New York Times 2019 Article Excerpt About The ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) Movement

Edited by Azizi Powell  

This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of a 2019 New York Times article by Farah Stockman entitled ‘We’re Self-Interested’: The Growing Identity Debate in Black America"

Some reader comments about this article and about the ADOS (American Descendants Of Slavery) movement are included in this post.

The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Farah Stockman and all those who are quoted in this post.
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As a reminder, I present article and book excerpts as a means of raising awareness about certain topics and as a means of increasing awareness about the books or articles that are quoted. I encourage all those interested in these subjects to read the entire article or book.

Click https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/reader-center/slavery-descendants-ados.html Deciphering ADOS: A New Social Movement or Online Trolls?. This is another Nov. 2019 New York Times article on this subject that was written by Farah Stockman.

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NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE EXCERPT
From https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/slavery-black-immigrants-ados.html

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

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

By Farah Stockman

Published Nov. 8, 2019

Updated Nov. 13, 2019

"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.

Tensions between black Americans who descended from slavery and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are not new, but a group of online agitators is trying to turn those disagreements into a political movement.

They want colleges, employers and the federal government to prioritize black Americans whose ancestors toiled in bondage, and they argue that affirmative action policies originally designed to help the descendants of slavery in America have largely been used to benefit other groups, including immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.

The American descendants of slavery, they say, should have their own racial category on census forms and college applications, and not be lumped in with others with similar skin color but vastly different lived experiences.

The group, which calls itself ADOS, for the American Descendants of Slavery, is small in number, with active supporters estimated to be in the thousands. But the discussion they are provoking is coursing through conversations far and wide.

Those who embrace its philosophy point to disparities between black people who immigrated to the United States voluntarily, and others whose ancestors were brought in chains.

Roughly 10 percent of the 40 million black people living in the United States were born abroad, according to the Pew Research Center, up from 3 percent in 1980. African immigrants are more likely to have college degrees than blacks and whites who were born in the United States.

A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Education found that 41 percent of black freshmen at Ivy League colleges were immigrants or the children of immigrants, even though those groups represent 13 percent of the black population in the United States.

In 2017, black students at Cornell University protested for the admission of more “underrepresented black students,” who they defined as black Americans with several generations in the United States. “There is a lack of investment in black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America,” the students wrote to the president of the university.

University administrators say that black students from other countries contribute to increased diversity on campus, even if their admittance does not mitigate the injustices of American slavery. Many black immigrant groups are also descended from slavery in other countries.

[…]

The goal of ADOS’s two founders — Antonio Moore, a Los Angeles defense attorney, and Yvette Carnell, a former aide to Democratic lawmakers in Washington — is to harness frustrations among black Americans by seizing on the nation’s shifting demographics.

Embracing their role as insurgents, Mr. Moore and Ms. Carnell held their first national conference in October, and have made reparations for the brutal system of slavery upon which the United States was built a key tenet of their platform.

Their movement has also become a lightning rod for criticism on the left. Its skepticism of immigration sometimes strikes a tone similar to that of President Trump. And the group has fiercely attacked the Democratic Party, urging black voters to abstain from voting for the next Democratic presidential nominee unless he or she produces a specific economic plan for the nation’s ADOS population.

Such tactics have led some to accuse the group of sowing division among African-Americans and engaging in a form of voter suppression not unlike the voter purges and gerrymandering efforts pushed by some Republicans.

“Not voting will result in another term of Donald Trump,” said Brandon Gassaway, national press secretary of the Democratic National Committee.

Shireen Mitchell, the founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, has been embroiled in an online battle with ADOS activists for months. Ms. Mitchell contends that the group’s leaders are “using reparations as a weapon” to make Mr. Trump more palatable to black voters. Others have pointed out that Ms. Carnell once appeared on her YouTube channel in a “Make America Great Again” hat.

[…]

Critics consider the movement a Trojan horse meant to infiltrate the black community with a right-wing agenda, and question why the group would target Democrats, who have been far more open to discussions of reparations.

