Therefore, the success of the independence struggles in different African countries in the fifties and sixties served as a great source of inspiration to African Americans during the civil rights movement as much as the civil rights struggle in the United States was a source of great encouragement to many Africans still groaning under white minority rule, especially in South Africa. The situation of black people under apartheid was similar to that of black Americans. And both were being oppressed by a power that was an integral of their country. It was a colonial power within, not a foreign power like in the rest of the African countries ruled by the British, the French and the Portuguese. They were fighting for freedom from fellow citizens who were going nowhere, unlike the British, the French and the Portuguse who left their African colonies and returned to Europe after the colonies won independence. Black Americans were also "colonized" within.

It is also critical to remember that even during the darkest hour in the history of our continent when we were under colonial rule and did not even have political parties fighting for independence, Africans in the diaspora played a major role in championing the cause of African freedom going as back as the early 1900s. Sylvester Williams from Trinidad, and W.E.B. DuBois from the United States, were the most prominent, followed later by George Padmore and CLR James also from Trinidad. They were joined by Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe and other African leaders in the 1940s, carrying on a tradition that went back to the early years of the twentieth century when the first Pan-African Congress was held in London in 1900.

The second Pan-African Congress was held in Paris in 1919. It coincided with the Paris Peace Conference by the Allied Powers ending World War I and demanded the right to self-determination in the African colonies. It was also in the same year that there were widespread protests against the exclusion of racial equality from the Covenant of the League of Nations, and delegates from the Pan-African Congress presented resolutions to the League of Nations demanding freedom and independence for Africans. A few years earlier, the African National Congress (ANC) was founded in January 1912 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and more than 80 years later won the struggle against apartheid.

Dr. DuBois played a critical role in organizing these conferences. It was he, together with Blaise Diagne, a Senegalese and highest-ranking African in French politics and deputy to the French parliament, who organized the Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919. It was attended by at least 57 delegates representing 15 countries and colonies, including Liberia, Haiti, the British West Indies, West African British and French colonies, and the United States. At least 19 delegates came from Africa.

The 1919 conference is often referred to as the First Pan-African Congress. But it was actually patterned after the Pan-African Conference, which was really the first Pan-African Congress, convened by Henry Sylvester Williams in London in 1919. DuBois also attended this conference as a delegate. The London conference petitioned the Allied Nations to take specific steps to end oppressive political and economic conditions in predominantly black colonies in Africa and the West Indies.

The Second (or third) Pan-African Congress was held in 1921 in the three main colonial centers - London, Paris, and Brussels - and was attended by 113 delegates. Again, Africans in the diaspora, with DuBois being the most prominent among them, played a major role in organizing this conference. The NAACP was also represented at the conference and provided financial support. The Third Pan-African Congress was held in 1923 in London, and in Lisbon, Portugal, pursuing the same goals as those pursued at the previous conferences. The main goal was independence for black countries in Africa and in the Caribbean.

The Fourth Pan-African Congress was held in Harlem, New York, in 1927 and was funded by an organization of black women, the Circle of Peace and Foreign Relations, long interested in improving the lives of black people in Africa and in the diaspora, including attainment of independence for the African colonies. The conference was chaired by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and attended by 208 delegates. And about 5000 people participated in the conference. Several sessions were also held in black churches in Harlem. African countries represented included Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (later renamed Ghana), Nigeria, and Liberia. There were also representatives from the United States and the West Indies.

Dr. DuBois tried to make arrangements for the Fifth Pan-African Congress to be held on African soil, in Tunis, Tunisia. He chose Tunis because it was accessible by shipping lines and was somewhat centrally located to enable many delegates from Africa and Europe to attend the conference. But the French government feared that such a conference held on African soil would lead to unrest in the colonies on the continent, and denied the organizers permission to hold the conference in its colony of Tunisia.

The French told DuBois and other organizers that they could hold the conference in Paris, but the Depression, which came in 1929, the same year the conference was planned, precluded any possibility that the conference would be held anytime soon. Financial problems were one of the main reasons why other conferences could not be held sooner. There were also ideological divisions among the organizers.

There were those who supported the ideology of Marcus Garvey which was strictly racial and excluded anybody who was not black or considered black enough including racially mixed people such as Dr. DuBois himself. And there were those who supported Dr. DuBois and his colleagues whose philosophy was inclusive.

It was not until 16 years later, in 1945, that the Fifth Pan-African Congress was held. It was held in Manchester, England, and was attended by Dr. DuBois, George Padmore, CLR James, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ras Makonnen, and others. Nkrumah and Kenyatta served as secretaries and played a critical role in organizing the conference.

It was also in the same year that Nkrumah left the United States for Britain after attending school in America for 10 years. When he was still a student in the United States, he met CLR James. CLR James said Nkrumah used to talk a lot and "he talked a lot of nonsense in those days," as he said in an article he wrote. But he said he was very much impressed by him because of his determination to achieve his goals. Other people who met Nkrumah were also very much impressed by his personality. He was charismatic. He was dynamic. I remember Professor Ali Mazrui, a Kenyan, saying when he first met Nkrumah, he was impressed by his charisma right away.

CLR James went on to say that when Nkrumah was getting ready to go to Britain to study at the London School of Economics, he wrote George Padmore introducing Nkrumah to him. Padmore lived in London. CLR James said he told Padmore to help Nkrumah, and went on to say: "He's not very bright. But he's determined to throw the white man out of Africa."

Nkrumah also read Karl Marx when he was a student in the United States. CLR James, who was a Marxist, didn't think that Nkrumah understood Marxism well. But he gave him credit saying that he studied further, and when Nkrumah gave a speech at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, CLR James said "it was an absolute masterpiece."

Nkrumah never looked back. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 and, ten years later, led his country to independence, earning it distinction as the first black African country to emerge from colonial rule.

When the Gold Coast won independence as Ghana on March 6, 1957, representatives from the African diaspora were invited to Accra, Ghana's capital, to celebrate. Nkrumah also invited people of African descent to go to Ghana and other parts of Africa to help build the continent.

The people invited by Nkrumah to celebrate Ghana's attainment of independence included Dr. Martin Luther King, Ralph Bunche, A. Philip Randolph, Adam Clayton Powell, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, and Richard Wright. There were also common citizens from the diaspora, such as Lucille Davis, an African American who was working in Los Angeles when the Gold Coast won independence and became Ghana. She wrote Nkrumah directly asking him to intervene on her behalf when the British embassy in Washington tried to stop her from going to Ghana to attend the independence celebrations. As Mary Ellen Ray who has lived in Ghana for almost 20 years stated in her article, "Ghana: 'Home' For African Americans":

"Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, sent out a call to skilled and talented African Americans to come to Ghana to help with the building of a new independent African nation. Many came; some left and some stayed. Today, it's estimated there are between 1,500 and 2,000 residing permanently in the country. This count isn't entirely accurate because many settled outside the larger towns and cities preferring to stay in villages and/or not registering with the U.S. Embassy.

African Americans residing in Ghana represent almost every state in the U.S., even Hawaii. A large number came as the wives of Ghanaians they met in the States. And each year more retirees arrive. Though inflation has hit Ghana and the "bargain" prices are not as much of a bargain anymore, water and electricity and telephone services continue to 'come and go' without notice, and cultural differences can get sticky at times, many of us African Americans 'hang in thar'.

Several have been here for fifty years. Dr. Robert Lee, a classmate of Kwame Nkrumah at Lincoln University, and his wife, Dr. Sara Lee (now deceased) were among Ghana's pioneering dentists. Sara Lee started the nation's first school dental clinic. After five decades of dental practice, Dr. Lee retired in 2002.

When Lucille Davis heard about the upcoming independence of Ghana in 1957 she was working in Los Angeles, an Upper State New Yorker, and decided she wanted to attend this historic event. The British Consulate discouraged her from making the trip. Undeterred, she went home, sat down and wrote a letter directly to Kwame Nkrumah, the president-to-be, explaining her desire and her plight. Within two weeks the British Consulate called Mrs. Davis saying Kwame Nkrumah was inviting her to the independence celebration as an honored guest. She now owns and operates the Beachcomber Guest House facing the Guinea Sea in Teshie Nunga, a suburb of Accra."

