Let's Choose the Fight for Global Reparations Rather Than the Diaspora Wars

At a time when anti-Blackness is surging, the comments by actor David Oyelowo and the ensuing backlash only further disunity in the diaspora and empower white supremacy.

(Photo by Envato)

The African diaspora wars are real, and in the end, the disunity is exacting a toll on Black people across the globe. The diaspora wars are cross-cultural conflicts based on disinformation, miseducation and misunderstanding, and they center proximity to whiteness and cause Africans and African descendants to compete over which colonizer is the best. These divisions come at a time when we can least afford them, and the only beneficiary of this distrust and disunity is white supremacy. It is far better to channel our energy into Pan-African unity and the fight for reparations.

Nigerian-British actor David Oyelowo fired the latest shot in the diaspora wars. Appearing on the One54 Africa podcast, Oyelowo disrespected the Southern Black accent—as if there is only one. “If you take the Nigerian accent like this and you slow it down, you put a lot of slavery in there, and then you start to put a little bit of subservience in it,” the actor said, further illuminating the global disrespect of African-Americans reflected in negrophobic media imagery (he has since issued an apology).

Oyelowo—who played Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, and the real-world Lone Ranger in Lawmen: Bass Reeves—was responding to a skit by comedian Druski that reignited the debate over Black British actors being cast as Black American characters. Channeling Robert Townsend’s “Black Acting School” in the 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle, and echoing Samuel L. Jackson’s criticism of the casting of Black British actors in Hollywood, Druski posted “British Actors are taking all the Roles,” a satirical video posing as Sampson Dubois, a fictional Black British actor.

Whether it is the comedian Godfrey calling out anti-Black self-hate among Dominicans (“I no Black”), debates over whether college admissions are prioritizing African students over African-Americans or Foundational Black Americans (FBA) and American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) decrying “tethered” African and Caribbean immigrants not deserving of reparations, the diaspora wars are furthering disunity and empowering white supremacy.

Let us not forget that white supremacy created these divisions among the African world through slavery and colonialism. Just as white folks carved up Africa for economic exploitation in the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 during the Scramble for Africa, today’s neocolonial powers are scrambling for Africa’s natural resources—the minerals, the gold and diamonds, the oil and cacao, and the land. This, as white nationalists act in earnest—and ultimately in vain—to erase Black history and Black political power in the United States during the 250^th anniversary of what was founded as a white settler state and is now a sundowning empire.

At a time when forces are aligned against Black people, we must unite the diaspora. African people are interconnected, no matter where they are.

The collective power of Black people is on display at the FIFA World Cup, where some people are learning the African diaspora really is everywhere, whether in Brazil, Congo, Ecuador, France, Haiti, Japan or Mexico.