“You are willing to let Donald Trump win, who clearly says he doesn’t see reparations happening?” asked Talib Kweli Greene, a rapper and activist who has become a vocal opponent of the group. “Get out of here!”

Recently, Hollywood has become the source of much of the frustration around the dividing line between United States-born African-Americans and black immigrants. When the black British actress Cynthia Erivo was hired to play the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the casting received immediate backlash. Similarly, the filmmaker Jordan Peele has been criticized for hiring Lupita Nyong’o, who is Kenyan, and Daniel Kaluuya, who is British, to play African-American characters in his movies

[…]

Ms. Carnell has also been criticized for her past service on the board of Progressives for Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group that has received funding from a foundation linked to John Tanton, who was referred to as “the puppeteer” of the nation’s nativist movement by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This summer, ADOS ignited a flurry of criticism after Ms. Carnell complained that Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, was running for president as an African-American candidate but had failed to put forth an agenda for black people. She noted that Ms. Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Critics quickly accused Ms. Carnell of “birtherism” and xenophobia.

[…]

And although Ms. Carnell and Mr. Moore say ADOS is a nonpartisan movement, the hashtag has been used by conservatives who support Mr. Trump.

“I like #ADOS,” Ann Coulter, a white conservative commentator, wrote on Twitter. “But I think it should be #DOAS — Descendants of American slaves. Not Haitian slaves, not Moroccan slaves.”

At the conference in Kentucky, supporters pushed back against the idea that they were anti-immigrant or surrogates of the president’s agenda.

“We’re not xenophobes,” said Mark Stevenson, a director of talent acquisition in the Navy who said he founded an ADOS chapter in Columbus, Ohio, this summer. “If you ask somebody who is Latino what is their heritage, they’ll tell you they are Puerto Rican or Dominican or Cuban.”

“This is our heritage,” he added. “I don’t see the issue.”
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Comments
[Pancocojams Editor's Note:
A total #628 comments were published for this article. Comments are closed.
The following comments are some of those that are categorized as "Times Picks" with additional replies for one of those comments. Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.]

1. Sola Olosunde

Far Rockaway, New York

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"Having grown up in New York City, with a global Black population....and as a Brooklyn-born Nigerian, I see both sides of the argument. I've heard many Nigerians speak down on African-Americans, ignorant to the perpetual struggle this country has put them through. I've also heard the xenophobic comments made by Black Americans up until about 3yrs ago, when Afrobeats went global. My parents have told me about the ignorant comments made by Black Americans when they came here 30  years ago. I'm sure lots of Black immigrants have biases that stem from those times. However, I do think Black immigrants should educate themselves, or at least be educated, on the history of those who look like them upon arrival in America. Vice versa too. Because though Nigerians may not have the same history as Black Americans, we do share struggles. Not all Africans are wealthy or middle-class, or have the means to become that. Those immigrants have children that you'd assume were Black Americans until they said their name. Police treat them the same way. Some Black immigrants don't speak English, and that's a struggle in itself. It's not as if immigrants come here and become wealthy all of a sudden.

I do think schools in Black neighborhoods should have exchange programs with African countries and the Black Diaspora. That'll open the eyes of children to understand other Black cultures and maybe then the divide will shrink over time."

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2. David L

NYC

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"The vast majority of Caribbean blacks are descended from African slaves, just like their American brothers."

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3. Nita

Illinois

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"As an African American woman, I can see the validity of both sides, the need for black American slave descendants to have a distinct ethnic identity, and the acknowledgement that racism also affects the lives of black immigrants to the States. This split partially results from the delay in allocating reparations to generations of African Americans. We have not been taken care of.  Most black people that I know are comfortable acknowledging the shared blackness of our African and Caribbean brothers and sisters. What we're not comfortable with, however, is how black Americans will be mocked by newcomer blacks as lazy, shiftless, ignorant, and dangerous while they slide into the benefits of living in America that we suffered to build. I have experienced contempt from immigrant blacks who see this country as the land of milk and honey, thus scorning black American communities for issues of entrenched poverty and illiteracy, ones they don't understand. Slavery's legacy is robust in America, and yet black immigrants often show little compassion for the black American struggle. So many of the ones I've met seem to care more about money and obtaining status, not about the strife of people who look like them that have been here for centuries. Regarding reparations, America has not loved or cared for its black daughters and sons. Like any abused child, it's hard to see your mother encouraging your brother or sister when she just finished slapping you in the face."

