(ThyBlackMan.com) Should Black Folks leave the United Stated? Yes! And no! The answer relies on many factors. Where do you stand on the on-going debate on blackness and the centralizing of an entire people/race/culture? Can blackness and all its vastness be compartmentalized and still rightfully engaged with a unified tongue and philosophy? Lots claim race is a construct of society, used to alienate and separate. “We’re all apart of the human race, ” is common feed, though many bright minds align this thinking with the same harmful rhetoric in “All Lives Matter.”
The question from the headline is, however, not a new or radical notion. Early in the 20th century, Jamaican-born activist and orator Marcus Garvey not only pushed and preached a “back to Africa”
message for black folks, he made the migration approach to Black liberation more than just an idea, producing a tangible escape mechanism for his followers. Garvey’s Black Star Line was a shipping line created with the intentions of transporting goods and black folks back to Africa.
Despite its inability to truly come to fruition because of FBI interference and financial oversight, the ideology was planted and stuck. For the next several decades black athletes, entertainers, writers, everyday citizens and civil rights leaders left the states, some for good. Entertainer Josephine Baker, writer Langston Hughes and activist W.E.B Du Bois are among the list of well known African American expats. More recently, hip-hop titan Yasin Bey (Mos Def) took up permanent digs outside the American borders (though many complications followed him). During an NAACP conference in San Francisco in the 1940’s, W.E.B. Du Bois spoke about racial inequality in America saying,” the colonial system of government is undemocratic, socially dangerous and a main cause of wars.”
Following the conference the United Nations was formed, in part as a response to the presence of DuBois and the NAACP delegation. So the question today looms, why leave? If blackness can be claimed and the massive contributions of those before us (including the building of buildings, the growers of financially viable crops and the inventors of entire genres of music) confirmed, shouldn’t black folks stay and reap the rewards? Shouldn’t the efforts of our great-great-grandparents be translated in the same way of white folks privilege, assets, land, money and resources to our childrens children, generationally? Sound like reparations, maybe? Fair enough. But WHEN should be the question, if ever? The writing is on the walls, though, so reparations remain unlikely.
On February 7 of 2013, the state of Mississippi finally officially abolished slavery on its books. Yes, in 2013! The continued documentation and rise of violence against black folks by law enforcement (and other, random American citizens) here in America is terrorizing and demoralizing. Black church shootings ring a bell? The continued over-criminilazation of black offenders versus white counterparts for the same crimes is well documented. Devils advocates debate, “so much has changed.” But really, has it? With the list of black expats growing in places like Ghana, Costa Rica, Cuba and all across Europe, are you feeling compelled to relocate and experience blackness in a new place?
Staff Writer; Charles Foster Jolivette
This talented young man can also be found over at; The California Creole and also Charles Patreon Page.