The Symptoms: Pop Culture Wars

Last year, I followed the back-and-forth debate around a 2020 video of South Africa’s Tyla, where she described herself as both “coloured” and Black, given her Zulu, Irish, and Indian descent. Black Americans, for whom the word “colored” is associated with a history of derogation, labeled her and, by extension, other Black Africans insensitive. Some even boycotted her music. Black Africans, on the other hand, accused Black Americans of insecurity and of insisting on a monopoly over defining Black identity and experience – particularly its plurality – to the exclusion of other Black peoples.

Another debate/banter erupted over Nigerian artist Rema’s outfit in the video for his song “Fun.” Black Americans claimed their hip-hop culture inspired Rema’s looks, suggesting that otherwise he would have worn traditional Nigerian attire like Agbada or Isi Agu. The implication is that Black American cultural material is superior to Black African. Africans, particularly Nigerians, again called them insecure. For many Black Africans, as Sam George Mac puts it, the suggestion that such basic attire could be culturally owned by a single group is absurd. Some Africans even responded with crude stereotypes, saying the only credit Black Americans deserve is for gang violence, artificial beauty, unhealthy food, sexualization, loudness, and single mothers.

This is part of a larger identity issue that goes beyond music and fashion and has huge political and economic consequences. At the height of the shift of Black American public opinion against the Republican Party in July, institutions and businesses associated with or owned by Black Africans in the U.S. were boycotted. Even Essence, a powerhouse in redeeming Black identity and spotlighting Black entrepreneurship, was targeted because Caroline Wagna, its CEO at the time, is Kenyan.

This antagonism is not limited to Black transatlantic relations. At home here in Africa, we find similar rivalries. Ownership debates over Amapiano, Afrobeats, and Jollof rice are not just playful banters; they’re rooted in unhealthy competition between South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana for cultural supremacy. Instead of respecting each contribution while acknowledging true origins, we deny one another’s ownership and undercut each other’s enterprises just to prove a point. The violent reaction to Nigeria’s loss to Ghana in a 2022 World Cup qualification match – including the destruction of the stadium – is just one illustration of how deep, unhealthy, and dangerous this mindset is.

Beyond identity politics, these cases illustrate how fragmented Black transatlantic and transnational relations are, and how this fragmentation threatens the consolidation of Black influence globally. They also highlight how tension grows around the unsettled question of credit and authenticity when cultural trends become global phenomena.

The Sickness: Miseducation

At the heart of these tensions lies miseducation: a lack of fuller knowledge/understanding of self and of one another. Most of what Black groups know of each other comes from simplistic portrayals in popular media. Growing up in Nigeria, my closest reference to Black Americans was rap/hip-hop, followed by prison. Elders would warn me not to sag my trousers because “that’s how black prisoners in America dress.” Other references were gang violence, drugs, and crime.

I didn’t even know why Black Americans were called that, nor how they got to be in America, until I studied the transatlantic slave trade and Black American history in university. In secondary school, history had been removed from the curriculum, so I was denied the context of the situation of that group. Even when I read Native Son as a teenager, I could only understand it as a Black boy senselessly killing a white girl to hide from her blind mother. The racial undertone was lost on me.

Similarly, Black Americans see Africans as poorer and more backward, because that is how the popular media has portrayed us globally. For many, learning about Aliko Dangote or the African middle classes is a shock even today. To most of them, we are serial polygamists from chaotic, poverty-stricken countries on the outskirts of civilization. That is why some Black Americans might assume African traditional attire is “uncool” or unworthy of a global pop star’s music video.

This mutual ignorance mirrors Baldwin’s warning that Black people are too often portrayed as having agency only in violence (and lack), not prosperity and ownership. He feared this would discourage a fuller understanding and appreciation of Black life. And it is true for Black Americans as it is for Black Africans today. We often see each other only through our vices or what we perceive to be vices – Agbada and Isi Agu.

The truth is, we know too little of one another to understand and accommodate each other’s sensitivity to certain nomenclatures. The Tyla controversy is a case in point. She didn’t know “colored” was an offensive term in America. Similarly, Black Americans did not recognize her unique perception of and experience with the term “coloured.” Each side lacked contextual knowledge of the other and thus failed to accommodate or understand each other.

This ignorance extends to debates on reparations. A Nigerian colleague once argued to me that African Americans should quit seeking reparations and playing victim – slavery was many years ago, he said. Yet the same person recognizes Jewish right to reparations due to their experience during the Holocaust (1933-1945). Why, then, are centuries of slavery and segregation (1619-1964) dismissed as “playing victim”? Likewise, why do we all acknowledge suits as European without debate, yet refuse to credit Black Americans for a style they actually curated? After all, both are basic attire worldwide.

Many Black Americans also believe that they are solely responsible for dignifying Blackness, and that Black Africans are ungrateful beneficiaries of their struggles. They believe this gives them the right to reduce Black identity to their own singular definition, while Black Africans retaliate by dismissing their agency altogether. Both postures undermine Black contributions globally.

As Black Africans, I feel that when we better understand why Black Americans protect their cultural materials from any external appropriation, we will credit them when due and they’ll not trivialize our own cultural materials as well. Ultimately, the real problem is miseducation. In my case, I was often taught Black history as a sequence of problems: slavery, colonialism, dictatorships, civil wars, and corruption. Dictators like Sanni Abacha have a bigger place in modern Nigerian history than innovators like Philip Emeagwali or writers like Chinua Achebe. Our failures, which I don’t deny exist, are foregrounded and stripped of context while our successes are minimized. If this is how we are taught about ourselves, imagine what we are taught – or not taught – about other Black groups.

I only knew Black Americans as gangsters before I knew Martin Luther King Jr or the Black Panther or Alice Walker. We always learn the worst of each other first, and the best of each other later – if at all. But that is usually not the case when we learn of other groups. For example, I learned of Mary Slessor’s heroism before Cecil Rhodes’s atrocities.

The Prescription: Re-education

The solution is re-education: a deliberate, coordinated effort to teach, amongst other things, that Black experiences cannot and should not be singularly defined. No single Black group can speak for the entirety of Blackness, and no group should impose its perspective on the other.

However, we must also recognize that while our experiences differ, the underlying reality is the same: we’ve all been subjected to exclusion, alienation, and dispossession at one point or another. Our shared triumphs, despite these conditions, should unite rather than divide us.

In the debate thread that followed Rema’s video, one comment stood out to me. It read: “Why do Africans think we give a fuck about them? You’re here. We never go there…” Though the author was referring to the physical distance, that comment echoes the reality that there’s a knowledge gap in Black transatlantic relations. We need to try and close that gap, not just through spirited social media banters, but through sustained conversations at cultural, educational, and political levels.

Imagine the African Union dedicating a department to Black transatlantic relations. Picture HBCUs, premier Universities in Africa, entertainment giants like BET, and other Black institutions collaborating on symposiums, TV Shows, and public debates on Black identity in its global spectrum. Prominent Black voices – from entertainment to academics and politics – could help lead this re-education drive. Black stories have too often been told in a way that presents our failures as the rule and our successes as the exception. This narrative is one of the most fundamental problems in how we interact with one another and the rest of the world. It has to change.

Finally, Black-on-Black antagonism benefits no one. If anything, it weakens us collectively. We are members of a people who have long been excluded, alienated, and dispossessed by others. We shouldn’t replicate that harm amongst ourselves. Not us. Not again.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by sour moha on Unsplash