Why is Delineation is Only hate When Black Americans Do It

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]We're going to talk about delineation.

[00:00:02]Okay, when I say delineation, I'm talking about foundational Black Americans. I'm talking about the American Negro.

[00:00:09]I'm talking about the Solon people.

[00:00:12]Uh to a certain degree, I'm talking about I'm talking about the people who can trace their lineage back to even before this country was formed.

[00:00:22]Um I'm talking about black people, black Americans.

[00:00:27]Um I want to acknowledge everybody in the chat room and I want to first say uh you know the truth is I got much love for all of the brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

[00:00:38]But at the end of the day, I don't think that love has been reciprocated.

[00:00:42]And I think that there are a lot of black Americans who would agree with me into that in that regard and um whether you call yourself a freed a a freedman, whether you call yourself indigenous, whether you call yourself foundational Black American, American Negro, all of those to me are considered legal terms. So there are some people if you look at their um birth certificates, their grandmother's birth certificates, it's it says colored.

[00:01:08]Okay?

[00:01:09]But the thing is we have to understand is that everybody has an opinion about Black Americans. Immigrants have opinions. First generation people have an opinion. Media people have an opinion. Academics have an opinion.

[00:01:21]Everybody wants to explain us and diagnose us and study us and criticize us.

[00:01:27]But then they also want to benefit from us. And then here's another thing. They want to speak over us about us.

[00:01:34]But when the question is posed, well, okay, where are you from?

[00:01:39]What is your lineage? What what gives you the authority to define a people whose history in this country goes back hundreds of years and some would argue thousands of years.

[00:01:52]Then they get offended.

[00:01:55]Then they then they say we're being divisive.

[00:02:00]And that's where the term foundational Black American comes in. We're talking about the descendants of enslaved people in the United States, people whose ancestors survived American slavery, reconstruction, convict leasing, Jim Crow, redlining, domestic terrorism, exclusion from wealth, and still built culture, churches, schools, businesses, neighborhoods, music, politics, civil rights, moral framework and and that other groups stand on today.

[00:02:37]People who didn't even like us still our stuff.

[00:02:40]Like Mahatma Gandhi.

[00:02:43]Didn't know he was a racist, right?

[00:02:48]I'm also talking about Black Americans that the people our ancestors came here both with Columbus and before Columbus.

[00:02:56]So when we talk about black identity in America, we're not talking about some flat generic one-size-fits-all blackness. Somebody type flat blackness in the chat room.

[00:03:10]Everybody black isn't the same people. Everybody black doesn't have the same history. Everybody black doesn't have the same relationship to America.

[00:03:22]You have people who are African, people who are Caribbean, people who are immigrant, first generation, or from other backgrounds.

[00:03:33]You know, and these people are writing and speaking on Black American identity as though their experience is interchangeable with ours and it's not.

[00:03:43]They may be black.

[00:03:45]They may have their own struggle. They have dealt with colonialism. They have dealt with so many different things.

[00:03:52]They they may have their own history, but they're not us.

[00:03:58]And the statistics show that this is not some imaginary internet argument. In 2024, there were about 5.6 million black immigrants in the United States making up more than 11% of the black population. African-born and Caribbean-born black immigrants each make up about 44% of the immigrant black population.

[00:04:23]The top origin comes from Jamaica and Haiti and Nigeria. So when we say black identity in America, it's not a monolith. That's not an opinion. It's a demographic reality of today. But here's the problem. The federal government and the media institutions, they don't separate foundational Black Americans from black immigrants or first generation Black Americans in any way that we need for this conversation to be fully effective. They flatten everybody into the same broad racial category, flat blackness.

[00:05:01]And when and when that happens, people with different histories, different cultures, different migration stories, and different relationships to America can all be placed under the same label, black, even though their experiences are not interchangeable. So when African, Caribbean immigrant, or first generation voices speak on their Black American identity as though their story is ours, that becomes a problem. They they may be black.

[00:05:33]They may have their own struggle, but they have their own struggle from their country and their history and their perspective. They they have an immigrant perspective. We're not immigrants.

[00:05:43]>> [snorts] >> But the bottom line is they're not automatically qualified to define uh the issues facing the descendants of the American slave trade, Jim Crow, redlining, segregation, and the civil rights struggle. That history is very specific. That lineage is very specific.

[00:06:02]It's the statistics and if the statistics prove anything, they prove that specificity matters. This isn't about division. This issue is about clarity.

[00:06:13]Black people, my foundational Black American people, of which there are thousands who follow my pages.

[00:06:23]We are very specific. We have a very specific history in this country and and that history can't be dumped into flat blackness and just because it makes other people comfortable doesn't mean we have to do it. Now when I say flat blackness, flat blackness is is the practice of treating all black people as if they share one identical history, one identical culture, one identical political interest, and one interchangeable racial experience simply because they're racially classified as black. That's not me saying that.

[00:07:00]That's Dr. Tommy J. Curry Johnson.

[00:07:03]He uses the concept in his broader work on black male studies, anti-black misogyny, and black male vulnerability.

[00:07:12]And this is his book. His book is from 2023 and it includes concepts directly in the title, uh which is solutions for anti-black misogyny, flat blackness and black male death. And one chapter is titled flat blackness, flat maleness, and flat andro mortality.

[00:07:31]Now uh this brother is a brilliant doctor. I suggest you all check out his channel.

[00:07:37]He is over uh he's a professor in in California.

[00:07:42]And I would I would I would I hope you all have the opportunity to check him out. He teaches at uh he teaches uh Africana studies at California State University in Fresno. Good friend of mine. I've actually used him as an expert witness. You can get this book on Amazon. I 100% support this and in fact, if you look on pages 92 I believe through 100 and something, I am actually quoted in this book. Okay?

[00:08:07]So uh you know, Uncle D is now uh I can cite myself. But you all, that's where the definition of flat blackness comes from as far as I'm concerned. Somebody type flat blackness, please. Somebody type Dr. T. Hassan Johnson. This is a uh foundational Black American brother top Dr. T. Hassan Johnson. You guys check his book out. You make sure I give that one my 100% stamp of approval. You guys check that book out. But anyway, so let's let's let's kind of move forward.

[00:08:40]The delineation.

[00:08:43]Delineation is is not anything new. It's not radical.

[00:08:48]What's radical is expecting Black Americans to be the only people on Earth who don't get to name ourselves.

[00:08:56]Jamaicans get to name they get to they get they get to be Jamaican.

[00:09:02]Nigerians get to be Nigerian. Ethiopians get to be Ethiopian.

[00:09:07]Mexicans get to be Mexicans. Puerto Ricans get to be Puerto Rican even though they're a territory of the United States.

[00:09:16]Chinese people get to be Chinese. You don't confuse them with the Koreans and Indians and the Pakistan. They get their own separate identity. But the moment you say you're a Black American and that we're a distinct people, they say, "Well, where are you really from?"

[00:09:33]Okay? Our bottom line is here comes the guilt trip. Here comes the accusation.

[00:09:40]Here comes the lecture about division.

[00:09:43]It's not about division. It's about being honest.

[00:09:46]We want to establish who built what, who endured what, who fought for what and when, who created what, and who that his history actually belongs to. So when people say delineation, don't let them twist that into hatred.

[00:10:05]What they're really talking about what we're really talking about is precision.

[00:10:10]And whether people like it or not, this isn't some fringe idea. This is a widely shared sentiment among black Americans who are tired of being generalized and misrepresented.