- They are worried about trouble,
and ask for the news media's help in appealing for calm.
They're worried about public reaction
if a grand jury does not indict a white police officer
in the shooting death of an unarmed black man.
(clicks tongue)
- Why can't they just instead of burning things,
destroying things, disrupting traffic.
It's very rude.
Instead of violence and protesting,
they could, you know,
use their education.
- Aah, I don't think you can say that.
- Why?
What?
Don't go out there and do those things.
- You're talking about black people as if you're not black,
as if we're not black, so.
- Wow, so I paid for school and you're an activist.
You think you can just talk back anyhow.
- I'm not being disrespectful,
I'm just trying to understand what you're saying,
because what you're saying is not good.
I can't believe I have to say this,
but it's time to tell your African parents
that black lives matter.
(lively string music)
Hey YouTube world.
It's me, Evelyn.
I wrote what became this video back in 2015.
- [Man] Hands up!
Hands up, don't shoot!
- I had a lot of discussions, mostly online.
(keys tapping)
But by far the most hurtful and confusing ones
were the ones that I had in real life
with older African folks.
This confusing brand of prejudice is something
that really pains me, and something that has got to go.
So in this video, we got interviews,
we got facts, we got figures.
I'm getting my education on in hopes
that I can encourage my fellow first-generation Americans
to say it with your chest,
because we ain't got time, all right?
We need to come together, stat, all right?
Umoja, and things of this nature.
So what does it feel like to be black in the US?
- In America?
Jesus. (laughs)
You gotta laugh from crying.
- A lot of things.
There's a lot of emotions, I guess,
that come with being black in the US.
It can be really lit sometimes,
if you're among other black people.
There are moments of beauty,
like when we watch the Olympics
and we cheer for all the black people.
I look at who is in power,
replaced by a first black president,
so I think it's an interesting time, given the history.
- But now, we're definitely loud about it,
and everyone's being very unapologetically black.
- It's a job, man.
It's a task.
I was just talking to a friend the other day,
and we were talking about why I feel like
rappers are always really good actors.
That's just 'cause I feel like black people
in general are just really good actors.
- It can feel suffocating at times.
- You're like a reflection of all your skin folk, basically.
Everything you do is representative of being a black person.
- I feel like my whole life I've lived two lives.
What do they call that, double consciousness?
- I really enjoy my culture, my experiences,
but at the same time, sometimes I feel like
I have to suppress myself, my true self.
- [Evelyn] You are an African child.
And usually that means you have African parents.
They are solid and stern and only sometimes sweet,
but they are yours.
So imagine you visited them for some quality time.
Everything is going all right, business as usual,
but then things get a little weird.
(television murmurs)
(clicks tongue)
- Why do they do things like this, huh?
Always, you know, sagging pants,
just always being violent.
Me? I work with a lady named Sheryl,
she's African American.
She's not like that.
There's another guy, Marcus.
I work with him, he was telling me he thinks
that boy provoked the cop.
And really, sometimes you really, you don't know.
- Wait, what?
What?
Whoo, child.
Oh my god.
Let's give it more context.
Where did this begin?
African immigration to the United States picked all the way
up after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Yes, this is a history lesson.
Class is in session.
Before that, things were based on a quota system
that started in the '20s.
So for example, they would let 50,000 Germans in,
30,000 immigrants from England.
And those are countries.
Girl, guess what the quota was for immigrants
from the entire African continent in like 1929?
1,100.
Because of the act, all of that changed so much
that you can basically split the course
of African immigration to the US
into before 1965 and after 1965.
The act got rid of those quota systems,
because upstanding Americans suddenly realized
that those quota systems were intolerable.
Now what, pray tell, was happening
in this country in the 60s
that would make a president wanna act right?
The Civil Rights Movement.
Black US citizens fighting for their basic human rights
in this country paved the way for legislation
that inevitably allowed black folks
from elsewhere to come here.
According to the Pew Research Center,
the number of African immigrants
in the US has been steadily growing since 1970,
with the numbers pretty much doubling every decade.
From 80,000 in 1970 to over 2 million in 2015.
Now that's not to say that coming into this country
and getting into this country is easy,
because it's not.
I'm just saying put some respect on they name.
- My experience with Africans growing up... Minimal.
- First time I think was 17 years old,
and going to South Africa for the first time
with a group of African Americans,
and we were so happy to be back.
We're your African brothers and sisters,
and they're like what's your native language?
What tribe are you from?
So it wasn't as welcoming as we thought.
We thought it was gonna be like welcome home!
Here are your gifts.
No, uh-uh.
- My husband is Nigerian.
He's first-generation Nigerian or Igbo,
and they were not pleased when he told his family
he was dating a black American.