Dr. DuBois was one of the African Americans who moved to Ghana and renounced his American citizenship. In 1961, Nkrumah invited Dr. DuBois to spend his last days in Ghana. DuBois was then in conflict with the American government for his opposition to America's Cold War and imperial policies. He left the United States and became a citizen of Ghana and died on August 27, 1963, in Accra, the day before the March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech on August 28. He was 95 and died shortly after becoming a Ghanaian citizen.

The involvement of Dr. DuBois and others in the African independence struggle, and the participation in Pan-African conferences by Africans from Africa together with those from the United States, the Caribbean and Europe, demonstrates the indissoluble bonds that have always existed between Africa and the diaspora. Black people in the Americas and elsewhere have always known that the well-being of Africa is inextricably linked with their destiny because whatever affects one, affects the other. No black person is free until all blacks are free.

And until Africa is free and united, there is no hope for the black race. If there is dignity in numbers, there is also humiliation in numbers. If more than 600 million black people in Africa - more than 200 million Africans in Africa are not black - cannot do anything to uplift the black race, 35 million blacks in the United States, or others elsewhere in the diaspora, cannot do it alone. Therefore the destiny of the black race lies with Africa. That is where the numbers and the resources are. And the bonds that have always existed between Africa and the diaspora should be strengthened to help Africans, at home and abroad, achieve their goals to be among the best among men.

When the Sixth Pan-African Congress was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1974, under the stewardship of President Julius Nyerere almost 35 years after the Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester in England in 1945, it was the first of its kind to be held on African soil. It was held in Nkrumah Hall at the University of Dar es Salaam. The hall was named after Nkrumah in memory of his dedication and achievements as a Pan-Africanist and Pan-African leader, one of the greatest leaders Africa has ever produced. In a survey of Africans in 2000, as reported by the BBC, the majority of the people voted for Nkrumah as the most influential African leader.

And in a Pan-African context, he probably had the strongest links to black America among all African leaders. And the years he spent as a student in the United States helped to strengthen those ties. But it was the depth of his Pan-African commitment, his ability to fully embrace the people in the diaspora as fellow Africans, as well as his colorful style as a leader, which was the biggest attraction to him among African Americans.

When he was a student, he was also attracted to Marcus Garvey and said in his autobiography that it was the teachings of Garvey which had the biggest influence on him. As he stated: "Of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Garvey, with his philosophy of 'Africa for Africans' and his 'Back to Africa' movement, did much to inspire the Negroes of America in the 1920's."

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1914 at the age of 28. After he moved to Harlem in 1916, New York became the new headquarters of the movement. It was the largest black movement in American history, attracting millions of followers and admirers with its mission to uplift the black race.

Marcus Garvey wanted to unite blacks worldwide and build a strong empire in Africa. Thus, the UNIA also became a back-to-Africa movement. As Garvey stated when he developed his vision for the Universal Negro Improvement Association: "Where is the black man's government? Where is his King and his kingdom? Where is his President, his ambassador, his country, his men of big affairs? I could not find them, and then I declared, 'I will help to make them.'" And the place where he was going to achieve his goal was Africa.

Garvey's vision undoubtedly had a profound impact on Nkrumah when he was a student in the United States and after he became president of Ghana as he sought to unite Africa. He became the most forceful exponent of immediate continental unification with his slogan, "Africa Must Unite." It was also the title of his book published to coincide with the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963.

Nyerere had the same kind of Pan-African commitment like Nkrumah. He embraced the African diaspora as much as Nkrumah did but did not have a flamboyant style like Nkrumah's. His style was simple, deceptively simple. Underneath lay a deep commitment to Pan-African causes transcending continental boundaries, without parallel among his contemporaries since Nkrumah whose political career was abruptly cut short by a military coup engineered by the CIA in February 1966.

And while Nkrumah, together with Jomo Kenyatta, played a key role in organizing the Fifth Pan-African Congress which was attended by a number of future African leaders including future presidents such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, and Nkrumah and Kenyatta themselves; Nyerere presided over the Sixth Pan-African Congress during a period when the liberation struggle in southern Africa was most intense.

It was also during this critical phase that African Americans launched a sustained campaign to influence American policy towards Africa, especially southern Africa. Leaders such Reverend Leo Sullivan who drew up the Sullivan principles with which American companies doing business in apartheid South Africa were required to comply to advance the cause of racial justice in that country; black members of the United States Congress who formed the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC); and groups such as TransAfrica led by Randall Robinson, played a critical role in this campaign and in helping to advance the cause of liberation in southern Africa. It was Pan-African unity at its best.

In Africa, Nyerere was, among all African leaders since Nkrumah, the most relentless supporter of the African liberation movements and their most articulate exponent in international forums. And he believed, until his last days, that the destiny of Africans in Africa was inextricably linked with the destiny of black people in the diaspora whom he considered to be Africans like Nkrumah and other African leaders did. As he said in one of his last interviews with the New Internationalist in December 1998 almost one year before he died in October 1999:

"After independence, the wider African community became clear to me. I was concerned about education; the work of Booker T. Washington resonated with me. There were skills we needed and black people outside Africa had them. I gave our US ambassador the specific job of recruiting skilled Africans from the US Diaspora. A few came, like you (the interviewer, Ikaweba Bunting). Some stayed; others left.

We should try to revive it (Pan-Africanism). We should look to our brothers and sisters in the West. We should build a broader Pan-Africansim. There is still room - and the need."

Chapter Six:

Misconceptions About Each Other

RELATIONS between Africans and African Americans have been reinforced and impaired by a number of factors through the years.

On the positive side, natural bonds between the two "peoples" - who are really one people - have been the most critical factor in maintaining and strengthening this "tempestuous" relationship. On the negative side, misconceptions about each other have been some of the most damaging, sometimes even impairing the credibility of those who are genuinely interested in fostering and maintaining a strong relationship between Africans and African Americans on both sides of the Atlantic.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that we don't care about each other or even like let alone love each other.

I asked one of the African Americans who moved to Ghana a few questions on this subject. She was living in Ghana when I asked her these questions towards the end of November 2004, the same month I started writing this book and when I was working on this chapter and she was more than willing to answer any questions I had.

Her name was Imahkus Okofu, author of Returning Home Ain't Easy, But It Sure Is A Blessing, about her return to her ancestral homeland Africa. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and lived in Jamaica before moving to Ghana in 1990, permanently, with her husband. These are her answers to my questions:

Q: "What are some of the challenges have you met?"

A: "Language, culture, historical differences and the perception that all Africans from the diaspora, especially Americans, are rich. Getting over the romanticized notion about Africa. It's a hard crash into reality."

Q: "What is the general attitude of Africans on the mainland towards African Americans, especially when they return to the motherland?"

A: "Some are very happy to see us, are proud and want to help us adjust. But many are angry and confused because (1)They say we were fortunate as our ancestors were taken as slaves and as a result we got to be born in America. (2) They don't understand why we left the land of golden opportunity (America) to come to Ghana where they are suffering. (3) Many want to go to America and can't."

Q: "What do yout think about Gregg Pascal Zachary's article, "Tangled Roots: For African Americans in Ghana, The Grass Isn't Always Greener," in The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2001? It caused quite a stir. But I don't know if all the people quoted in the article, besides Victoria Cooper, disputed what was said or denied saying what the writer said they did."

A: "Several people mentioned in that article responded to The Wall Street Journal and to date have received no response. This so-called journalist with his warped mentality to the degree that he should be put into the category of agent provocateur in trying to discourage Afrikans of the diaspora from looking towards Afrika with the thoughts of returning and re-uniting this Afrikan family.

As a couple of individuals (my husband and I) that this 'white boy' wrote about, we can honestly say that a lot of what he said was unfounded, untrue and terribly distorted. He also failed to mention in his article how he had been treated and accepted as a journalist in our community. Nor did he expound on his vocal discourse of 'wishing he had been born black.' And let us not fail to mention his sneaky, underhanded affinity towards Afrikan sisters. He has been banned from our community and all others should take careful notice of this snake."

Q: "Is it true that some African Americans are disgusted with Africa - the cold reception, etc. - and have decided to return to the United States?"

A: "Our reception has been anything but cold. Extremely friendly, even with underlying motives. Afrika is not for every Afrikan descendant born in the diaspora. As the title of my book states, 'Returning Home Ain't Easy.'

There are a few, and I do mean a few, who have returned to the diaspora. But for the most part, those who have repatriated have stood the test of time, dating as far back as 1956 when The Honorable Osagefyo Kwame Nkrumah first invited brothers and sisters to come home to motherland Afrika/Ghana; and also keeping in mind the affirmation of The Honorable Marcus Garvey 'Africa for Africans, those at home and those abroad.' Those descendants who visited Afrika and chose to return to America are the Africans 'abroad.'

The networking between the continent and the diaspora is extremely important. so, those Afrikans 'abroad' must support those of us repatriated Afrikans on the continent as much as possible, for we are here to make a way for those who desire to come.

Those Afrikans born in America as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Arab-European slave trade, descendants of kidnapped Afrikans, are the ones that are working to be a part of the re-building of Mother Afrika and the uniting of the Black Afrikan family globally.

There are those of us kidnapped Afrikans born in the diaspora who also hear the message from The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey that we have to reclaim and redeem Mother Afrika. Of course, there are those who do not want this to happen, but 'Up You Mighty Race You Can Accomplish What You Will' (as Marcus Garvey said)."

Q: "What happened to the citizenship bill for African Americans President Jerry Rawlings talked about at a press conference with President Bill Clinton in Washington in 1998? Is it true that it's dead?"

A: "For all intents and purposes, it is unconscious. It is up to us to re-awaken the sleeping giant. Dual citizenship was only given to Ghanaians. We received something called Right of Abode and it is not citizenship. We will have to fight hard for this one. Sorry, Jerry let us down, I'm afraid.

Stay strong. The Struggle Continues But Victory Is Ours!

One Love, One God, One Heart, One Blessed Afrikan Family.

Seestah Imahkus and Nana Okofo Iture Kwaku I Ababio."

Although she tried to clear up some of the misconceptions Africans and African Americans have about each other, a commendable effort, there is no question that some of the African Americans who lived in Ghana - as well as in other parts of Africa - and returned to the United States disagree with her assessment of the situation on the continent, especially in terms of relations between Africans and black Americans.

There are Africans who don't want to be bothered, just as black Americans don't; there are those who are genuinely friendly and interested in helping our brethren from the diaspora to settle in Africa; there are Africans who pretend to be nice to African Americans, calling them "my brother," "my sister," just to raid their pockets or use them to get to the United States in order to escape "hell" in Africa; and there are some who are outright hostile, just as some African Americans are, especially those who don't want to be identified with "primitive savages" on the "Dark Continent" as their brethren.

And there are many factors we have to take into account in order to understand why we have misconceptions of each other and why relations between Africans and African Americans are sometimes not as good as they should be.

We have to be brutally frank that our perceptions of each other are quite often refracted through the prism of prejudice. There are many Africans in Africa and in the United States who simply don't want to bothered or be indentified with African Americans because they don't see them as fellow Africans. They see them as just Americans, nothing else, not even as distant cousins. As one African American woman in Detroit stated in her message posted on the internet on a Nigerian discussion forum, Mobile Nigeria Forum, in March 2005:

"For years even after traveling to Africa, I have watched strange relationships between native Africans and other Africans living all over the world.

A few years back, I had the opportunity to travel to West Africa: Ghana. While visiting in a local cafe, I desired to strike up an conversation, and I was told by a gentleman there, 'Listen I don't care who you say you are, you are American and go back home.' I walked off confused.

Yet again, someone else had the same attitude towards me, but this time I replied, "do not be mad at me because my great grandmother made the the trip through unthinkable atrocities across the Atlantic". It wasn't until after this statement, that I was offered a seat.

It has always bothered me as an American what should I call myself. I believe my heritage is in the West African area, but what am I to do? But this I do know: I refuse to let anyone tell me that I am not African - for I am.

My question to you is: What must we all do to improve relations between native Africans and others descendants living in other countries?"

Some Africans cite cultural differences as the main reason why they don't accept American blacks as fellow Africans. And it is true that black Americans have been exposed to the full radiation of a predominantly European culture and therefore, through no fault of theirs, their culture is more European or Euro-American than African.

Then there are those who say black Americans lost their African identity a long time ago through slavery and racial intermingling, creating a new identity of their own which is neither European nor African; an argument Dr. Martin Luther King also made in one of his speeches and published in his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? As he unequivocally stated, "The Negro is not an African." He went on to say that "the Negro" is neither African nor European but a hybrid of both.

I remember when I was a student in Detroit in the early and mid-seventies, some African students used to say black Americans were not African. One of them, a West African student, went even further and bluntly stated: "You know we don't like them." Another one, a Nigerian student who had just arrived in the United States said: "They are not African. I don't accept them and will never accept them as Africans."

There were others who shared those sentiments. But there were also those who didn't. And that is still the case today across the United States and in many parts of Africa. Many black Americans, of course, don't care about Africans anymore than Africans do about them.

There are also realities which are ignored when people ask why relations between Africans and African Americans are sometimes not very good. One of those realities is the misconception many blacks in the United have about Africa. Even those who should know better seem to ignore the fact that Africa is not a monolithic whole, and that Africans are not one people in several fundamental respects.

Africa is not one country. It is a continent, huge and diverse, with about 800 million people who belong to more than 1,000 different ethnic groups and also to different races. To say, for example, that Ethiopians and Somalis in East Africa and Fulanis in West Africa (who probably originated from Ethiopia as the Somalis did as linguistic evidence shows; so do common physical features Fulanis share with Ethiopians) belong to the same race as the Ashanti in Ghana or the Yoruba and the Igbo in Nigeria or the Zulu and the Xhosa in South Africa is to ignore reality.

Somalis and Ethiopians and Fulanis are African, it is true, but they are not "Negro." Nor are the Moors or Berbers with curly straight hair. They belong to different races and some of them, typical Berbers for example, look white. Their languages also are very different. Amharic, for example, the main Ethiopian language is related to Hebrew. Other Ethiopian languages, in Tigre and other parts of Ethiopia, also have Semitic roots or elements.

Even just the way most Ethiopians look - many with curly straight hair, thin faces and pointed noses, others with light complexion, what have been described as black "Caucasian" features - should be enough to raise questions regarding the claim that they have the same racial identity as Bantus and "Negroes." No, they don't! Emperor Haile Selassie himself looked like a Jew. So do many other Ethiopians.

Yet many, if not most, African Americans lump all Africans together and in fact insist that Ethiopians and Somalis are the same as Zulus or Ewes or Ashantis, members of the same race! And in their determined attempt to identify with Africa, some African Americans point to their own features saying they look like Ethiopians and Somalis, ignoring the fact that they look that way because of their Caucasian heritage; they have European genes, and not just African, since slavery and from voluntary racial intermarriage between blacks and whites in the United States through the years.

And when they are not fully accepted as black people or as Africans by blacks in Africa or from Africa, they say Africans just don't like them or just don't want to identify with them or with black people in or from the United States. And many of them don't. They don't even see them as black people but as a product of mixed races; which is an indisputable biological fact even according to mixed blacks themselves except that they choose to identify with only their African heritage even if they are mostly of European ancestry.

And there are such people even in Africa itself, in fact many of them, born and raised in Africa who are a product of mixed races, African and European, African and Arab and other races or all combined. And they are Africans just like the rest of the Africans on the continent and elsewhere because they are citizens of African countries. Many of them have black African blood in varying degrees just like black Americans or African Americans do; although there may be some black Americans who are even more African in terms of genes than some of the black Africans themselves who say none of the American blacks are African like black Africans.

Still, none of them - racially mixed black Americans and racially mixed black Africans - can be denied their African heritage.

If a black African has a sister who has children with a white man, he cannot honestly say that those children are not his nephews and nieces like those born to another sister whose husband is a black African. They are all his nephews and nieces, and not half-nieces and half-nephews simply because they are half-black or simply because their father is white.

And that is analogous to the African identity of racially mixed black Americans. They have African heritage, and they are entitled to it as much as their brethren are. And they have relatives in Africa just like other black Americans do, relatives their ancestors left behind when they were captured and sold into slavery.

But even racially mixed Africans are not considered just black, for obvious reasons, because of their mixed parentage. In East Africa, especially in Kenya and Tanzania where we have a very large number of people of mixed races, they are called chotara in Kiswahili, which means half-caste, a British term we learned from the British who taught us English since the two countries were British colonies.

The term chotara is not a derogatory term. It is used only for identification purposes even if it has some derogatory connotations in the minds of some people. In South Africa, such people are called Coloureds and like to identify themselves as such, in many cases to deliberately maintain distance from blacks whom they consider to be inferior even if they don't say so, especially after the end of apartheid. But during the apartheid era, they were classified as superior to black people. Many of them still feel the same way today.

Now, when African Americans whose features distinctly show that they are racially mixed find out that they are not accepted as black people when they go to Africa, unlike in the United States where they are identified as such, they assume that black Africans just don't want to accept them. They have the same experience with a number of Africans even within the United States itself who don't see them as really black.

But they forget that even within Africa itself, people of mixed races are not considered black as I have just explained, although they are accepted as fellow Africans. For example in South Africa, they wouldn't be calling themselves Coloureds if they thought they were black. And many of them don't even want to be called black just like many light-skinned blacks in the United States did not want to identify themselves with blacks, until the civil rights movement started to gain momentum in the fifties and sixties and they started to drift with the current for their own interest since they saw that blacks were then making progress in the struggle for racial equality. So they had to identify with the only group which would accept them because of their common African heritage in spite of the fact that mixed blacks also had a lot of European blood in their veins.

Therefore it is not rejection but different perceptions of who and what people are which keeps some African Americans and Africans apart, although we can't deny that there are those who simply don't want to accept black Americans - racially mixed or not - as fellow Africans just as there are black Americans who don't want to identify themselves with Africans as the same people.

The problem of racial identity manifests itself even in subtler forms in Africa among the elite. Unlike the uneducated, many educated Africans claim to have transcended racial and tribal loyalties for the sake of national unity. Jerry Rawlings, the former president of Ghana whose father is Scottish and his mother a member of the indigenous Ewe ethnic group found mostly in eastern Ghana and across the border in Togo, was elected on this platform. Many people, the elite and laymen alike, supported him eschewing racial solidarity and ethnic loyalties. But there were still those who did not accept him as a fellow black African. The phenomenon is not unique to Ghana or any of the other African countries.

In South Africa, Walter Sisulu, one of the most prominent leaders in the anti-apartheid struggle who was also very close to Nelson Mandela, was not just black. His mother was a Xhosa and his father British. Yet he was fully accepted by most black Africans as a fellow African and was revered as a leader with the same stature as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Govan Mbeki - some of the most the most prominent black African leaders in South African history.

In Tanzania, my country, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim lost the presidential nomination in 2005 as the candidate of the ruling party CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi which means The Party of the Revolution or The Revolutionary Party), which was guaranteed to win the election as has always been the case since independence, mainly because he was an Arab.

His racial identity became a subject of discussion even in the media, with some people raising concerns about his "eligibility" as an Arab to be president of a predominantly black country. As Professor Teddy Maliyamkono, a black, at the University of Dar es Salaam said about Dr. Salim's quest for the presidency, many people in Tanzania - meaning black people - were “not ready for an Arab-looking person” to be president.

Even Dr. Salim's explanation at press conferences and other meetings that he was also partly of black African origin, Nyamwezi and Manyema, two tribes in western Tanzania with the Manyema also straddling the Tanzanian-Congolese border, did not help his candidacy.

Yet he was highly popular among many people and was one of the three finalists, coming in second, although a distant second, in the number of votes cast by the ruling party's delegates at the nominating convention, ahead of a black African candidate, Professor Mark Mwandosya, who came in third.

The nomination went to the country's highly popular minister of foreign affairs, Jakaya Kikwete, a black African whose election as president was a virtual certainty. Yet, through the years since Julius Nyerere, the country's first president, stepped down in 1985, it was generally accepted that Dr. Salim would be the next president of Tanzania and was in fact even endorsed by Nyerere to be his successor.

Salim himself said Nyerere asked him to run for president in 1985 but he declined because there was so much opposition to his candidacy. He also said he declined again to seek the presidency in 1995 because he felt that it was the turn of someone from Tanzania mainland to lead the country; Salim comes from the former island nation of Zanzibar, Pemba island in particular.

But it was his identity as an Arab, probably more than anything else, which derailed his candidacy. Even delegates of the ruling party from Zanzibar, the isles where he came from, were resolutely opposed to his candidacy for the same reason, contrary to what the founding father of the nation, Mwalimu Nyerere, taught about racial tolerance and equality.

Therefore much as racial identity plays a major role in the acceptance and non-acceptance of many African Americans as fellow Africans or as fellow blacks by many black Africans in Africa and in the United States where many of them live as immigrants or as students, it plays an equally major role within Africa itself among Africans themselves of different racial backgrounds.

One example of how many Africans see black Americans differently involved a female African American student who went to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in the 1990s on an exchange program as I explain elsewhere in this book. She said when she walking in the streets of Dar es Salaam, the nation's former capital and now its commercial center with more than 3 million people, some people stared at her and even children called her "half-caste"; in spite of the fact that there are many people of mixed races in Tanzania, between Africans and Europeans, and between Africans and Arabs for an even longer period of time spanning centuries.

There is another divisive element among black Africans themselves: tribalism. And it is a potent force. Tribalism in African countries is probably an even bigger problem since it involves more people, tens of millions of Africans, interacting with each other or in conflict with each other sometimes on daily basis.

The Hutu-Tutsi conflict which cost about 1 million lives in Rwanda in 1994, and about 500,000 in more than 10 years in neighboring Burundi since 1993, is just one example. In Nigeria in the sixties, about 2 million Igbos perished in a civil war led mostly by the Hausa-Fulani.

The civil war in southern Sudan which ended in 2005 claimed more than 3 million lives, mostly black since 1983, at the hands of the Arabs and was therefore mostly racial. But even among black ethnic groups themselves in southern Sudan, there have been conflicts through the years costing untold numbers of lives in spite of the fact that they were at the same time fighting a common enemy, their Arab oppressors, the same ones who have committed genocide against members of black tribes in Darfur region in western Sudan.

The ethnic and cultural diversity itself of this vast continent is enough to boggle the mind. And many African Americans are disappointed when they find out they can't fit anywhere in Africa in terms of ethnic and cultural identity. When they get there, they realize that Africa is not one, but many in one. They also have a distorted and romantic view of Africa and automatically expect to be embraced, even with hugs and kisses, by Africans as their kith-and-kin finally returning home after centuries of separation since the slave trade.

Some Africans accept them, and even embrace them with hugs and kisses, while some don't. Africans experience the same thing when they go to the United States, although they probably fit in easier when they move into black communities because blacks in America constitute a single ethnic group and are not fragmented along tribal lines the way we are in Africa. And many of them see African immigrants and students in the United States just as fellow blacks.

But even when they settle in black communities in the United States for obvious reasons, including acceptance by black Americans as fellow blacks and avoiding white neighborhoods because of racial hostility, many Africans still don't easily mingle with African Americans. And there are several reasons for that.

One is non-acceptance or indifference by some black Americans. They don't want to mingle or associate with Africans. They don't see them as a part of them; they don't want to be identified with "primitive" people; they think that Africans don't like them or accept them as their people with the same African origin and heritage; they are not sure how Africans are going to respond to their overtures; some say Africans are arrogant and think they are better than American blacks; and some of them don't like Africans because they say they sold them into slavery.

Another reason why many Africans don't mingle with black Americans is that they are perfectly comfortable within their own world even when they are far away from home and live in the United States. They are a part of the black community in the United States, yet so far apart in terms of social interaction in many cases.

