402717936796770308
Marcus Garvey also teamed up with Theodore Bilbo, a virulent anti-BA racist who incited violence against Medgar Evers who was later assassinated.
https://twitter.com/guang_lie/status/1476685688586350592
More on Garvey’s organization, the UNIA, and its partnership with Theodore Bilbo:
https://twitter.com/guang_lie/status/1476356633320206343
To be clear, I don’t have a problem acknowledging the contributions that West Indians have made to BA history as they ASSIMILATED into BA culture; however, I’m tired of the “West Indian urge” to center themselves in BA culture/history/achievements as if WIs were indispensable.
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