The Diaspora Wars: Who gets to be Black?
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The diaspora wars have been raging for years, so I went searching for an answers to the question “who gets to be Black?!?” I’ve been watching the growing tensions between parts of the ADOS/FBA community and parts of the Black immigrant community in America. From name-calling and online harassment to the creeping anti-Black-American sentiments harbored among Black immigrant, we talk about all of it. We also take a little detour into the complexities of complexion in the Black community.
There is a lot here, so let me know what you think in the comments!
You can check out my Substack here: https://substack.com/@garrisonhayes?utm_source=user-menu
Huge shoutout to:
Olayemi Olurin (@olurinatti)
Yvette Carnell
Dr. Martha S. Jones
Dr. Adjoa B. Asamoah
You can find Dr. Jones’ book here: https://bookshop.org/a/21557/9781541601000 (Affiliate link)
I’m on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrisonh
I’m on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@garrisonhayes
#kamalaharris #blackamerica #ados #blackhistory #fba #culture #donaldtrump
@GarrisonHayes
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Go to https://ground.news/garrison to break out of echo chambers, understand different perspectives, and combat political polarization with Ground News. Get 40% off your subscription.
@toyintoy
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Ados 0.0 this light and bright lady your leader ?? isn't her dad white? what are yall doing over there….
Kamala Harris is a bad example, shes part indian. Not fully black. When I say black I mean your mammy and papa black.
Anyway when we immigrants come to America.. we get treated like yaall.. If you see us living lavish just know it wasnt a free ride..
@Colin-from-BHAM
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
We need to call ourselves something. Our ethnicity, rooted in shared history, is important, but we are often grouped together based solely on appearance. I am British, but my ethnic background is Jamaican. I share similar experiences with melanated Indigenous peoples of Australia, whose ancestors left Africa long before Europeans did.
I struggle with using words that were once used to oppress and enslave my forebears. The term “Black” is useful because it does not tie us to a specific geography or culture. It acknowledges our shared experience without trying to define us by borders or colonial histories.
@daviscd6837
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
What was your answer to 'How do you define Black?" I question Harris being Black in the sense that she dies not share my lineage. Her father being Jamaican dies nor make her a sister. She was raised by an East Indian mother. Sorry, I see her as cosplaying Black American. She does not share my experience as a Black woman in this country because she went to a HBCU. Plus do your homework about her Black grandmother. That picture had been disputed.
@kevsthaunicorn4935
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸Represent! But many of my Bahamian friends who schooled in America complain about being ostracized by African Americans…
@dreddiknight
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
There are differences between American Blackness and day British Blackness but not enough to set such a hard boundary on it. All Black people of the African diaspora and colonized Africans have experienced very similar treatment, because it all comes from the ideas created by Europeans to justify the African slave trade.
@RusselKing-qw5pu
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I find it absolutely incredulous that in 2025, we're drilling down to: – microscopically define Blackness,
– to determine whose experience of racism was the harshest
– who has or hasn't accumulated generational wealth.
Whether your ancestors had their hands chopped off to incentivise their productivity in the Congo, or worked a sugar plantation in the Caribbean, or picked cotton from sun up to sun down in Tennessee, we all faced oppression at the hands of white supremacy, whether at the hands of a slave Master, a policeman, a judge, a teacher, a whatever.
At a time when we have the means and technology, to be stronger through unity and looking at what we have in common, we're finding ways to create deeper divisions.
My hero, our "Shining Black Prince" Malcolm X, a man who so accurately articulated the experiences of Black people not only in America, but globally. A man who reached out to build bridges with other people of African decent. He himself was the child of a so called "immigrant" mother, born in Grenada. So, is he any less Black, does he not qualify as being ADOS or FBA? Astounding
And guess what? The only people profiting from this inward looking, devisiveness are the same white supremacists, laughing whilst we turn in on ourselves.
We must do better
@ratbatnufftime2861
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
So we've gone from gender wars to diaspora wars now? This is ridiculous.
@Them_kids_momma
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I feel like y’all being dense on purpose.
@deannaxdulce
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Black is considered a race and ethnicity, which is two different things. Race is phenotypes and physical appearances. Ethnicity- geology.
@kimberlymw5522
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
White woman, here to learn. Thanks for sharing this.
