‘We’re Self-Interested’: The Growing Identity Debate in Black America

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Wednesday, November 13, 2019

November 13, 2019 - From NYTimes

Why a movement that claims to support the American descendants of slavery is being promoted by conservatives and attacked on the left.

In Hollywood, Harriet Tubman is played in a new movie by a black British woman, much to the annoyance of some black Americans. On the United States census, an ultrawealthy Nigerian immigrant and a struggling African-American woman from the South are expected to check the same box. When many American universities tout their diversity numbers, black students who were born in the Bronx and the Bahamas are counted as the same.

A spirited debate is playing out in black communities across America over the degree to which identity ought to be defined by African heritage — or whether ancestral links to slavery are what should count most of all.

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