They like to socialize with fellow Africans because they are more comfortable to be with "their own kind"; they have their own groups they identify with, fellow African immigrants and students in general or people from their own countries including their own ethnic groups - for example there are many Igbos and Yorubas in many parts of the United States, including large numbers of them within the same cities where some of them have even formed organizations. Many Africans also have state and national organizations.

Africans in the United States also don't mingle or associate with black Americns because they don't consider them to be African.

They also see them as "lazy" and "prone to crime" instead of doing something constructive with their lives and always complaining about racism in a country which has so many opportunities almost for anybody to succeed in life as long as one is willing to sacrifice and work hard and save money, even if it's a dollar at a time - it adds up eventually.

The work ethic is strong among Africans, as it is among other immigrant groups, while it's lacking in the black community among many black Americans. That is the erroneous assumption many Africans have about black America, ignoring the fact most black Americans have jobs and work hard; with the shiftless and the riff-raff among them being only a minority.

But that is the belief they have, and it is prevalent among a large number of Africans in the United States, although not all, I should emphasize. I have dealt with fellow Africans, many of them, for many years in the United States, and those are some of the observations I have been able to make in my dealings with them.

And many of them have been frank about it in the company of fellow Africans. There are even those who tell American blacks how they feel about them, however rude and cruel this may be. Therefore there is no question that many Africans have a negative attitude towards black Americans. As Chike Okafor, a Nigerian immigrant in the United States, stated in his article (posted on the internet), "Dilemma of Nigerian Kids in the Diaspora":

"I read an article not too long ago about African stereotypes toward African Americans. The article contended that Africans regarded African Americans as inferior, poor, uneducated, lethargic, crime prone, poor English, and the list goes on. In fact, the last stigma resonates with the thesis of this article.

I have also been in a number of discussions with our resident brothers and sisters in the United States of America who perceived Africans as arrogant, selfish, pompous, crass, and the most troubling, looking down on them with scorn.

I have often tried to reconcile the prejudice held by these two communities. In one instance, I reasoned with an acquaintance that these stereotypes were a result of lack of understanding and knowledge of each other.

I have argued that the elite western media takes to heart and adore its role in preventing African Americans from knowing their heritage by continuously planting the seed of discord among the two communities. The elite western media were able to do the damage through selective content reporting on Africa. I have argued that the western media is not friendly to Africans or African-oriented issues. For instance, it is a common knowledge that about 90 percent of the western media reports on Africa were negative, five percent were on safari (animal watching) and the remaining five percent can be apportioned to other issues.

It is no secret that the bulk of the information that African Americans read or see were presented through the eyes of others; in this case the western European dominated media. As mentioned previously, remember that at least 90 percent of the reporting on Africa are negative. An example of such reporting are ethnic warfare and killings (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi), famine (Ethiopia), corruption (Nigeria), and Aids (Kenya, South African president’s position on the issue) and the list goes on. So it is easy for one to see how negative opinions can be easily formed about Africans.

Alternatively, if one wants to know the truth, one has to travel to Africa. Unfortunately, to do so is very expensive and not too many African Americans can afford the cost of such trip. To compound the situation, African leaders have not made any serious effort to encourage such trips especially through real tourism.

Those African Americans who have been to the African continent have a different perception about Africa and its people. They tend to be more susceptible to a rational opinion in discussion of African affairs. Moreover, I have equally held that Africans in the Diaspora have not done enough to bridge the gap. What they did was to incorporate the existing stereotypes held against African Americans into one word - Akata.

What is Akata? In Yoruba language of southwest Nigeria where it originated, it meant black Americans of African descent. Fair enough. However, the Africans in the Diaspora have turned the term to mean something more negative or derogative.

They have used it derogatorily to imply all the symptoms embodied in negativity such as lethargic, penury, unmotivated, kleptomania, drug head, welfare queen, drunkard, uneducated, killers, broken homes, illiterates and rapists.

However, what they have missed in the process is that they, the Africans in the Diaspora have contributed to the growing population of the Akatas, a phenomenon that occurred through childbirth. Most of the new generations of Diaspora kids are more confused than the African American that have been subjected to unfounded scorn and derogatory remarks."

And that is a fairly objective assessment I share with this fellow African from Nigeria. Yet, little has been done to dispel the myths we have about each other. Both groups, African and African American, continue to fuel misperceptions of each other to the detriment of both, and as many people from both sides continue to maintain distance from each other. Africans in the United States are no less inhibited in all this, as I have explained earlier, and are probably further encouraged to do so because they are far away from home and see themselves as "isolated," and as strangers, in a foreign country - which is thousands of miles away from Africa.

There are other reasons why Africans maintain distance from African Americans. Like most immigrants and foreign students, they came to the United States to succeed in life and have little time for anything else including forging strong ties with black Americans simply because they are fellow blacks or people of the same African origin. They are busy with their own lives just like most black Americans are busy with theirs and don't care who has moved nextdoor or has come from Africa and moved into their neighborhoods. Each to his own.

Africans also see black Americans as arrogant who don't want to have anything to do with them or with Africa and therefore maintain discreet silence when they are around them or when they live in the same neighborhood where they also maintain distance from them. This is not true in all cases but in many of them. Both sides can testify to that, while others will dispute this, sometimes out of racial solidarity which, from my observation in many cases, is more apparent than real.

And the fact that many Africans don't seem to be bothered by the legacy of slavery in the United States, since their ancestors in Africa never experienced it and memories of the slave trade are in the distant past, only compounds the problem of this "tempestuous" relationship between Africans and African Americans.

And, tragically, neither side has taken strong initiatives to bridge the communication gap or improve relations between the two groups.

In all the years I lived in the United States, mostly in black communities, I was not aware of any concerted efforts by groups of Africans or African Americans to improve relations between them, although now and then meetings have been held by some people and a few groups through the years, even if only sporadically, to discuss issues of mutual interest.

Still, those who may contend that this has been going on across the the United States, on sustained basis for years, will be hard-pressed to come up with empirical evidence to support their argument. Ask them where those groups are in Michigan, where I lived for many years, doing this on regular basis. Where are they? I knew one, the Pan-African Congress-USA, which sponsored me and other African students in Detroit in the seventies but it was eventually dissolved, with members going their separate ways.

Go anywhere in the United States where Africans have settled in significant numbers, and come up with some evidence to show that they and black Americans in those places work together on regular basis to establish strong ties between them, help each other, and pursue a common agenda to achieve common goals. You'll probably come up empty-handed besides a handful of speeches here and there made by some Africans and black Americans, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." In many cases, it's all rhetoric without substance.

Even black churches, which should be some of the leading institutions in forging strong ties between black Americans and African communities in the United States, don't seem to be doing much in this area. I lived in Detroit, a predominantly black city with many black churches, large and small, and I didn't see any evidence of this.

And one of the biggest reasons for this failure is that the primary interest of black churches and other black institutions including social and civic organizations, and of the black American community itself, is black America. And it is understandable. That is their constituency, not Africa or African immigrants. And that is because black Americans are Americans more than anything else in the practical sense.

Still, they and the Africans in their midst or around them can work together on the basis of racial solidarity to pursue common goals in a country, and in a world, which does not make a distinction between them but sees them simply as one people and as children of Africa.

While it seems that efforts are being made at the international level, with African-American groups establishing ties with and working in African countries, not much is being done at the local and national levels between Africans and African Americans within the United States even in pursuit of racial solidarity without which achievement of any other common goals is virtually impossible. Even African and African-American student groups on college campuses don't always work together, if at all in most cases.

So, whose fault is it? Both sides.

But there are somethings which have been done, even if on a limited scale, in pursuit of common objectives. Even those who are genuinely interested in the well-being of each other still don't know some of the things which both sides have done to foster racial solidarity and support the struggle for justice we as people, black people, have been denied probably more than anybody else.

I remember, for example, reading about an African American graduate student at an American university who wanted to know if Africans in the United States and those in the motherland had ever been concerned or played any role in supporting African Americans in their struggle against racial injustice including lynchings. He asked this question obviously because most black Americans don't know or don't believe that Africans have ever shown any interest in their plight or helped them in the struggle for racial justice and equality. Although it is a misconception, it is accepted as truth.