@porkchop745
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Do you think it would be useful to create a video to add some historical context to the ADOS/FBA movement? In some ways, ADOS is repeating the observations made by A. Philip Randolph, Tony Brown, Barbara Jordan, Carol Swain, Terry Anderson, and Claud Anderson. Even Booker T. Washington expressed concerns about mass immigration.
@LPruckus
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
This is the time to unite as not just people or color but also the working class. The current administration is targeting minorities with their executive orders and criminalizing us for the outcomes that have been systemically imposed on us.
@reece6853
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Together we Aspire, Together we Achieve🇹🇹🇺🇸
@mesa290
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Yvette Carnell had and has this all wrong the argument in nonsense . Olayemi was spot on, well it doesn't matter now we are stuck with a convicted felon for the next 3 1/2 who's on a revenge and loyalty tour. Garrison is one of the best when it's comes to breaking down these conversations
@odemata87
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
When the oppressed take on the oppressors mental illness
@jawazalsharq
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
or "possibly white", as Erin Burnett [CNN] calls people.
@oxmor
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
There’s a lot goin on here. Theres a difference between African Americans, Black people, and African people. I think the confusion is around, race ethnicity and nationality. This is a common issue in context conversations.
African Americans, like myself, are pissed off people benefit from our oppression without sharing that direct history. All while struggling immensely currently.
It’s sad watching my family live in the hood in poor resource conditions while immigrants get business and education opportunities.
So black people and Africans who move here who have not suffered directly from the legacy of American slavery and benefit from our sacrifice and take space it pisses African Americans off.
Unfortunately the whole thing gets convoluted and confused. Let’s not conflate things, there’s xenophobia etc anti blackness, that’s not the point.
I’ve been told I’m not black. My granny grew up n a share croppers hut. I’m multi ethnic, but in America, racially I’m black. This is from the legacy of slavery and an ethno state. Brown bag etc. it’s crazy to me a non African American even has an opinion on my identity when their families hadn’t experienced Jim Crow.
Main things is this whole conversation serves Nazi America. Let’s group together, but understand the position we actually have.
@jalrip1950
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Years ago the pastor of my then church gave a sermon. In it he compared rabbits to black people.(I am a 75 year old black man by the way) He said that if you go into the forest you might see foxes chasing rabbits, bears chasing rabbits or dogs chasing rabbits. What you won't see is rabbits chasing rabbits.
This is a rabbit chasing rabbits conversation.
@PlantShinobi
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
This is such a tricky conversation to have. I, as a Black person born here in America, used to be a Pan-Africanist, and while I do hold some Pan-Africanist views still, I kinda agree with the ADOS movement, that our experience here in America is very unique to us, thus we need to specify that in a way that is meaningful to US.
My only issue with the ADOS movement, is their rejection of their African ancestry, because that is where the xenophobia begins to manifest. As someone ( @JunoFranklin) pointed out below, there is nothing wrong with each group of Black people (Jamaicans, Black Americans, Nigerians, etc), claiming & owning their own unique cultural and social identities due to colonization. However, we still need to recognize that we ALL have been impacted by the same global system meant to keep us at the very bottom of the social, political, and global hierarchy, so we have more reason to be united because our struggles are similar.
Both truths can exist at the same time without xenophobia dividing us.
@Ruuok777
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Google Negroland.. West Africa.. we settled there as a tribe after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.If u had good intelligence u could just look at our captivity in America and read the Exodus chapter of the Bible u will without a doubt see the parallels..Children of Israel were in Egypt 400yrs.When Moses told the pharaoh to let us go(reparations) he refused but he always lied and said he would..We in Egypt now! Look at the money with pyramids on the back..Duteronomy 28 spoke of us being moved as a whole,from our land, to be slaves e n a foreign land..We got off the boat in 1619.. 2019 makes 400yrs .. Now we will become the head and not the tail!, so Trump and Musk and the aka Arian White Russian people who are claiming to be us! Are really Ukrainian! Us blk folks had name like Solomon, David,Ezekiel, before they forced new names and Islam on us the wash our minds from Yaway.. Why the lie about Egypt pyramids and what color they were is to hide the fact that when the people of the Bible were hunted and in trouble they fled to Egypt..Jesus,Moses,Joesph..They mistaken Apostles Paul for an Egyptian .Nipsey Hustle was an Egyptian u would be hard pressed to pick him out amounts the Negros … aka the tribe of Judah!!!!!
