Being Foreign-Born Does Not Disqualify Me From Understanding Anti-Blackness

Añadido: 2026-06-02

[00:00:08][music] >> The millennials on threads [music] came from my neck yesterday.

[00:00:22]>> [music] >> And it all started when I decided to create a quick 6-seconds TikTok video responding to a comment that someone left on one of my YouTube channel videos.

[00:00:38]And where this person was reacting to um something I had said in the commentary about um solutions, right? Options and stuff for like for the future. And the person said, you know, that's not going to work. And you don't know it's not going to work. And then they were saying immigrants like JJ don't understand. And that's where I kind of cut off. I didn't even read the rest of their comments. I was like, what immigrants like JJ don't understand?

[00:01:04]What are you talking about? You And the fact that they said like JJ makes me feel like they know or they're they're not new to my channel.

[00:01:12]So I was like, you know, I'm going to respond to that. I used to go I used to go a little offended to that. So responding to someone saying immigrants like JJ, and to me immigrants like JJ are immigrants who are black cuz I'm a black immigrant who came to the United States when they were like a child, like I was almost 4 years old. So I was a little kid.

[00:01:31]And essentially I'm an acculturated black American. So most of my experiences are black American. And in my mind, in my experiences, I'm like a black American. I've defended myself as an acculturated black American in every respect all the time to my immigrant parents and immigrant families who do not understand or appreciate the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears blood, sweat, and tears of the sacrifice of the forefathers of the African Americans who were the blueprint for um resistance movements from the civil rights movement to black power movement to every single thing. Like every single person who's ever had a cause whether uh oppressed or marginalized people who rally, whether it's the workers union, whether it is a suffragist movement, whether it is Stonewall, whether it's the LGBTQIA community, whether it's migrants, whether it's immigrants, whether it's veterans rights, every single thing started from modeling the resistance movements of black people.

[00:02:31]My people, I'm thinking that's me. What do you mean?

[00:02:34]I'm going to say like like JJ, I'm So, in response to my 6-second reel, I uh screenshotted the comment, I put a caption, and I said um you know, I've been here a long time. In the caption, I mentioned the fact that not only have I studied, um I'm aware, can read, see music, movies, and stuff like that, and much aware, but also personally having lived here since like 1979, um I've actually experienced it, even experienced it before people who are actually real true African Americans. Like all of like And I said, "Who?" Oh, like the millennials.

[00:03:10]Like all of them. I was thinking, let me go back to millennials.

[00:03:13]That was my mistake number one.

[00:03:15]Cuz culture wars are a thing, but also generational wars are a thing. And as a member of the Gen X delegation, as a member of the Gen X delegation, we are the forgotten generation. So, when the boomers and the millennials are fighting, we're just like like on the side looking back and forth and Mhm.

[00:03:35]Mhm. Mhm. We're just observers. And when the millennials are beefing with the Gen Z'ers, or when the Gen Z'ers are beefing with the alphas, no one talks about us, and we really don't care. We're just in our own world. So, that was my mistake as I mentioned it. In my mind, to me, uh using them was like a cute way of instead of saying like and let's say you had a uh you discover a bakery and you was like, "Oh my god, this is so great." and you tell like an older neighbor or your aunt or your mom, "I just discovered this great bakery." and your mom or your aunt or your older neighbor tells you, "Girl, you just discovered it? I've been going to that bakery before you were even born."

[00:04:09]You're like, "Oh, for real? Word?"

[00:04:10]That's it. That is what it's like.

[00:04:13]And to be responding to my personal experience is someone's calling me personally out and saying, "Well, I've been here for a long time before most people even here." So, I know I'm aware of it and I've experienced it. Folks came for me and they took it personally.

[00:04:26]And I was like, "On my page?" They were like Someone even said this morning like, "Well, you need to just edit your caption." Like edit the caption of my response of my video? What are you saying? It was like and eventually today I archived it cuz I was just tired. I wasted a lot of time yesterday going back and forth with people unnecessarily. It was a waste of time. I normally don't do that. Every single quarter I tell myself, "I'm never going back and forth with people but something that's irrelevant. I'm just going to mute it and move on or archive the topic cuz it's not worth it. I really don't care. It's really stressful cuz it's kind of like it's light-hearted thing and y'all took a light-hearted little quip and it's only the people in Threads cuz only a few people in on Instagram like like like clap back but I shared on Substack TikTok, YouTube like, "Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, they better recognize." That's it cuz it's just really innocent and not going to be like no big deal.

[00:05:14]And the comments by the way, I said this is instructive. Let me share the So, the commentary came in three different formats and I wanted to share with you because normally I would just go about my day, I had legal else to do, I had to do some errands for my mom, I'm like trying to get my daughter to graduate.

