No Kaffir Boys Allowed

I'm going to be posting another blog in like 15 minutes, but this is too infuriating to let slip. From the NY Times (reg req as usual):

'African-American' Becomes a Term for Debate

"I said, 'But I am African and I am an American citizen; am I not African-American?' " said Mr. Kamus, who is an advocate for African immigrants here, recalling his sense of bewilderment. "They said 'No, no, no, not you.' "

"The census is claiming me as an African-American," said Mr. Kamus, 47, who has lived in this country for 20 years. "If I walk down the streets, white people see me as an African-American. Yet African-Americans are saying, 'You are not one of us.' So I ask myself, in this country, how do I define myself?"

***

This month, the debate spilled into public view when Alan Keyes, the black Republican challenger for the Senate seat in Illinois, questioned whether Mr. Obama, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, should claim an African-American identity.

"Barack Obama claims an African-American heritage," Mr. Keyes said on the ABC program "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. "Barack Obama and I have the same race - that is, physical characteristics. We are not from the same heritage."

"My ancestors toiled in slavery in this country," Mr. Keyes said. "My consciousness, who I am as a person, has been shaped by my struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage."

Some black Americans argue that black immigrants, like Mr. Kamus, and the children of immigrants, like Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell, are most certainly African-American. (Mr. Obama and Mr. Powell often use that term when describing themselves.) Yet some immigrants and their children prefer to be called African or Nigerian-American or Jamaican-American, depending on their countries of origin. Other people prefer the term black, which seems to include everyone, regardless of nationality.

So the Black descendents of Caribbean slaves, who have since fled further strife in their countries to come to America and who have fought to become citizens of this country have somehow not been "shaped by [their] struggle, deeply emotional and deeply painful, with the reality of that heritage"?

Now, it seems, African-American is not just an Ethno-Cultural distinction, it's a statement of how many lashes your great-great-grandfather/mother bore on his/her back--as well as on what continent he/she received them.

My God.

How many generations does it take to be considered an American? Does living in the Caribbean somehow strip you of African status in a way that living in America does not? What country should someone be born in that they can claim slave heritage? Is having descended from people who were torn from their homes and bound in irons and sent to work as animals thousands of miles from their home somehow not enough? Do whips hurt less in Jamaica? Does the beautiful scenery somehow mitigate suffering?

Is this the new classism in America? We've become too equal, so exclusionists have to split these kinds of hairs to set themselves apart?

This string of questions isn't some kind of Socratic literary conceit, I just . . . don't . . . get it.

Short Bio of Alan Keyes

Italy to Cornell to Harvard, what a hellish existence he's had burned into him. My mom was a military brat, does that make her like 1/4 African American? Of course not, Keyes still has a race card to play--but only when it suits him.

I guarantee Abdulaziz Kamus, the Ethiopian-born activist from the beginning of the Times story, has had to overcome more personal hardship than Mr. Keyes.

Then this:

Keyes defended the [Reagan] administration's policy against imposing economic sanctions on South Africa, a position that brought frequent criticism from black leaders.

So somewhere, whilst being "shaped by [his] struggle", Keyes came to support apartheid, or at least oppose the sanctions that could have helped end it. Was he worried about the impact of sanctions upon the disenfranchised black Africans? If so, then why doesn't he welcome these same refugees into the larger fold of African-American brotherhood? The hipocrisy is deep.

This is the new face of Xenophobia I think. This is the new front in the war against them--the war against everyone else. Not even Americans of recent African decent are allowed into the African-American clubhouse. They haven't suffered through enough left-wing battery at Cornell.

If a great white Satan like myself can be maddened by this, where are the black leaders who actually fought for equal rights? They've gotta set these people straight.

Where is Al Sharpton when you need him? Though his great-great-grandparents were probably slaves--American slaves--so I shouldn't assume he's with me on this.

It's good the two parties can share a talking point: that refugees from impoverished and war-ravaged nations haven't suffered enough to consider themselves African-Americans.

This isn't progress.

Why does no one listen to Goethe?