Respect the Lineage: This Ain’t Just Diaspora Drama, It’s Erasure

Part II of III — Diaspora Politics & Black American Erasure

Let’s talk about the tension.

When Black Americans speak up about our culture getting erased, we’re told to “just be proud we’re all Black.”
When we say, this is ours, we’re told we’re “dividing the diaspora.”
But where was that unity when we were being mocked, criminalized, and killed for the same culture y’all now cosplay?

This ain’t about gatekeeping—it’s about naming.
Because Black American descendants of slavery are not a costume, a category, or a collective noun. We are a people. A bloodline. A culture that exists because of forced displacement, genocide, and survival.

And while the rest of the Black world gets to trace back lineage, land, and language—we’re still piecing ours together through fragments, funeral programs, and DNA tests.
That’s not just grief.
That’s sacred labor.
And it deserves respect, not repackaging.

Let’s name what it really is:

• When you erase “Black American” and replace it with just “Black,” that’s flattening.

• When you call everything African without knowing where in Africa it came from, that’s not unity—that’s lazy.

• When you mimic our slang, rituals, and history like they’re all up for grabs—that’s colonizer behavior with a kente twist.

Y’all want to say we’re all family… until it’s time to protect the ones who built the house.

Here’s the punchline y’all avoid:
We are the culture everyone claims, but no one protects.
Global Blackness owes a debt to Black American creation—for the freedom songs, the kitchen-table altars, the hood genius, and the Sunday side-eyes that built the whole vibe.

So don’t tell us to get over it.
Get educated.
Get honest.
Get behind the people who taught the world how to move, how to speak, how to be Black under empire—and survive it with style.

To the ones who carry this grief in their bones:
You’re not crazy. You’re not angry.
You’re awake.
And your lineage matters—even when it’s inconvenient to the narrative.

TO BE CONTINUED…
Part III: “Reclaim the Mic: Our Story, Our Voice, Our Rules”

Coming soon.