[00:05:30]So, there's a lot of things I need to do to prepare for her graduation dinner and the graduation week as in you know, lots of things to do and I had done a full video responded to it and then I end up changing the video after this morning and kind of realizing what the thing is and I'm better able to categorize and deconstruct and unpack what happened.

[00:05:52]And the categories of responses were in three. The first was people who said to me, it could have been the same person in a way. Yeah, okay, and I feel like they believed they needed to like I was one-upping them but I was using my age, I was weaponizing my age.

[00:06:09]By me saying I was here before you.

[00:06:10]Like, oh, you were here before me. Well, how about another deep. Someone was like, well, did you have your mother and your mother's mother and your mother's mother and all sorts of things tell you down through oral histories the stories?

[00:06:23]Yeah. It's not the same. You might have lived before me, but you don't have the oral histories of being an African-American, a true one.

[00:06:32]I was like, you know what? My god, I love oral history. I'm a fan of oral history. I believe that every single person, if you have an elder relative, you need to get a tape recorder or use your phone and sit down and let them tell you stories because when they go, that's it. Those stories go with them.

[00:06:47]So, yeah, I love that. I was like, yeah, girl. Mhm, oral history. No, I don't have it, but I love that for you.

[00:06:54]And then other people, the second category is folks who say, "Okay, well, girl, you might be a black Americans, I mean, you Africans and you Caribbeans come to our country, look down on us, think you guys are better than us, separate yourself from us, and then the white people treat y'all better than us.

[00:07:13]And um yeah, and and I'm just like, yes, that is sucks.

[00:07:17]First of all, I don't think that's all, but I know people like that. I have relatives like that, and they suck ass for that because but for the sacrifices of African-Americans through the civil rights movement, black power movement, you wouldn't be able to do all the things you'd be able to do.

[00:07:33]The resistance blueprint is black people liberation in this country. And from watching what black Americans were able to accomplish despite being oppressed, despite being like actively actively marginalized, they accomplished a lot and every time built independent self-sufficient communities that were thriving and shut it down. So, I'm always evoking the name of Black Wall Street, of Rosewood, of Greenwood, Tulsa.

[00:08:08]I'm like trifle. Like that's it it wasn't me, but it's like so don't mess with us and recognize. That's me. So, that's why I'm so offensive. Like no, not African not immigrants like me cuz someone at some point today someone said, "Of course they would come from an immigrant." So, it's kind of like there you go, generalizing.

[00:08:27]Okay.

[00:08:28]So, that's true. Those people exist and I don't like them and it's not everyone because remember Stokely Carmichael, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X is of foreign parentage. So was Barack Obama. And there's a thing as Pan-Africanism. So, Kwame Nkrumah, you know, Nelson Mandela. There are scores of people not born in the United States, but all about liberation of black people wherever they are. You know, so you don't have to be from here to be about wanting wanting great for y'all. So, yeah, I get it.

[00:09:04]There's no competition cuz someone said this morning, "Oh, it's like an oppression Olympics." Like no, I just talked about personal experience and y'all want to jump in and feel like you're taking it kind of way because and making it a competition. I didn't make it a competition, you did on my post.

[00:09:17]So, that was the second category. And then there was the final ones which I was like, "Mhm, mhm. I'm going to have to talk to these folks." The people say that you couldn't fully thoroughly experience it. Even if you experience it, your experience aren't truly authentic and it's not genuine and it's not real. It's like you you didn't really have the real lived experience as us. So, keep our name out of your mouth.

[00:09:36]It's it's not authentic. It's not real.

[00:09:38]You don't have You need to have the generational trauma in order to really know how it is to be black in America.

[00:09:44]If you don't You don't have that generational connection, then your experience is not real. Like denying my actual lived experience without even knowing my actual lived experience and just And I was like, I was once like you guys when I was young and thought I knew something and went to school and got educated. And I like to school people and tell people stuff like that. Not really knowing or being aware if they knew what I was teaching them, if they asked for what I was teaching them. And then so people a lot of people like lecturing talking down to me.

[00:10:13]I was like, okay, go ahead, speak your speak your peace, but you don't know me.

[00:10:17]So, let me use this opportunity to share some of my lived experiences for you.

[00:10:21]Not to bring it down, not to like just give you some context. Cuz I feel like I context at least.

[00:10:27]So, when I was like 7 years old, we went to a water park. I lived in DC.

[00:10:32]I lived in a redlined neighborhood.