@DavidETrotman
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Does Evette not know that Caribbean people faced European imperialism and played a major role in slave revolts globally?
@tristc6909
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
This man deserves 1 million followers
@ExpatMom288
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
You can’t really have this discussion until you understand the distinction between ADOS and FBA and that the split between the two came because of xenophobic antics online. ADOS is a political NONPROFIT movement, whose only goal is to uplift descendants of chattel slavery. FBA was believed to be doing other things, this the split. You can’t really have this discussion if you use the two terms interchangeably. That said, you have to go to the spokesperson for ADOS to know what ADOS stands for. Ms. Carnell has made no xenophobic statements on behalf of ADOS, but she does hold fast to the boundaries she outlined at the start of the video. The problems come when people try to encroach those ADOS boundaries and are no longer allowed to do so.
@phoenix-gz1pv
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Thank you for your discussion of this important issue. I appreciate the uniqueness of the struggle of Black Americans. However, I am not willing to ignore the struggles of Black people who make up the African Diaspora, nor will I ignore tneir contributions to the struggles of Black people in America. One thing I have learned during the reign of Trump is that we must begin to more fully understand how intricately intertwined we are as human beings. Our lives depend on it. As Peter Tosh says, no mind your nationality, you have got the identity of an an African. If your complexion high, high, high, if your complexion low, low, low, if your complexion in between you're an African. Shout out to you, shout out to Martha S. Jones–your work is so vitally important. Garrison, point of contention–as a light-skinned person, I hate the word "fair" when used to describe light-skinned women. It causes me and other Black people distress, no matter our hue. ❤
@narutobullock
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Who cares, how has this aided the black experience.
@bloodyheart936
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The highlight reel bit has me dead as fuck. U already had my attention but now u have my interest
@waffles3179
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
black = race of people that share a common phenotype typically shared among those of West African descent
Black = an ethnicity/culture made up of descendants of African American chattel slavery also know as Black Americans
If you're family is pre civil war and worked the plantations you're Black American. Otherwise you are black American aka Jamaican, Haitian, Ghanaian American etc.
@yazmina84
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
This is a great topic. Unfortunately, ADOS has been a disappointment to me. The folks only were more dedicated to division and is a pipeline to Trump/Maga. To me, Pan Africanism is the only way. That’s why I’m part of Knarrative and follow Dr Carr and Karen Hunter. I hope you interview them one day!
@patriciaa4451
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I'm Kenyan, born and raised and I didn't even realise there was such a thing as being Black until I started interacting with people on the internet in the late 2000s. I identified first with my gender then with my country, then my ethnic community- Luo. I think Diaspora wars are useless at best and do the work of white supremacists/colonisers at worst by dividing groups that could be allies.
Growing up my dad exposed me and my siblings to reggae music and I remember listening to South African musician, Lucky Dube ('Different Colours, One People') and Jamaican musician Peter Tosh for hours. I remember there's a song of Peter Tosh that goes "I don't care where you come from, as long as you're a Black man, you are an African". I still believe in the message of togetherness, unity and hospitality behind that.
@lordbaylish3187
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
She's Indian
@TCM_SLM87
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I’m torn on this subject. On one end, it’s beginning to feel like “Black” as a category is insufficient because it’s far too generalized especially when you have nggs like Africans coming here with a superiority complex (directly or indirectly separating themselves from those born here) that probably shouldn’t be part of our group but then on the other end enslaved black ppl were moved around in and out of the states so much that it because dubious to clearly state who’s been here the whole time and who hasn’t. For instance, I’m third generation Jamaican immigrant through my mother and my children are second generation through theirs. I’ve never spoken down on my blackness nor tried to separate from it even when pressured in majority white spaces… so do I get to claim ADOS despite my grandfather being raised by immigrants? Do we even know exactly where anyone’s family was before 1865? Is being “black” about where you’re from or how you express or engage with your “blackness”? I don’t know it man and I don’t think anyone can provide a necessary condition for “blackness” that would satisfy everyone’s perspective. Also, why do people say biracial/mixed race black ppl aren’t black if their mom isn’t?
