The New African Diaspora

14. Resisting “Race”: Organizing African Transnational Identities in the United States

14 RESISTING “RACE”: ORGANIZING AFRICAN TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITIES IN THE UNITED STATES Jill M. Humphries We are tired of white American and African American men speaking for us. —African immigrant woman BL AC K T R A NSAT L A N T IC M IG R AT ION Increasing transnational migration and immigration of black ethnic groups to the United States is changing the notions of race, ethnicity, and nationality and the ways in which people fundamentally understand themselves in U.S. society as well as relations with their home countries (Rogers 2000; Waters 1999). While the U.S. racial architecture subsumes black ethnic groups within one homogenous racial group, irrespective of history , culture, and nationality, what it means to be black in U.S. society is contested and changing as a result of the inclusion of other black ethnic groups. To be black can no longer be simply equated with a single racial/ ethnic group—African American. Rather, African immigrants (Pierre; Bryce-Laporte), Afro-Caribbean immigrants (Rogers), and black Latinos (Greenbaum; Jones-Correa) bring different understandings and interpretations of what it means to be black. The different racial systems that exist in their home countries, and the varying meanings they place on these experiences , fundamentally affect how they see themselves in U.S. society (Greenbaum; Rogers; Waters). This in turn has implications for political organizing in the African constituency arena. Most studies that examine the African constituency tend to focus on either the African American ethnic lobby as a monolithic entity without examining its heterogeneity, or multiracial coalitions primarily composed of Euro- and African American participants. Few studies examine the process of building multiracial/multinational 271 272 Jill M. Humphries coalitions that include African immigrants as primary actors in the process . This essay seeks to explore how African immigrants envision themselves in the U.S. racial hierarchy and the implications of that hierarchy for establishing multiracial and black intra-racial alliances. More specifically , I explore the ways in which African immigrants deploy notions of identity and identity politics as a tool for mobilizing collective and oppositional identities in the United States/African constituency arena. I examine these issues in the context of the National Summit on Africa, a nationwide constituency building initiative.1 In the first part of this chapter, I briefly discuss the historical context for the National Summit on Africa2 as an African advocacy initiative and its relationship to U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, given the constraints imposed by the antidemocratic nature of the process and the rationale for such constituency building initiatives. In the second part, I examine the relationship between identity and identity politics, U.S. racial structuring, and the implications for building African American and African immigrant alliances in the African constituency arena. In the final part of the chapter, I provide two examples from the California case study and National Summit that illustrate the complex process of establishing a collective identity with which to mobilize participants, and more specifically the process by which African immigrants mobilized and organized around their immigrant African identities. In the conclusion, I examine the implications for political organizing in the African constituency arena. C R E A T I N G A S PA C E F O R D O M E S T I C C O N S T I T U E N C I E S I N U . S . F O R E I G N P O L I C Y M A K I N G The end of cold war politics (D. F. Gordon et al.; Clough), the decline of authoritative leadership (D. F. Gordon et al.), and the rise and consolidation of democratic transitions (Walters; Diamond and Plattner) among African states signal a new period for Africa in global affairs and, in particular , for United States–Africa relations. As a result, U.S. policy makers are faced with the challenge of developing a new policy mandate that is mutually beneficial to the fifty-four African states in addressing a wide array of transnational issues such as increasing globalization, sustainable development, economic and trade relations, and health, environmental , and security issues. Previously, U.S. national interests in Africa were defined through a Eurocentric and masculinist bias (Brown), with a focus on resource extraction, and with a priority toward geostrategic concerns (Horne).3 This myopic approach has contributed to the U.S.’s inability to develop a proactive and comprehensive policy toward Africa. It was not until the 1970s—as...