Most people may not know about this, and there may not be much documentation on the subject, but it is a fact, a documented historical fact, that Africans have supported their kith-and-kin in the United States for decades and in the best way they could, given the constraints under which they have had to operate. There are, and there have been through the decades, operational limits beyond which, as foreigners, Africans on American soil and in Africa cannot go in their support for the black American struggle for equality and justice.

During the civil rights movement, African governments took strong interest in the struggle for racial equality in the United States and issued a formal statement condemning racial injustice against people of African descent in the United States. The statement was in the form of a resolution linking racial discrimination in the United States with apartheid in South Africa and was issued by the African heads of state and government who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963, to form the Organization of African Unity. And it was incorporated into the OAU Charter:

"The Summit Conference of Independent African States meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 22 May to 25 May 1963; having considered all aspects of the questions of apartheid and racial discriminations; unanimously convinced of the imperious and urgent necessity of co-ordinating and intensifying their efforts to put an end to the South African Government's criminal policy of apartheid and wipe out racial discrimination in all its forms,...(also) expresses the deep concern aroused in all African peoples and governments by the measures of racial discrimination taken against communities of African origin living outside the continent and particularly in the United States of America,...intolerable mal-practices which are likely seriously to deteriorate relations between the African peoples and governments on the one hand and the people and Government of the United States of America on the other."

And in the following year, after the OAU summit of African heads of state and government met in Cairo, Egypt, in July (1964), African leaders addressed the subject of racial discrimination in the United States. This was after Malcolm X spoke at the conference and appealed to African leaders to raise the matter at the United Nations. If apartheid in South Africa could be addressed by the UN, he saw no reason why racial discrimination against people of African descent in the United States could not be accorded the same treatment.

About nine African countries including Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania and Egypt agreed to take up the matter and bring it before the UN General Assembly but did not do so for a number of reasons including diplomatic and political problems and strong opposition from the United States government.

When Malcolm X went on a trip to several African countries in July 1964, State Department officials in Washington complained about his activities, saying he was causing a lot of trouble for the United States in Africa where he also strongly condemned American involvement in the Congo and in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. And the assassination of Malcolm X himself several months later on February 21, 1965, after his African trip, sealed the fate of this subject since he was the only major African American leader who consistently worked to have it brought before the UN.

But even before then, and even much earlier, Africans had been involved in varying degrees in the struggle for racial equality in the United States just like African Americans had been in the independence struggle and liberation movements in Africa.

In the late 1950s, the leaders Ghana and Guinea, the first two black African countries to win independence - Ghana from Britainin 1957 and Guinea from France in 1958 - addressed the issue of racial discrimination in the United States. The diplomats from these two countries raised the issue at the UN at least once.

And not long after Tanganyika (renamed Tanzania in 1964 after uniting with Zanzibar) won independence, the Tanganyikan ambassador to the UN, and other diplomats at the Tanganyika Mission, worked with African Americans including Malcolm X who, after his African trip in July 1964, was picked up from the airport and taken in a car with diplomatic plates that were traced to the Tanganyika Mission to the UN. This is contained in a memo written by the FBI who had been watching Malcolm X all the time and had agents at the airport waiting for him to follow his movements.

The FBI also said after Malcolm X arrived in New York, he was taken to the residence of Tanganyika's ambassador to the UN. And in a photograph on one of Malcolm X's speech albums, one of the people shown is Muhammad Ali Foum, a Tanzanian diplomat to the UN. At this writing, Foum was still a high ranking Tanzanian and also an African diplomat representing the African Union (AU) in different forums including peace missons on the continent.

In another photo, Malcolm X is seen talking to Abdulrahman Mohammed Babu, a leading Tanzanian cabinet member and one of the most influential African and Third World leaders who worked closely with President Julius Nyerere for many years. The picture was taken when the two met in Harlem. Babu died in 1996. He remained a formidable political figure and renowned academic intellectual in international circles until his death even after he felt out with Nyerere and left Tanzania to go into exile in the United States where he became a professor.

All that is more than just anecdotal evidence of African support to black Americans in their quest for racial justice in the United States. It is enough proof showing that a number of African countries have been actively involved in the struggle for racial justice in the United States and have always strongly identified with African Americans as an African people themselves; although their support has been limited for a number of reasons including threats and strong opposition by the United States, and also due to the fact that it is not easy for outsiders to play a major role in the domestic arena of other countries.

Yet, in spite of all this, some Africans in Africa devised various means to support their brethren in the United States in their quest for racial justice. For example, trade unionists in Ghana in the fifties, aware of what was going on in the United States in terms of race relations, periodically sent letters to America's largest labor organization, the AFL-CIO, condemning racial injustices including lynchings and other travesties of justice.

And even further back in the forties, many Africans in Africa closely followed what was going on in the United States. Nigerian newspapers under Nnamdi Azikiwe - who later became Nigeria's first president after independence in 1960 - and black American papers worked together, covering events on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the mid-late forties. For example, there was extensive coverage of the Nigerian general strike of 1945 and the Enugu coal miners' strike of 1949 in black American newspapers which prompted black American organizations to ask the US State Department to intervene on behalf of the Nigerian workers whose rights were being violated by the British colonial government.

Even US federal intervention in the southern states was largely motivated by foreign policy considerations to win the friendship of African countries in the super-power rivalry with the Soviet Union and rob the Soviets of a powerful propaganda weapon they used against the United States to portray it as hypocritical nation which professed democracy while denying racial equality to people of African descent on its soil for no reason other than that they were black and African. Concerns about America's image at home and abroad was a much more powerful motivation than the quest for justice and concerns about the plight of American blacks as victims of racial injustice.

As African countries emerged from colonial rule in the late fifties and sixties, African leaders paid close attention to what the United States was doing in terms of advancing the cause for racial equality. And the Daily Graphic in Ghana reported extensively on what went on in the United States during the civil rights movement; an interest motivated by racial considerations and racial solidarity between Africans and African Americans.

The paper, which was the organ of the ruling Convention People's Party (CPP) led by President Kwame Nkrumah, even sent a correspondent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to cover the school desegregation case, and the accompanying violence, all of which attracted international attention. The Daily Graphic correspondent was also assigned to cover race relations across the United States in general.

I also remember when I was a news reporter in Tanzania in the early seventies, our newspapers, especially The Nationalist owned by the ruling party TANU (Tanganyika African National Union), had many stories about the struggle for racial justice in the United States, including the plight of the Black Panthers such as Angela Davis and George Jackson.

The editor of The Nationalist was Benjamin Mkapa, simply known as Ben Mkapa, who also wrote strong editorials on the subject. He later became my editor at the government-owned Daily News in Dar es Salaam, the nation's capital, and helped me to go to school in the United States. In 1995 he was elected president of Tanzania. He was re-elected in 2000 for a second five-year term which was also his last as stipulated by the constitution.

And like the founding father of the nation Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Mkapa was also a committed Pan-Africanist who was fully aware of the imperative need for unity of all African people including those in the diaspora.

This should help to dispel the myth that Africans don't want to have anything to do with African Americans.

But there is another dimension to this problem, the misconception that Africans don't want to identify themselves as black, or that they don't want to call themselves black, especially when they are in the United States, in order to maintain distance from black Americans who are collectively known as blacks in the American context. And there is some truth to this, also arising from a misconception on the part of many Africans - by no means all - that black Americans are low-class and lack positive values including values conducive to achievement, an image reinforced by the media and the predominantly white racist society.

But it persists, nonetheless, and is taken for granted as a fact of life by many Africans including those who should know better after living in the United States for many years. As Charles Mudede, the son of African immigrants from Zimbabwe, stated in his article, "Out of Africa: Young African immigrants Must Choose Between Being African or African American" published in TheStranger.com in 2001: "Black Americans represent an underclass and to adopt their ways - and be their color at the same time - is to adopt their terrible fate."

That's a pretty loaded statement. And to understand what he is saying, it is important that it should not be taken out of context, as the author himself explains in his article reproduced here in its entirety so that we don't lose perspective on the subject:

"Young African immigrants must choose between being African or African American. Their parents pull in one direction and their peers pull in another.

