I used to be soldier number 003 on the frontlines of the diaspora wars way back in the day. I went to college amid what I would call a cultural shift of what it meant to be black, african-american, or African in America. I had arguments ready for every side of whatever debate would arise amongst friends, colleagues, and classmates. I basically critically thought my way through an identity crisis in college. For context, Iām Nigerian. I was born and raised in America. I went to college and graduate school in America. Iām now completing my doctorate from Harvard. Since college, Iāve been blessed enough to live in different diasporic communities around the world from South Africa to the UK.
From my experience (Iām interested in hearing other peopleās experiences), the diaspora wars tend to be concentrated in America/across the Atlantic Ocean. So here are some surface-level thoughts on the cultural shifts in America that have served as a backdrop for the diaspora wars.
The āComing to Americaā Era
In the 70s/80s, there was an influx of African immigrants to America during what I call the Eddie Murphy āComing to Americaā era. The basic cultural engine at this time was the idea that Africa was a country [yes, you read that right. Africa was one idea in the minds of many Americans]. Homogeneity was king.
The Poverty-Stricken Era
In the 90s, Africans in the diaspora began to be viewed through the lens of the civil wars and extreme poverty that were plaguing nations across the continent. The end of South African Apartheid, the Rwandan Genocide, Darfur, the AIDS epidemic, etc. all shaped the average Americanās outlook on āAfrica.ā Humanitarian commercials convinced people that for just 25 dollars a month, you could stop these flies from swirling around this extremely poor child who most likely did not consent to being recorded.
Africa to the World Era
Now, the cultural shift is tending towards in the words of Burna Boy āAfrica to the Worldā. I think this āAfrica to the worldā cultural era that weāre in is marked by the mass export and consumption of music genres like Afrobeats, highlife, and amapiano. The African diaspora is now seen, for better or worse, through the lens of films (like Black Panther), books (like Chimamanda Adichieās Americanah), and other cultural products that have been spurred on by the prevalence and accessibility of social and mass media.
Defining āDiaspora Warsā
Amidst all of these cultural shifts, in America at least, there has been a set of discourses on who owns or has the rights to a particular set of cultural narratives and practices. This is the diaspora war.
I did some digging to see if anyone has been able to truly define the diaspora wars. Hereās what I found.
The Executive Editor of the student-run magazine Little Hawk describes it like this:
āDiaspora wars, also known as cross-cultural conflicts, are the rising conflicts amongst diasporic groups that create a negative impact on our communities, creating disunity. Being Black in America is not an easy experience whatsoever. But being Black is also an extremely confusing experience. You can be born to African parents in America, but you are not African American, you are Black. But you may not feel aligned with that term, so you are āAfrican.ā But due to Americaās skewed perception, you are āBlackā once againā (source).
Hereās another thought from the National Black Cultural Information Trust:
āDiaspora wars can be loosely described as cross-cultural arguments among different ethnicities of African people where we express discontent with each other for various reasons. Itās normal to have a certain level of cross-cultural conflict or discussions. However, these conversations take a counterproductive turn when we internalize and promote anti-Black/white supremacist narratives about each other that hyper-focus on divisions, instead of how we can best unify for the purpose of collective freedom. Itās time to move from war to understandingā (source).
I think these sources do a good job of talking about the consequences and drawbacks of people on both sides of the Atlantic arguing, often online, about current and historical grievances.
However, I want to take this a step further to help you see some examples of what can spark or initiate a diaspora war. I donāt want to re-hash previous real-world examples, so letās turn to fiction. More than a decade ago (wow, Iām feeling old!), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published the widely acclaimed novel Americanah.
In Americanah, the main character Ifemelu, a recently arrived Nigerian in America gets sucked into a debate in her college classroom on the use of the N-word. Here is how the exchange goes down:
Ifemelu raised her hand; Faulkner's Light in August, which she had just read, was on her mind. "I don't think it's always hurtful. I think it depends on the intent and also on who isusing it."
A girl next to her, face flushing bright red, burst out, "No! The word is the same for whoever says it."
"That is nonsense." The firm voice again. A voice unafraid *If my mother hits me with a stick and a stranger hits me with a stick, it's not the same thing."
