by their country of origin or ethnic group; she was both “African” and “Somali.” Similarly for Akin, he strongly identified as “African” and “Yorùbá.” The identity that was most prominently expressed or acted upon depended on the context. When speaking about Nigerian national politics, whether he was in Nigeria or at a Minneapolis meeting of Ẹgbé Ọmọ Odùduwà, Akin most strongly identified as Yorùbá. However, in most American social and political contexts, he most strongly identified as “African” in contradistinction to Europeans, Asians, or other non-African-derived American ethnic groupings. For CWC continental Africans, there was no apparent conceptual conflict between an “African” and “tribal” identity.26 They identified as both, although how they described themselves varied according to the particular social or political context. Indeed, much of the CWC’s work can be seen as providing African diasporan participants, both American- and African-born, a conceptual model for defining and positioning their translocal identities: for example, what it means and how to be African, Yorùbá, and American all at the same time.
African immigrant participants, who maintained relationships with family members living throughout the world, made a subtle distinction between “political” and “cultural” identity that was more prominent than among those CWC participants who defined themselves as “Africans born in America.” For African immigrant CWC participants, the correspondence of blood origins and place of birth with ancestry was incidental; place was not the primary determinant of African cultural identity, but it was for political identity.
Both CWC participants who defined themselves as “Africans born in America” (African Americans) and African immigrants—who generally referred to themselves as “Africans”—saw African identity primarily as a matter of ancestry. However, for “Africans born in America,” equal emphasis was given to physical indicators of “Africanness” based on notions of “Blackness” as sometimes externally indicated by skin color.27 While African immigrant participants also had a sense of physical indicators of Africanness based in part on skin, primary emphasis was given to ancestry as determined by blood or biological relation or ancestry. However, as will be described below, physical indicators of “Africanness” were given more importance among those CWC Africans who have experienced racial discrimination in North American or European countries.
African immigrant CWC participants tended to have a stronger sense that people of African ancestry should make a conscious decision to define themselves as African to be considered such, although there was significant variation on this point. Those who had worked with the CWC’s “African born in America” leadership the longest (for example Akin, quoted above) seemed to share the view that an African ancestral origin, even if unknown and unacknowledged, made an individual “African.”
Those African immigrants who were newer to the CWC had the sense that self-identification as “African” was a necessary prerequisite for African identity. One could not be “African” unless one perceived and described oneself as such. Because of the strong emphasis placed on the combined notions of “Blackness” and ancestry, participants who described themselves as “Africans born in America” tended to believe that people of African heritage were still African even if they actively rejected or denied an African ancestry. Continental African participants, almost unanimously, maintained that people born and raised in Africa who did not have an African biological ancestry, regardless of level of acculturation—for example, White Kenyans or White South Africans—were not African in terms of cultural identity, either attributed or self-ascribed. However, because of the African immigrant distinction between political and cultural identity, people of European ancestry could be politically African in terms of their nationality. Most African American participants who described themselves as “Africans born in America” maintained that such individuals were not African by any definition—they were “Whites” or “Europeans” living in Africa. The participants of African heritage who did not define themselves as “African” and instead defined themselves as “African American” or “Black American” placed more emphasis on place of birth or citizenship in defining identity. For them, people not born and raised in Africa could not legitimately define themselves as “African,” although their African ancestry was recognized by the inclusion of the terms “African,” “Black,” or “black” in their ethnic descriptors. For self-described “African Americans,” people of European ancestry could be “African” if they held African citizenship or were born in an African country.
CWC “Africans born in America” tended to justify a common “African” identity across the diaspora in part because of a shared history of racism and discrimination. For example, Sandra, an “African born in America” school social worker, described this commonality in spiritual terms:
I feel more of a connection with Africans around the world than I do with Europeans…. It’s just a natural, kind of spiritual connection. So, it’s like if you’re talking to a family member, you’re more likely to share. But then other people from other cultures can also be very interested and make a good connection and you can be more intimate too. It just kind of depends. But, there is something special about and is spiritual with African people … It is a shared heritage. A shared sense of suffering. I think that wherever we are on the planet, we have had some degree of suffering that is historic and that continues based on the color of our skin.28
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