United States President, Joe Biden, has celebrated the Black History Month at the White House amid slipping support from Black voters distressed by the administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine war and disillusioned by what they see as a lack of progress on Biden’s racial justice agenda.
Black History Month is a yearly observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month from February 1 to March 1. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
“Tonight, let’s reflect on how we make history, not erase history,” Biden said Tuesday night, taking a jab at Republican-controlled state legislatures that have introduced bills that would limit what schools can teach about race and American Black history.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke before Biden, was more direct.
“Across our nation, we have witnessed extremists try to erase our history,” she said during the White House reception with Black leaders. “They censor history textbooks and cancel history classes.”
This is just as a report has detailed what it is like being an African youth in the diaspora. According to the new Being African: How Africans Experience the Diaspora report, African diasporan youths experience different types of discrimination: exoticisation in France, micro-aggressions in the UK, and surveillance and profiling in the U.S.
The latest research report by narrative-change organisation, Africa No Filter, investigates how young Africans experience their diaspora, how they define being African and the basis of their belonging. It also looked into how they negotiate relationships with other Africans and how the prevailing stereotypical narratives about Africa impact perceptions about the continent among diasporic youth.
According to the latest figures on foreign-born Africans, there are more than 619,000 in France, 1.2 million in the UK and 2.1 million in the U.S.
Africa No Filter said it interviewed Africans from the U.S., the UK and France who were either first or second-generation diasporans and they all had few or no fixed memories about the African continent and relied mainly on information imparted to them in their host countries.
The report found that while life in the diaspora is marked by various types of discrimination, diasporic African youth have a unique double heritage that makes them proud of African languages, food, music, and history, while also strongly relating to the language and culture of their host country. Their perception of Africa was also not overly influenced by the many negative narratives about the continent in mainstream media.
Instead, they relied on interpersonal relations and social media, and sometimes travel to the continent, to access knowledge about being African.