They were still feeling like he should've made more effort
to find another Igbo woman to date and eventually marry.
I was more concerned with how he was gonna manage that.
That's more important to me,
'cause people can't control what families they come from.
It's just about how your spouse manages that relationship,
and we're married now so (laughs) it went well.
- Actually, older Africans love me.
(laughs)
I am always, oh, my daughter.
How are you doing today?
I just feel welcomed into the fold,
so Nigerian aunties love me.
Nigerian dads don't really talk a lot so (laughs) you know.
- I grew up with a lot of kids that were African,
some of them first generation,
some of them weren't born here.
So I had a cool experience in getting
to get that diversity from a very young age.
As I got older it changed,
especially when I went to college.
- My experience didn't start till I got in college,
and I just felt othered.
I felt like I couldn't relate to them.
I felt like I was less than.
I didn't feel as intelligent.
- Well, I attended the University of Houston,
where my assumption is most
of the black population is Nigerian (laughs),
so it was like whoa.
It was a lot of culture to take in,
which I thoroughly enjoyed.
- When I went to college, and I remember there was a,
was it Black African Club or something like that?
And I was like, I'm black.
I could be in that, 'cause I'm kinda,
I mean, I don't know where I'm from, but you know.
It's gotta be from some African country,
and they were like no, you can't join.
And that's the first time I've been
around black people and I was not accepted.
- I got to meet a lot of people who were very, very cool,
and like naw man, I greatly identify with black culture.
We listen to the same music,
we dress the same way, you look like me.
Enough said.
And then I also met a lot of people
who were a little aristocratic.
- And then I realized oh,
some Africans think they're better than us.
(laughs)
And part of me kinda bought that.
I was like yeah, maybe they are better than black people.
They have a culture and history that we don't have.
I wondered why.
I was like, why do certain Africans
think they're better than black Americans,
and I think it's 'cause of the history.
- So yeah, what is that?
That thing that our elders do to black people in the US?
- Sometimes I think that they kind of wanna forget
that there are parallel issues with black Americans here
and Africans in home countries.
- Well, I like to blame the white man for everything,
so I definitely think it's a systematic thing.
We're all taught to just hate each other.
- And I think the older African generation picked up
on anti-blackness and tried to distance themselves from it.
- I feel like the goal is once you move here,
you need to rise above some of the certain stereotypes,
or some of the certain issues that are tied to color.
- The message that's been put in their head
is all about respectability.
We worked really hard to come to this country,
and now it's all about being a doctor,
lawyer, engineer, whatever.
It's all about education,
and anything that isn't going towards that goal,
or anything that isn't high-class isn't good.
- You can thank Harvard professor
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, yes fellow Evelyn,
for coining the term respectability politics.
She first used this term back in 1993,
and now it refers to the notion
that if people just acted better,
better being a completely arbitrary set of rules
set by the people abusing them,
that you would get treated better.
What?
- 100's of years of propaganda don't just go away,
so it's a hard thing to shake,
even if the person look like you.
- So what our parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles,
or people in our community,
do is see those images and they're like,
oh, that's what it means to be black.
That's what black people are, or African American,
whatever you wanna call it.
- If you associate yourself with blackness in that way,
then you're getting dirty with all the ugly stereotypes
that come with being black in America,
so if you have black friends,
then maybe your kids won't be as smart.
They won't try as hard in school.
They won't take math and science seriously.
Maybe they'll wanna be rappers, you know?
- If you're being taught that this what's right,
and then all these images are being fed to you
about what's wrong about these people,
even if they look like you,
you're gonna internalize that too.
- One major problem with that is that it shifts the blame
of treating someone badly
onto the oppressed, not the oppressor.
The other problem with respectability politics
is that they don't work.
I distinctly remember having a Harvard-educated,
sometimes corny-sounding, biracial black president,
and folks wasn't necessarily jumping for joy
at the chance to respect him.
I mean, folks elected a Hot Cheeto afterwards,
so where did respectability get us?
And I ain't got no Masters, okay?
All I know is that every judgmental (clicks tongue)
is a chance for us to step up
and help our African parents, our elders,
understand the way in which
they're perpetuating white supremacy.
Yeah, I said it.
Oh my god, I'm a woke YouTuber now.
I'm a woke YouTuber now.
- I get people wanting to retain their culture.
Maybe not, "I don't want you to be considered black
because of these negative stereotypes,"
even if I'm woke enough to recognize that that's ridiculous.
Maybe I just don't want you to lose your culture,
and I get that, but I also very much grew up
wanting to make that gap smaller,
'cause you may be from Kenya,
but to them, you look like you from Atlanta.
They don't give a shit.