Ifemelu looked at Professor Moore to see how the word"nonsense" had been received. She did not seem to have noticed; instead, a vague terror was freezing her features into a smirk-smile.
"I agree it's different when African Americans say it, but I don't think it should be used in films because that way people who shouldn't use it can use it and hurt other people's feel-ings," a light-skinned African-American girl said, the last of the four black people in class, her sweater an unsettling shade of fuchsia. "But it's like being in denial. If it was used like that, then it should be represented like that. Hiding it doesn't make it go away." The firm voice.
"Well, if you all hadn't sold us, we wouldn't be talking about any of this," the gravelly-voiced African-American girl said, in a lowered tone that was, nonetheless, audible.
The classroom was wrapped in silence. Then rose that voice again. "Sorry, but even if no Africans had been sold by other Africans, the transatlantic slave trade would still have happened. It was a European enterprise. It was about Europeans looking for labor for their plantations."
Professor Moore interrupted in a small voice. "Okay, now let's talk about the ways in which history can be sacrificed for entertainment." (169-170)
What Adichie captures here is one of the common battlefronts of the diaspora warsāthe history of enslavement. Or, what I think is really interesting here is the fact that the diaspora wars are, at its core, a problem of history. Who did what, when, and to whom? History is the foundation, the ground upon which people put their stakes in the ground, so to speak, during arguments.
Using history as a backdrop, there are many different frontlines to the diaspora wars. Some of them revolve around the following questions. For example, do you have a Nigerian accent or a British accent? or an American accent? Which passports do you carry? where did you vacation on holiday? Have you returned or have you not returned? do you use your full name or a nickname? when did you come here? did you come to America in your youth or later in life? Were you born here or elsewhere? Can you speak your native tongue or just pidgin? The questions are endless.
So what do we do with all of this? Well, itās hard to do a series on the diaspora without addressing the diaspora wars. If you havenāt noticed yet, the diaspora wars are often between African-Americans and Africans in America or Africans on the continent. Yet, the issues that usually come up during these cultural debates are ones inevitably shaped by imperialism, globalization, and capitalism.
The idea behind this series āBeyond Hyphenation: A Deep History of Diasporasā is to move beyond the hyphen, this idea that what it means to be African or American has to sit on opposite sides of a bar. Or even the idea that America has to sit at the center of the histories of diasporas in the first place.
In this series, weāre moving beyond, although not ignoring, America. Weāre going to explore how people have understood themselves before nation-states and governments created passports that tell us who we are, where to pay taxes (or not pay taxes), and with what ease or difficulty we can move between certain borders.
I donāt participate in the diaspora wars anymore. The more I delved into history, the less worthwhile it became. Someone on Twitter (r.i.p) back in the day said something along the lines of āthe diaspora wars should dissolve the moment you realize, weāre having these debates in English.ā
What does this even mean? Well, I am a historian of the British Empire in my academic work. For a glimpse of what that encompasses, there are only 22 nations in the world today that have not been invaded by the British Empire (source). If you speak or have heard English, have ever been a Boy Scout, eaten Cadbury chocolate, used a Unilever product, or have any money invested in your respective stock exchanges around the world, youāve experienced the historical imprint of the British Empire.
Sathnam Sanghera in his new book Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe even highlights the geographical prevalence of British imperialism. For example,
āthere are at least thirty-five places called York in the world, there are at least eighteen places named Birmingham, there are more than eighty named Victoria (in Mauritius, a couple of days before I arrive in India, I find myself driving through a village called Queen Victoria - the colonists in that case not even bothering to delete the royal title), there are at least fifty-three Plymouths, and there are at least forty-one places in the world named Jamestown.ā (31)
History is messy. I donāt have all the answersāno historian does. What I can tell you is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Iāve mentioned this in past letters, history has shown us that imperialism and colonialism in all its forms work in such a way that brings into close contact, yet divides entire societies and cultures.1
The goal here is to introduce you to nuance and take you on a journey of uncovering the complexity of diasporic histories.
Naming cross-cultural conflicts a diaspora war suggests that someone can win. There are no winners here or maybe there are, just not the ones we think.
until next week,
Hereās the newsletter on imperialism: