OPINION: My Ethnicity is a Color, that Color is Black. Black Americans Compare Ethnicity to the Tribes in the Diaspora
Understanding the Ethnicity of Americans: A Descendant's Perspective on Identity
Ethnicity Is Not Race
For Black Americans, their ethnicity is deeply rooted in the history of the United States. Because their bloodline is a unique blend of ethnicities found only in the Americas that dates back to the 1600s. In the United States, race is often conflated with ethnicity.
When descendants of former slaves discuss their "ethnicity," they are referring to their shared social and cultural background less than five generations from slavery. However, race is very different than a person’s ethnicity. Race is about a physical characteristic, skin color. However, ethnicity encompasses the traditions, values, and experiences that shape a community.
Ethnicity: A term to describe social and cultural backgrounds or experiences. A culture passed down from generation to generation.
Tribe: Social division in society based on traditional social, economic, religious, and blood ties.
Culture: The arts, human intellectual achievements, and social institutions of a familial group aka “Caribbean Culture.”
Formed a New Ethnicity
When European colonizers immigrated to the Americas they were met by groups of Natives. Copper colored natives greeted the colonists when they arrived on the Mayflower.
As time went on those Europeans and the few slaves accompanying them began to co-mingle with the Natives and a new ethnicity was born. The children of Native women or enslaved were subjected to whatever the Mother suffered. The children of enslaved women were also slaves and slaves were automatically in the category of black as opposed to white.
The government identified this new breed as a color. Why? Because the Europeans who invented the concept of ranking people by skin color (race, racial hierarchy) only created two kinds of people: white people and black people. Therefore the new ethnicity was labeled according to the language of the colonizer: Negro, Mulatto, Creole, or Black. The term negro, literally means 'black', and negro was brought to the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese slave owners. Those slaves were then forced to breed with slaves from other plantations. Pushed into barns like animals, enslaved persons were raped by the Master in the evenings and forced to breed new slaves during the day.
“Unserious people think they define what Blackness is in America.”
After emancipation, some former slaves lived amongst Natives, the same Indigenous Natives who greeted the Mayflower. Now, generations later, the descendants of former slaves - persons you call African Americans - have the indigenous bloodline of the natives who greeted the Mayflower. That pre-colonial bloodline, the bloodline of the Negro slave, lives and breathes today. Born with the blood of the Colonizer, the Native, and the Slave, these persons were legally called Negro until Democrats Rep. Grace Meng of New York and former President Barak Obama sponsored bill H.R.4238 which removed Negro from the government’s vocab in 2016.
In a rare show of bipartisan support, the measure H.R.4238 (to amend the Department of Energy Organization Act and the Local Public Works Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976 to modernize terms relating to minorities) unanimously passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate before it was signed into law by Barack Obama. That was the day the descendants of US chattel slaves lost their legal separation from immigrants. Regardless of the lack of separation between the immigrant and the indigenous, on paper, these persons boast a unique mixture of American blood are ethnically identified as a color. Not by choice. But because of the oppressive system of race created by their colonizers. The descendants of former US chattel slaves have an ethnicity that is a color. That color is black. These persons are the "Black Americans.”
The Reality of Race
In recent years, the concept of race has been increasingly confused with ethnicity. Vice President Kamala Harris, might racially identify as black because there are only two categories: white or black. But her parent’s ethnicity is not the same as a Descendant of former US chattel slaves and ethnicity has nothing to do with race.
When Black Americans say, "Kamala ain’t black," they're not just talking about her dark-colored skin. This phrase reflects a deeper conversation about ethnicity and shared experiences.
Here is an example for a better understanding. Europeans racially identify as white, but people who identify as white come from a long list of ethnicities. The founding colonizers and slave owners from Spain, Germany, England, Ireland, Italy, etc left their European identities to become known as a color. The structure of identifying citizens by the color of their skin, the racial structure of whiteness, white privilege, and white supremacy are legally protected by the U.S. Constitution because the Constitution was written by slave owners who identified as white.
When then-President Obama and Democrat Grace Meng removed Negro from the OMB and federal vocabulary they erased the ethnicity of the Negro and deliberately inflicted serious mental and bodily harm onto an entire ethnicity of Super Citizens. Ordinarily, those are actions that would be punishable as acts of genocide but U.S. politicians in 2024 are immigrants too. Immigrant politicians in 2024 don’t know any better, if there family arrived in the USA as a result of the 1965 then they’ve experienced less than 15 Presidential elections in their whole life. However, no one is in charge. The federal government isn’t interested in holding anyone accountable. The Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Steven Horsford, just admitted to an auditorium full of people that he’s the son of an illegal immigrant from Trinidad. How many other CBC members are anchor babies here in the United States illegally?
Just like the waves of colonizing immigrants before them, generational immigrants of 2024 do not care about the Constitutional rights of former slaves. Millions of immigrants move to the U.S. each year because the federal government allows people like Chairman Horsford and his mother to abuse the Reconstruction Amendments. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments were written exclusively for descendants of the former slaves - and no one else. Returning the sanctity and exclusivity of those amendments would only take an Act.
Regardless of skin color, all colonizing immigrant politicians are perpetrating the colonizer’s traditions of denying former slaves’ of their right to be exempt from unfriendly laws per the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admissions. However, the Congressional Black Caucus refuses to uphold Special Order 15 in Court even though the Supreme Court just blatantly said the country owes a debt to the slaves.
Tribalism Affects Africa
Immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean might have dark-colored skin, the melanated, racially identify as black because there are only two categories in the system of race. Black and White.
Similar to ethnicity, tribes in Africa are divided by social, economic, or blood ties. However tribes and tribalism has long influenced conflicts around the world since the colonial days. Tribes in Africa have notoriously fought and killed one another in many wars over the years. The last great African war was 1998 was so great it has several names. The Second Congo War is also known as Africa's World War, the Great War of Africa, and the Great African War. Today Africa acknowledges over 3,000 tribes and Pulse. Africa labeled Somalis as the strongest warrior tribe. A reputation of warfare Somalis warrior tribes were the first to engage in battle on water. World Bank called the ethnic diversity of tribes the cause of fights in Africa. According to the World Bank, African rebel movements are almost always ethnically defined by their tribe.
Having melanin in your skin does not automatically mean you both share the same values, morals, or views on politics. Escaping religious persecution, or running from a Civil War in another country, does not mean a person understands the generational pain of being enslaved in the land of your ancestors. That’s the Black American experience. A generational immigrant should never speak on behalf of the Descendant class. No immigrant has the authority to speak for the former slaves or their ancestors.
When it’s election season, Kamala Harris pretends to have an ethnicity of a former slaves. When Brahmin Indian Kamala says she eats “hamhocks and greens” she’s pretending to have an ethnicity of a color then she is pretending to be a descendant of former US chattel slaves. She’s cosplaying being a Black American. Not the African diaspora living in America. If she was trying to act Caribbean (because her father is Jamaican) then she would talk about Carnival, beef patties, or patois. But she doesn’t.
The point of contention when discussing Kamala with paid celebrities like radio host Rickey Smiley and his cohosts. The same way tribes separates people in Africa, 2024 is the year both sides of the global melanin community, skin color (racial categories) does not equal a shared ethnicity.
Debate: Should Immigration Continue
The descendants of former US chattel slaves, the Black Americans, have a complicated relationship with immigration. The influx of immigrants might have enriched the country in some ways, but immigration also created a lot more challenges that weren’t present before the Immigration & Naturalization Act of 1965.
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that race has no Constitutional or biological basis to be used for legal purposes. That means race was never supposed to be used in law or legal state matters, but 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation immigrants think because they share the same skin color that they have the authority to speak for those whose families were in the country before the 1965 Immigration Act was passed. In other words, the colonizer has empowered immigrants who arrived after 1965 to feel comfortable speaking for those who fought the Irish, Italians, and Germans in 1965.
The year 2025 marks 60 years of mass immigration and the children or grandchildren of the 1965 Freedom Fighters are questioning whether immigration was worth the fight. Realizing the “American Dream” only applies to anyone who is not a descendant of former slaves, the Descendant class is asking themselves, “How much longer should we allow immigration go on?”
Understanding their ancestors thought they were bringing over reinforcements to help fight the Irish, Israeli, Italian, and other European colonizers. Instead, Africans, Asians, and Latinos are helping the Europeans control the Negroes. Asians sided with the Jews and helped try to destroy affirmative action. Luckily their plan backfired on them. Instead of everyone benefitting from affirmative action the Supreme Court ruled only the descendants of former slaves can benefit from affirmative action now.
SLAP IN THE FACE
Before mass immigration, legacy nonprofit organizations like the National Urban League and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was useful to Black Americans. Negroes felt supported by legacy organizations because they were founded or run by a Negro. When my grandparents moved to Chicago in the 1940s the Urban League helped my grandmother when a hateful Italian called her a number of unkind words. Now immigrant-first organizations, the National Urban League and National Coalition on Black Civic Participation slapped the descendant class in the face when they formally petitioned the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to continue forcing descendants of former slaves to identify with immigrants. That means immigrants who arrive in the United States in 2024 are eligible for more benefits and privileges than Descendants of former slaves.
Another slap in the face, California State Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez used her position to publicly speak against the compensation and restitution for former slaves in the form of cash reparation payments. “The majority of our state is Latino and Asian, making up 55% of our population. Most of them like me are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery, discrimination, or Jim Crow laws. Nothing,” said Assemblywoman Sanchez on June 10th, 2024. Although the Hispanic California Assemblywoman and her family continue to financially benefit from California’s status as a sanctuary state she said it was “fundamentally unfair for Asians and Latinos to have to pay” restitution to the 2% of descendants of US chattel salves who still live in California.
Since it is election season, then this might be the best time for the Descendant class to discuss if the fight in 1965 was worth immigration in 2024.
Understanding the Phrase: "You Ain’t Black."
America’s descendant class is the only group on earth whose ethnicity is a color. That color is Black. You might ask why former slaves continue to use that ethnicity and one response is who named Jamaica? On paper, the Descendants of former US chattel slaves are a color. Because the bloodline of descendants predates the Constitution, those Americans embraced the identity imposed on them by the colonizer (“the white man”). Other ethnic identities tied to their home countries of origin (e.g., Jamaican, Haitian, African, Somali) is this the year the diaspora embraces the ethnicity of the former slaves as a color?
Not according to Ebro, from the morning radio show “Ebro in the Morning.” The radio show host speaks from a place of authority although he’s confused about the difference between ethnicity and race. Similar to the rapper Drake, Ibrahim Jamil "Ebro" Darden (born March 17, 1975) is the child of a Black father and a Jewish mother. He went to church in Oakland and Hebrew school in Sacramento.[1] Ebro Darden hosts an urban themed radio show based in New York City with co-hosts Peter Rosenberg and Laura Stylez. Assumably estranged from his father, on Jul 23, 2024 Ebro claimed to have a great grandfather “on my Dad’s side” who was born on a plantation. Now according to his light colored skin color, his Jewish upbringing, and lack of knowledge about the enslaved then Ebro should racially identified as white, but that doesn’t stop him from commenting about blackness.
August 1st Ebro said, “Black is a race and an international identity. The enslaved in the United States would mean Black American culturally not racially” to Marc Lamont Hill, the Host of BET News, and the Foundational Black American @AfroAmericanJay. He tweeted “Black IS a culture in America. Black is also a race. Black is also an identity shared by the African diaspora,” on July 31st. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Ebro had the Caucasity (Caucasian audacity) to correct a Lineage verified Black American on Twitter. About Black American women not voting for Kamala he said:
A Black person who is an American citizen is Black American.
You can also not agree but good luck with that.
A white person born in Africa, moves to America and becomes a citizen is technically African American, but they are white racially.
We don’t like it, but….. here we are.
Little did he know, Ebro was tweeting a notable lead in the Detroit reparation movement. Lineage verified Co-Founder & Co-Chair of the Detroit GrassRoots Coalition, known online as Hellfighter, the beautiful Black American woman was respectfully correcting a Jamaican who jumped on the “I am a #BlackAmerican woman and I will not be voting for Kamala Harris” bandwagon when Ebro decided to correct Hellfighter. It was the day after Vice President Kamala Harris raised over a million dollars from thousands of women who racially identify as black. Then the next day Black Americans, women who ethnically identify as a color, let their voices be heard and they said they’re not voting for Kamala.
Then the radio host, Ebro, who looks like the love child of a young Seth Rogen and an old DJ Khalid, cemented himself as a colonizer and not a colleague when he corrected Reparations advocates. Completely ignorant of the differences between race, ethnicity, and citizenship Ebro told a Foundational Black American, “A Black person who is an American citizen is Black American.” Luckily he has less than half a million followers (301.3K Followers) but this comment has already been viewed by nearly half of his followers (146.8K times). Almost all two hundred of the comments were Black Americans explaining the difference between race and ethnicity.
Now let’s quickly recap. Ibrahim, who goes by Ebro, was raised by a Jewish mother but he used the hip hop identity from his father’s side to create a very lucrative career for himself. Ebro rocks the streetwear, he talks the talk, and in his spare time he crushes the fighting spirits of descendants of former slaves online. Confused about his own identity, Ebro believes he has the right to correct anyone with melanin regardless of his bloodline or ancestry just like his Jewish Israeli ancestors. Ebro exploits the work, the livelihood, and destroys positive efforts of the former slave class. He very coldly told another reparation advocate “unserious people think they define and limit what Blackness in America is.” The young male reparationist was trying to reach today’s youth by posting a TikTok video on Twitter when Ebro verbally accosted the Constitutionally protected young man.
Conclusion: Ethnicity is an Identity
The Black American identity is about the ethnic identity. It is the bloodline of persons who were before colonizers. Human beings who have been forced to legally identify as a color. Americans denied Constitutional rights by the slave owning nations Ireland, Italy, Israel, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain.
Regrettably, the Descendant class has decided they will not be following the leadership of former slave owners anymore. Kamala Harris’ family, her bloodline, is from slave owners. Black Americans take a person’s bloodline, their ethnicity, very seriously because their “American experience” has been rooted in resilience from invaders, they bore a culture out of colonization, and they boast a legacy of changing the world. Ebro’s comments matches the sentiments of the Israeli Consul Official who called the younger generations of the black community a major problem for Israel. Looking back the Descendant class has emancipated themselves from physical, mental, and economic slavery in the United States more than once. Is it time for the Descendant class to emancipate themselves from immigration? Has the Descendant class been too damn nice for their own good?
