According to the Census Bureau, 16.5% of Black Americans will be immigrants by the year 2060. Continental Africans make up the majority of the Black immigrant population in the U.S., at 36%.

On paper, this appears to be very uplifting data. What we should be concerned with, however, is the long-standing rift that exists between the American-born descendants of African slaves and foreign-born Africans of the Diaspora who move to the States. Of course, this rift was created by policymakers in the States who regulated immigration to this country.  In the years since the end of slavery in 1865, it has been feared by white supremacists that Africans around the world would form alliances to counter–and eventually defeat–systematic racism/white supremacy by building a society totally independent of Westernized societies.

It has been statistically proven that America is witnessing an increase in Black immigration. Can we as Melanoid people (also classified as Black) use this to our advantage? Or will the increasing Black presence here in the States be “addressed” by white supremacists as they attempt to numerically suppress our collective population by watering it down and giving the new Black immigrants classifications or preferences over us that will separate them from the rest of us, much like many Hispanics (or “Afro Latinos”) were treated in years past?

by B. Clark