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Originally Posted by GirlySports
I dont think Kamala is what people were looking for.
I have a general, probably ignorant, question to ask. Do Americans make a distinction between black americans or African-Americans, many generations in America and recent black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. I find this distinction important when talking about civil rights, slavery and reparations.
If so, then does the Kamala Harris count as "black" enough? I know that seems a dumb question but in politics it matters. I mean she is 1st generation born in the US, Indian mother, Jamaican father. She a person born from immigrants, like me, like a lot of others. So is she considered a politically black candidate that will bring out more black voters?
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There were some black people in media the commentating when Obama was first running that we wasn't culturally the same as African Americans who were decedents of slaves. More recent African immigrants do tend to fair better financially than those that were hurt by slavery, for obvious reasons and some black people see them as different.
Whether or not that was a common view, I don't know since the press reporting on something doesn't necessarily tell you if the idea is popular.
Harris' origin is also from Jamaica where the British used a different form of slavery. While obviously no slavery is good, it wasn't the same brutal form of chattel slavery that was practiced in the U.S. The British also abolished slavery 35 years before the U.S. and maintained Jamaica as a colony until the 1960s. While slavery in Jamaica ensured most black Jamaicans would be poor, they weren't essentially abandoned overnight like most American blacks were when slavery ended. For the same reason African immigrants tend to fair better, black people from the Caribbean who moved to the U.S. tend to have come from means. I imagine there are some people who view Harris as "different" for those reasons.
There is a book called "Black Masters" that caused some controversy in 1984 when it outed some prominent black families. The book talks about black slave owners in America and how it was more common than people realize. Some black families in the U.S. go through great lengths to erase it from their family trees because once the word gets out, they become resented by others in their community. There definitely are some divisions still today based on origin.