@michaelmaxwell2464
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
All I'm going to say how race is constructed varies from place to place and a MAJOR issue is Americans trying to IMPOSE American constructs on the rest of the world.
@jb2736
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The African people on the continent are divided by tribalism , especially Nigerians. How are Foundational Black Americans supposed to unite with that. They come to the U.S. with their tribalism issues and have sabotage and fought against the progress we have made in the U.S. over the last 70 years. They are not like us.
@PoliticKing7
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Are we still having this conversation in 202f'n5
@solomonmorrison6502
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Every immigrant group to the States is, at some point, "marked for certain indignities" many of those indiginities having overlap with the lived experience of Black Americans. Yet it's immediatley understood that these discriminations dont make us the same as say, the Chinese during the exclusion act.
@CrocZzZz
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
As a Black American with Native ancestry, I understand why many push back on the assumption that Blackness is automatically rooted in Africa. My grandmother on my father’s side was a Native American woman from the Blackfeet Nation. Her skin was Black, as were her ancestors’, but they were not African, and they were not enslaved by Native tribes. They were Indigenous people—not like the Black individuals who were enslaved and later granted tribal citizenship by nations such as the Cherokee. It’s important to recognize that Blackness is not a one-size-fits-all identity, and not all Black people in America descend from Africa or slavery.
On my mother’s side, my great-grandmother was Haitian Creole. She considered herself a sharecropper, but the truth is she was still bound to a system that mirrored slavery. Nearly 80% of sharecroppers after emancipation were white, which tells us how deeply peonage and economic bondage affected poor people across racial lines—especially Black people. The 13th Amendment didn’t abolish slavery outright—it banned slavery except as punishment for a crime, and it originally used the term peonage, which left open the door for forced labor. That wasn’t changed to “involuntary servitude” until 1942, when the U.S. sought to improve its image to rally international support for World War II.
Our struggle as Black people isn’t monolithic—but the shared experience of anti-Blackness across the world is uniquely powerful. Honoring the full complexity of our roots—Indigenous, African, Caribbean—doesn’t weaken our identity. It strengthens our sense of self, and deepens our understanding of the generational fight for freedom and dignity.
@solomonmorrison6502
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
To the extent black immigrants are in the "crosshairs" of government, they face issues of deportation, whereas black anericans face economic exclusion and theft. What about these things makes us "natural" allies?
@dezjuansamon9812
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
"A history that doesn't go back to slavery!!! " ?? do people forget that Jamaican and Haitians we pretty much slave islands for sugar cane and other exported goods, we literally all have the same origin story, and guess what we're all gonna get the same poor treatment of we don't stand and ally with each other like JESUS 😠
@HardLessonLearned_1611-k3x
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Everybody that came on them slavr ship, we’re not Africa we come from Abraham Africa come from ham read the curses of Deuteronomy the Bible is are history that’s why we are in the condition all over the world we are not Africans just like Japanese are not Chinese
@PanAfricanist
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
ADOS came about after Black Caribbean people told black Americans to go get their reparations cause we are fighting for ours. So they started deliniating about who is black American saying other black people don't deserve reparations. Listen to the early videos on ADOS. It was all about who was entitled to reparations and it became nastier and nastier.
@Kai2lit04
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Finally some ADOS commentary and analysis that actually includes some engagement with the group’s leadership. Unfortunately this video seems like it was a debate with Carnell but neither she or the other people included were aware their clips would be used in this manner. The viewer doesn’t get to fully engage or understand what your guests views were because their commentary is sliced and diced
@captainzenbi
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
."Black" can be defined as "black" as in black people and "black" which specifically means African Americans.
@Mona-ue5uk
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The segway was poorly introduced & rushed into the video. The segway of light-skinned & passing as white & Kamala Harris was brought into the video very bumpy not guided in appropriately in my opinion. Its like it was meant to further disavow the black American inherited lineage based experience as opposed to black lived experiences.
BTW, Ground news sponsored the video. The owners heritage is based in Southeast Asian, Punjabi culture from Canada. That's interesting 😮! But, these meta-analysis of news & article gathering is needed to understand the entire landscape.
@joykevin
July 31, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Fascinating. It would have been interesting to delve more into the definition of biracial Americans.
Comments are closed.