[00:10:35]We didn't have the same services and access and options as people who lived in communities in the suburbs of North Bethesda, Potomac, Maryland, Chevy Chase, uh Northern Virginia, Alexandria. They had all of the best services and these communities, these parks, these stores, these restaurants when they went to open, they never came through our community. We were redlined. So, redlined, check.

[00:11:02]At some point, my DC public summer camp went to a pool like a I think it was like Six Flags.

[00:11:10]And so we friends of mine go up the water slide, we come down. It was so fun. We're going back up for our next trip. And a group of white boys, including one biracial kid, were like, oh, these little N-words want to get around. And we stopped and we looking at them. Me personally looked at them like, wow, you know what?

[00:11:26]I still feel like this way. I feel sorry for you that you feel like you need to use those words to talk down on this to feel better about yourself. Like that's really pathetic. Like I was thinking that as a 7-year-old, I was thinking that. Like damn, that's you that sucks.

[00:11:37]That was interesting. So, called the N-word as a as a child, check. Black experience.

[00:11:43]Then, fast forward several decades. I get married. I have a young family. My son 6-month-old. We go to a Caribbean festival in Baltimore. We're having a nice time. At some point, Baltimore Vice Squad comes to shut down the vendors that are selling counterfeit goods. My husband, who was a law student at the time, thought he can go up to the police officer, the nice police officer, and say, "Hey, there's a that elderly woman there sitting on her knees. Could you get her a chair so she could The officer, we didn't know at the time was like a rogue officer. He was like a dirty cop. Like he had a long rap sheet of being brutal. He shoved my husband.

[00:12:17]So, my husband was like, "What?" Again, being the young law student, thinking he knew something, was like, "I'm going to write down your badge number." You don't ask a cop who's rogue for a badge number. They all just start pummeling him down. He's all bruised up.

[00:12:30]They throw him in the paddy wagon.

[00:12:31]Eventually, we sued. We settled. But, police brutality, check.

[00:12:36]Later on, I end up working at a big law firm. The big law firm has a retreat or has like a an event at a nice country club like over in I think it was like um somewhere out in suburbs. Really, really nice elegant place. As I'm leaving, driving while black, check. I've had a couple of those.

[00:12:58]I've been followed in stores. I remember a couple of incidents that also had that second-class treatment. My husband and I was going in to buy his first suit at Jos. A. Bank. And there was an Indian.

[00:13:10]That's why people be like pe- people of color drop that. That's why people say BIPOC, black indigenous people of color.

[00:13:15]We're different people. Indian guy sees us. My husband says, "Where are the suits?" He said, "Here's the Here's the double-breasted. Here's these suits good for you. We're looking for it on our own." A white couple The woman is just like me. The man is just like my husband. We're identical. He bending over backwards showing them all these things and we're looking like, "God damn it." My husband took today to regret the fact that he purchased that suit from Jos. A. Bank. He should have walked out.

[00:13:35]The white couple never paid for it.

[00:13:37]I I couple of experiences at a mall in the Ashburn malls. Always Ashburn areas in DC. It was White Flint Mall. I go to a kiosk to buy an ice cream. Back then, sometimes they ask you for your ID. So, I buy a $3.99 cup of ice cream and the guy asked me for my ID, which is weird.

[00:13:53]I said, "Okay, I'll give it to him."

[00:13:54]Now, wait a minute. Hold up. There's a long line of people. Let me see if he asked the the next white person who's paying for a credit card with his for their ID. And he of course he didn't.

[00:14:02]So, I looked at the guy. I was like, "Don't forget to ask her for her her ID."

[00:14:07]In that same mall upstairs, they used to have like realtor kiosks um where you can go in and um look at homes. And so, we looked at some houses and they had like the little pictures of the houses.

[00:14:17]The guy who was manning the kiosk didn't just saw me, didn't come up. A white woman comes up. He pops up and ask all these questions. At that time, I was at a law firm. My husband was at a law firm. We're making like double six figures or something like that. The woman says, "No, I can't I can't pay for this. I'm a teacher. I can't afford this." But she got all that service.

[00:14:32]Just like the white couple got all that service at Jos. A. Bank. So, second class treatment in in a black country country which black people built, check.

[00:14:39]When we first purchased our first home, we found out later on that the interest rate we were charged compared to another white couple of our profile was higher.

[00:14:47]So, housing discrimination, check. My husband was denied a job because they told him the last black person they hired came late all the time and because he lives far, they don't not quite sure he'll be able to come on time. So, employment discrimination, check.

[00:15:00]So, to say that you can't possibly have had a lived black experience and know what it's like to be black in America is Uh, anyway, that's it. That's my stories. J Z with each one teach one.

[00:15:11]I'm not messing with y'all millennials or Gen Z no more generation wars for me.

[00:15:15]I'm good.