The Case of the Missing Head Nod

For meaningful connections among the diaspora, must Black Americans learn to de-center ourselves? 

Are our skinfolk required to greet us with open arms wherever in the world we meet? Image credit: Shutterstock 

I’ve moved to three different countries in the last 10 years. Most recently, I’ve landed in Portugal and will likely remain here for the rest of my life. In each country, I’ve made a concerted effort to connect with Black Americans who have chosen to take a break from our home country and make a life elsewhere. While forming friendships with others from the Black diaspora is important to me, the familiarity and common shared experience often motivates me to curate a community among Black immigrants from the U.S. 

Black Americans can enter potentially meaningful connections with our brothers and sisters from the diaspora through an arrogant lens of entitlement. We don’t see it this way, of course. But to expect kinship from someone who doesn’t define kinship simply along racial lines is to invite disappointment.

However, I’ve noticed a trend with Black Americans, particularly, here in Portugal. There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance when it comes to seeing ourselves as part of the privileged class whose Americanness often grants us some protection from the prejudices that Blacks from the global South experience on a regular basis. Particularly in European cities like Lisbon, it’s easy for us to mistake an advancement in social class as evidence of some sort of racial utopia. Continental Africans with less desirable passports and financial solvency built on an American salary don’t have the luxury of viewing Lisbon in this way. 

It’s this difference in context that can create distance between the Black American who arrives in the country and expects some sort of race-specific kinship with immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. At a regular event for Black Americans living in Lisbon, I had a conversation with such a man. Upon sharing that I’d previously lived in Rwanda, he asked me how Rwandans had “treated” me during my tenure in their country. I didn’t quite get what he was asking at first, but with more probing he offered that he felt the continental Africans he encountered around Lisbon didn’t extend him the warmth of someone “who could be their cousin.” And if he did find himself in organic interactions, some of them were cold, standoffish even. 

It’s fascinating to me how many times I’ve had a conversation with one of my countrymen who felt slighted because someone from the Black diaspora had not shown their affinity for skinfolk in the way Black Americans have decided translates into solidarity. Particularly when in countries that are not predominantly Black, we see another Black person on the street and give them “the nod” and are immediately disappointed when this person just keeps walking along – unaware they have violated some sacred code. Used to being kept out of the social order that builds wealth in our home country, we arrive to one like Portugal as Americans with money. We marvel at how “safe” it is. We rarely consider that perhaps the police tend not to terrorize neighborhoods where immigrants from North America and Europe live. Generally, immigrants from the global South have a much more nuanced perspective on how safe they feel in Lisbon. In the conversations I’ve had with immigrants from the African continent, the only thing that makes Portugal “safer” is its lack of gun culture. They understand why we Black Americans would just stop calculating for safety at this factor alone. 

 “Why would a random African man treat you like you’re his long-lost cousin when you don’t even know where on the continent he’s from and he has no idea where you’re from?” I asked the man at the Black American event. My countryman was flummoxed. In a world where Americans are made to believe it is our country’s responsibility to “lead” the globe, Black Americans can enter potentially meaningful connections with our brothers and sisters from the diaspora through an arrogant lens of entitlement. We don’t see it this way, of course. But to expect kinship from someone who doesn’t define kinship simply along racial lines is to invite disappointment. It also weakens our chance to have authentic engagement with another person who might be seeking solid friendships too.  

The Black American man I had this conversation with truly did want to build authentic kinship bonds with others from the diaspora. What I’ve learned over this last decade moving around the world is this is not possible when you enter a potential relationship with expectations formed around your own limited worldview. To build a genuine global village of skinfolk, Black Americans, particularly, would do better to decenter ourselves. We should envision Blackness as an expansive landscape with a complex tapestry extending far beyond what our eyes can see.