African immigrants have strong ties to their countries. Many lead transnational lives, moving back and forth between Africa and their new homes. The long, tangled, and problematic relationship black Americans have had with the nation to which they were brought has bound them in various ways to Africa whether in the 17th or the 21st century.

In 1925, the poet Countee Cullen ruminated on a question that African- descended people in the US had been asking in a variety of ways over the centuries of their enslavement. This question continues to be asked by some to the present: “What is Africa to me?” Cullen’s poem Heritage attempts to answer the question and shows the contradictions, ambiguities and complexities in the relationship between African Americans and Africa. Over the four hundred years of the African presence in the US, its black citizens have off and on wondered about their relationship to the continent from which their ancestors were taken. A real, and imagined, Africa has been ever-present in the consciousness of African Americans. Even when black Americans eschewed linking themselves to Africa, they recognised and identified it as part of their heritage. But what is the relationship between African Americans and Africa? What has Africa meant to people of African descent in the Americas?  

The question, famously posed by Cullen in the early 20th century is one that has preoccupied black Americans for centuries. It has engaged them in discussions about what they should call themselves, and how much they could, should or would identify with Africa. From the moment women and men of African descent were enslaved and brought to the US, what they called themselves would be a contested issue. 

Enslaved men and women, who were from a variety of communities and varying ethnicities, arrived with no notion of “Africa”. They claimed identities based on family, lineage, or other social relations. In the US they would become “African,” later African American. Over the many centuries that African descended populations have resided in the US, some have constructed Africa as a homeland where they imagined that the racial oppression they faced in America did not exist. 

As they strived to be included and to assimilate in the US, many found that their African ancestry precluded incorporation into the larger society. Some looked for other ways to signify their place in the US, and abandoning their ties to Africa seemed a good first step. So it was that many called for the label “African” to be abandoned, and urged that Americans of African ancestry try to assimilate more fully into American society. But many disagreed, looking to Africa as a place to escape racial discrimination. Indeed, the racial hierarchy operating in the US did not allow for the inclusion they sought. 

In the 19th century, those who championed repatriation to Africa continued to highlight their African background. Even those who rejected the idea of a “return” identified with or embraced the term “African.” Now several generations removed from Africa, many black Americans gradually dropped that label from their institutions, attempting instead to integrate into the US and to claim their rights as men and women who had contributed to the country’s history and success. They fought for inclusion in the body politic of the new nation, and to agitate for the end of slavery. Many, like David Walker and Frederick Douglass, stridently pointed out the contributions Americans of African descent had made to the country’s growth and success. 

In the 20th century, African American ties to the continent waxed and waned, influenced by events in the US. The 1960s saw the rise of the Black Power movement, and many black Americans took pride in identifying with their ancestry. As African nations gained independence from European colonisers, some African Americans chose to highlight their links to Africa.  In 1989, when the call to embrace “African American” came, some readily accepted the relationship to Africa the label signified while others argued that they were Americans, not Africans. 

While “African American” is now widely accepted and used interchangeably with “black” by most Americans of African descent, the debate has resurfaced in the 21st century as black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean settle in the US. The issue has become complicated as continental Africans struggle with how to categorise themselves in a racial hierarchy that has historically relegated people of African descent to the bottom rungs. 

It is clear that a large part of the discussion surrounding what men and women of African descent call themselves is tied to their condition and to historical moments and emerge out of specific situations in history. How Africa does or does not figure in these debates is often contingent on how marginalised members of the black population are (or feel), how white Americans perceive them, whether they believe that the path to assimilation is open to them and, more generally, whether identification with Africa helps or hinders them. 

In this century, with the large-scale migration of Africans from the continent to the US, the question “What is Africa to me?” has taken on a significantly different meaning for those labelled African American. To the 2.1 million African-born people now living in the US, the answer is, once again, self-evident. They are Nigerian, Ethiopian, Sierra Leonean, Liberian, or Ghanaian, with direct experiences of Africa. 

This “new” African American population is generating a different image of Africa, as it attempts to understand what it means to be black American. African immigrants have strong ties to their countries. Many lead transnational lives, moving back and forth between Africa. The long, tangled, and problematic relationship black Americans have had with the nation to which they were brought has bound them in various ways to Africa whether in the 17th or the 21st century. DM