The bus that runs up and down Rainier Avenue carries two types of East African youths. The first type is distinguished by their traditional clothes and Islamic politeness and diffidence. They never speak loudly, and are always found near the front of the bus for either safety or propriety's sake. Then there's the second, newer type of East African youth. This type always sits deep in the back of the bus, decked out in FUBU, Johnny Blaze, Ecko, and Mecca with sneakers as thick as Neil Armstrong's moon shoes.

In the winter they wear puffy space jackets, their ears sealed in bulging Sony headphones. In the summer, they wear NBA vests and long, baggy shorts or white undershirts with polka-dot boxer shorts puffing out of their sagging 'raw denim' pants. If they are girls, they have colorful nails done up at Hollywood Nails; if they are boys, they have tight braids or do-rags, and no amount of scrutiny can separate them from African Americans. Only when they speak is the truth revealed.

'I can always tell the difference between the two right away,' Dinknesh says to me in the library of her high school. She came to Seattle in 1999 from Ethiopia, and though her accent is thick, she has a steady command of English. 'If I go to the mall,' Dinknesh says confidently, 'I can tell who is African American and who is African. For some people it's not easy, but I know the difference.'

I explain to her that I can never tell them apart, especially with the East African youth. If they come from Nigeria or Zimbabwe or Zaire, I know right away they are African, and not because their features are more recognizable (more Bantu, as an ethnologist might bluntly put it), but because they always get the codes wrong or messed up. They are either a year behind the trends or their pants aren't sagging in the proper, lackadaisical manner, or worse still, and I have seen this several times, they are wearing a generic version of Tommy Hilfiger--a brand name that's already a thing of the past for African American youth.

'I can understand how you might not tell the difference with the [Ethiopian] boys; they are harder [to distinguish]. But the African girls, you can tell right away,' Dinknesh says.

Dinknesh is a case in point: She is East African, but in terms of appearance, clothes, bright jewelry, and fancy fingernails, she's all African American. And though she doesn't say it directly, she's proud of the fact that in just under three years, she has managed to blend into the American foliage. 'Many African Americans are surprised when they hear me speak,' says Dinknesh. '[Before I speak] they think I'm an American or even someone they know. But I'm Ethiopian, and proud of who I am, and of my African heritage.'

A hard line runs between Dinknesh's appearance, which is connected with her American future, and her internal life, which is still connected with her African past. The surface and the center do not hold well in Dinknesh and others like her; they speak two separate social languages, which they have yet to reconcile or make sense of. For many young East African immigrants, this conflict has produced a crisis. Dinknesh's successful assimilation of black American clothes and style will, according to popular and academic reasoning, probably be more detrimental than beneficial to her future in America. Black Americans represent the American underclass, and to adopt their ways (and be their color at the same time) is to adopt their terrible fate.

All East African youths who look like African Americans are conscious of this; it's frequently emphasized by their parents. To look like African Americans, who are the very definition of limited opportunity in this society, is to reject the grand myths of success that obsess the immigrant parent. Dinknesh and other East African immigrants like her are making a choice that will relegate them to the bottom of this oppressive society.

Classic Assimilation

The old model of assimilation--the classic assimilation model--goes something like this: Immigrant arrives in a big, northern industrial city like New York City, with a leather suitcase in hand. The immigrant then moves into a ghetto, gets a low-paying job, works long hours for his/her kids, who do their homework in a tiny kitchen smelling of Old World foods. The kids, the second generation, then go to college, graduate with honors, and become doctors, lawyers, and presidents of the United States of America.

As Kathryn Harker writes in her invaluable study, 'Immigrant Generation, Assimilation, and Adolescent Psychological Well-Being' (Social Forces): 'According to this model, first-generation immigrants, who are foreign-born and socialized in another country, should rarely be expected to achieve social and economic parity with the native-born American population because they must often overcome barriers such as discrimination, a new culture, and a new language. However, the second generation, U.S.-born children of immigrants, [or] foreign-born immigrants who migrated to the U.S. while very young… [are] expected to narrow the gap between themselves and the native population in terms of social outcomes.'

The classic model of assimilation, however, applies only to European immigrants, who can lose their ethnic identity and become white, and thereby identify themselves with the ruling class. 'Life is easier for you if you assimilate, and become more white American, that is true,' says Mimi Rosinski, who is 19 and came to America from Poland 14 years ago. Like the Polish immigrants who arrived in this country in the early part of the 20th century, Mimi has gone through the first phase of the transformation from European to white American; her son will complete the transformation and become all-American.

'You get shit for being different in school, and so you become like them. It also makes it easier for you to get a job if you're American, and to get to places you want to be in this society,' says Mimi. 'But then there is the whole other problem of becoming Americanized, even if it is white American. In the end, parents don't like it. At least my parents didn't like it. They now say I'm too Americanized and liberated, and I've lost touch with my Polish roots. But they are the ones who let me become American. They didn't teach me anything about being Polish. I think they first thought it was good and were even excited about it, then [later] they thought it was bad and ruined the unity of the family.'

Despite its currency in the popular imagination, the classic assimilation model has been in sharp decline since the passage of the Hart-Cellar Immigration Reform Act in 1965. That law abolished 'national origins' quotas that favored European immigrants above all others, and channeled immigrant flows through more democratic processes. Today, 90 percent of immigrants come from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and they've invented a plethora of new assimilation and adaptation models to meet their specific needs.

For blacks in particular, the classic assimilation model is nothing more than a bad joke. Unlike Latin Americans and even some Asians, blacks don't stand a chance of becoming white and benefiting from the institutions and connections available to white people. In fact, all they can become is another type of traditional American: black American. But this form of assimilation doesn't offer the same opportunities that white assimilation offers European immigrants.

So to succeed in the United States, modern African immigrants have to adopt the very opposite of the classic assimilation model. To survive in this country, they work hard to preserve their cultural distinctions rather than blend in with African Americans. To blend with African Americans is to engage in downward assimilation, as sociologists call it, a process by which new immigrants are absorbed into 'impoverished, generally nonwhite, urban groups whose members display adversarial stances toward mainstream behaviors, including the devaluation of education and diminished expectations.' (Center for Migration Studies of New York.)

In New York City, for example, the retention of foreign accents and culture has helped West Indian blacks get jobs. 'Given the strong negative stereotypes attached to black Americans, maintaining their distinctiveness [is] particularly important for West Indian blacks,' writes sociologist Kyle D. Crowder. 'Recent research indicates that West Indian immigrants are well aware of the stigma attached to being black in America, and, especially among first generation West Indians, there is a strong motivation to maintain their distinction as West Indian ethnics.'

This was certainly the case for me. I'm the son of Zimbabwean immigrants, and when my family lived in a black community near Sharptown, Maryland, my mother took extraordinary measures to keep my sister and me separated from local black Americans. My mother allowed only the children of whites, other Africans, and upper-class African Americans of the sort to be found in Ebony magazine to hang out in our rooms. But most of the African American boys and girls I knew--and conducted secret friendships with under my mother's radar--were like Kicky, who lived across the street from us. Kicky's mother was a part-time server in a cafeteria at a special school, and his father was somewhere in Tennessee serving time. My mother not only banned Kicky from our house, but also from the sidewalk in front of our house.

Our Parents

'Where have I heard that before?' laughs Hali Mah-Mohamed, after I tell her the things my mother used to say about African Americans. 'I hear that all of the time. Even the little bad things that happen, she blames them on African Americans. She is always saying they are drug dealers, they don't want to work, they do nothing but bad things.'

Like Dinknesh, Hali, who is 18 years old and moved here from Uganda six years ago, looks more African American than African. Her friend, Tirzah Ngaga, who is 19 years old and moved here from Kenya four years ago, also looks American, though a part of her makeup--the penciled eyebrows; her long, pulled-back hair--recalls Nairobi's 'high life' culture. We're sitting in the Rosebud, and the girls seem to forget me for a moment, locked, as it were, in a conversation about their guardians.

'Remember when you braided Makoni's hair at my house, and he was there with three of his friends?' Hali asks Tirzah.

'Yeah, I remember that,' Tirzah responds, sipping her cappuccino.

'My mother just freaked out when she saw the boys, because they looked African American,' says Hali. "'Who are those African Americans?' she asked me. I told her that they were not even African American but from Ethiopia, and they were my friends. But she still freaked out, saying I should stay away from African Americans 'cause they are bad people, and a bad influence. They do drugs, and go to jail.' Hali shakes her head as she recounts her mother's impossible reasoning.

'Even if they were African American, what does it matter anyway?' Tirzah adds, raising her voice in protest. 'My sister does the same thing. In fact, she is always judging African Americans. She never stops saying that they are not good people and I will get into trouble if I hang out with them. But how can you judge something you don't understand? She does not know any African Americans, so how can she call them all bad?'

'Parents are always like that. They just label everyone as the same and that is it,' concludes Hali.

A few days before meeting Tirzah and Hali, I met again with Dinknesh, who has been in the United States for two years, and a handsome young student named Hayat Yemer, who has been in the United States for four years. Seventeen years old and from Ethiopia, Hayat's face has the noble air of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant. Whispering in the library of Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle, we discussed their parents' attitudes toward their appearance, which is black American.

'Our parents have problems with [it], but this is the way we must look because we are now in a new country,' Hayat says confidently. 'When I play basketball with my friends we speak English, and I like to speak English. It is the professional thing to do.'

'I don't feel whites. You know,' says Dinknesh, laughing, '[whites] don't like me and my skin color, and I don't like them. So why should I try to look and act like them?' I ask her if she gets along with African Americans, seeing as she has rejected white Americans. 'My people have a problem understanding them,' she says. 'That is why we don't get along. They talk too fast, and pronounce words like 'ask' like 'axes.' So we don't know what they are talking about. Plus they don't like us. And they also think we don't like them.

'When I was at the mall the other day, some African American guys who thought I was American came up to me and started talking. [But] when they heard me speak they backed away, saying African women don't like African Americans. But I said it's black Americans who don't like Africans, especially black American girls. The girls don't like us because they are jealous of us--at least that is what I heard. They are jealous because of the hair and they recognize our beauty. So they are worried that their men will chase us instead of them.'

'All you have to do is work hard and everyone will respect you,' Hayat says, feeling that Dinknesh has gone off the deep end, and is now in private territory. 'I know African Americans have problems working and also with family [life]. Their fathers are never around, and drugs are everywhere. But if you work hard, get a job, and don't abuse the freedom we have in America, then everything will be okay.'

The Survivors

Most immigrants avoid thinking too deeply about what's really going on in America. The whole weird and complex structure of their new society is broken down into basic parts: parts that work and improve their lot, and parts that don't work and don't improve their lot. All other possibilities are thrown out the window. Immigrants can't help but be so blunt because their world is a panicked world. They arrive in America fleeing desperate circumstances--war, famine, crazy dictators.

Once they arrive, deportation always seems a phone call away. They are usually forced into poor neighborhoods riddled with crime and bad cops, and if they have a job it's rarely stable or meaningful. This is why so many black immigrants hold such low opinions of African Americans, the very people they should identify with. Immigrants want to improve their lives as fast as possible, and they don't see many black Americans living the lives they want to live in America.

Indeed, most black immigrants are as suspicious and critical of whites as black Americans, but they don't have the luxury of voicing their grievances. For example, my mother's criticism of black Americans was equally matched by her criticism of white Americans, particularly Republicans. She hated Ronald Reagan with a passion, and thought that Republicans were the cruelest, most selfish people on Earth. The day Reagan was shot was not a dark day in the Mudede home. But my mother would never express this harsh criticism in public, because she didn't want to jeopardize her already shaky status as an American.

What mattered to her first was achieving some sort of security, and not the larger problems of the racism and capitalism in America. (When we were back in Africa, many years later, she let everyone know how much she despised Ronald Reagan. Even the daughter of the American ambassador to Zimbabwe, who visited my sister regularly, was told that her father's employer was a very bad man. My mother's brother, who was educated in the middle of Idaho, spoke about Europeans in terms that would have pleased Louis Farrakhan after he returned to Africa.)

The Real Future

East African youths like Dinknesh are in transition; they may look black American, but their core is still African. Their children, however, will be African American in the deepest sense. Because America is the way it is, these African American children will experience the full brunt of America's brand of racism. The happy life their grandparents dreamed about when they arrived here from 'war-torn Africa' will become, for them, a nightmare of police harassment, job discrimination, and limited social and economic prospects. Dinknesh's parents are trying to block the path to this bleak future by sustaining and imposing their Africanness.

As for my own mother, she succeeded. Despite my absorption of black American culture from hiphop to black literature, I maintained my African/British identity, and never became an African American. But now I have two kids, who, despite being mixed (white/black), are considered black in this society--the sad legacy of the 'one drop rule' (during slavery days, it was held that one drop of black blood made you 100 percent black). Will I react like my mother if my son comes home from school in sagging pants, saying nigger this and nigger that? At present, I really don't know. And maybe I don't want to contemplate such a terrible question."

So, in a very strange way, though not totally inexplicable, this blackness, this black identity of ours, attracts and repels at the same time. It draws many Africans towards black Americans because of the natural ties they share as people of African origin; yet it repels them from their brethren precisely because they have the same identity as blacks, not because they are fundamentally different in terms of origin. But it is reciprocal. Many black Americans feel the same way. It is the fear of admitting "I am what you are" because of the negative image they have of each other.

But there is still another dimension to this, at least in the American context, which explains why some Africans don't want to be called black. "Are you black?" "No, I am African. I come from Africa, not from the United States." That is because the term black in the American context is generally used to mean black American as opposed to foreign-born blacks.

Therefore many Africans don't want to be called black or be identified as black because they don't want to be confused with American blacks. But there is also an underlying motive, powerful, and even if not necessarily sinister. They don't want to forge links with them. They just want to remain and to be known as Africans, with their own distinct identity or identities solidly anchored in their African heritage. That is the line of reasoning, convincing or not, rational or irrational. It is a powerful motive, nonetheless, among a significant number of Africans in the United States.

But while some of that is true, it is not true that Africans don't want to identify themselves as black people or don't accept their black identity because they hate to be mistaken for black Americans; there are, in fact, many who would like to be black Americans and even do their best to talk and sound like black Americans, something they wouldn't be doing if they were ashamed of being identified as such.

Yet, there is no question that Africans usually don't call themselves black people. I myself remember this very well when I was growing up in Tanganyika, later Tanzania, in the sixties. We simply called ourselves Africans. Even during colonial rule, we did not have the equivalent of the Black World, or Black News or any other organ to articulate our nationalist sentiments and aspirations in racial terms in our quest for freedom and independence, the way black Americans do, appealing to color (blackness) as a binding force in their struggle against white domination and oppression. We had, instead, Mwafrika, a newspaper for Africans, black Africans yes, but African, not black, as our common identity. We had the same paper in Tanganyika and in Kenya whose name in Kiswahili simply means an African - man or woman.

And the main reason we Africans usually don't call ourselves black in Africa the way African Americans do in the United States is that we have ethnic or tribal identities our brethren in the diaspora don't. They lost all that during slavery.

Except in Tanzania and may be in Botswana, Africans in other African countries usually identify themselves first on the basis of tribal identity, as Kikuyu, Ashanti, Ewe, Shona, Ndebele, Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu, Venda, Xhosa, Toro or Luo before they say they are Kenyan or Nigerian next, or African, let alone black. As Mwashuma Nyatta, a Kenyan student at Harvard University in the 1990s, bluntly put it when quoted in an article "Black Identity on Campus" on Africana.com: "I am more Taita than I am Kenyan, and more Kenyan than I am black." His tribal identity, Taita, comes first.

That is one of the fundamental differences between Africans and African Americans who are bound together by their blackness in a predominantly white society. Therefore, whereas, for example, Kamau is a Kikuyu first, or Olutola or Adelabi is a Yoruba first, and next a Kenyan or a Nigerian before he even identifies himself as an African, a black American is black first and last, or American next.