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4. PS Mom

Brooklyn

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"Most forms of originalism in heritage arguments seem to constructs to favor one group over another. Few of us remember our great grandparents or know their stories. For most of us going back a few generations in the US, will uncover some form of subjection. Women were treated as chattel.  Most immigrant groups were unwelcome/systematically harassed etc. Should Mexicans and Native Americans get reparations for the land stolen from them? Get into the weeds and you'll find a forest.

Anyone with dark skin in America suffers racism, the racists don't check birth certificates or lineages. Anyone who is poor IN America suffers a lack of opportunity as a result of their birth class. Does a child born to an impoverished ADOS family deserve something more than the child born to an impoverished Chinese immigrant or a child from a struggling family in Puerto Rico?

The lopsided success of certain groups of poor immigrants black/white/or asian over the rest of us is all about culture.

What nobody seems to want to address is the lack of equity for the impoverished and the lack of a culture that nourishes them.  Rather than talking about one group I wish we would discuss education with the same urgency as we now discuss climate change or health care."

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5. mirucha

New York

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"I teach at a college with a significant student population of both Black students who have been in the USA for multiple generations and first & second generation Black immigrants. While the distinctions are real, these fade away within a couple of generations at most, especially compounded by elements of intermarriage, American-sounding accents, and public school attendance.

Additionally, from watching Henry Louis Gates' "Finding your Roots" tv program, it becomes evident that regardless of race, nobody knows much about where their families came, or what wounds or secrets they bore beyond about three generations. It seems to me that the present racism and microaggression that people experience end up being a common thread.

I fully understand the sentiment of the Cornell students, and don't want to discount them. On the other hand, this distinction, like all racial distinctions is too hard to draw, i.e. how many drops of slave blood would be required to establish that one is or isn't ADOS? What if, like many participants on Gates' show, one is mistaken about one's family heritage?"

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6. William Wallace

Barcelona

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

"I know first generation immigrants from Africa personally, and I can tell you right off the bat, their children grew up as American as any other black child, and faced all the same issues, including the need to have a sit down with their parents about "driving while black", etc.

It's not really who one is, it is how one is classified and put in the same box by others that is the problem, and all black people in American face it."

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Reply

7. TC

Newburgh, NY

Nov. 8, 2019

"@William Wallace As a Haitian-American I understand the sentiment that you expressed in your post.  If I am pulled over by a racist cop my experience may be similar to an ADOS.  But what you fail to realize is that as a Black person whose family were immigrants my family does not have a specific experience that is distinct to ADOS.  The African family that you mentioned does not have a legacy where their ancestors dealt with American Slavery, Convict Leasing, Jim Crow, Red Lining, Crack Cocaine, Mass Incarceration, etc.  Those experiences are specific to ADOS, not Haitians, Jamaicans, Nigerians, etc. ADOS were promised reparations at one point after slavery and the US Government reneged on their promise to them.  After the US Government caused irreparable harm on ADOS  it's only right that ADOS is owed a debt for what they suffered and continue to suffer from.  A debt is owed to ADOS and that debt must be paid to them.  This is what we would call justice in America."

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Reply

8. Tangie Thankful

North Carolina

Nov. 8, 2019

"@William Wallace And if I may add to TC’s comment... African immigrants migrate to America on their own accord.  African Americans are here due to forced migration.  Our lineage, culture and protective laws born of our unique history in the US makes us a distinct ethnic group.  Saying so is not xenophobic or ethnocentric.  We understand that Africans may experience racism on one level or another but our historical  background make the comparisons between Africans and African Americans an unequal equivalent."

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9. Matthew

Bethesda, MD

Nov. 8, 2019

"@William Wallace This ignores how different the past two centuries of  African American history has been from that of post-1960s immigrants from African or the Caribbean.  To begin with, recent African immigrants were never enslaved by non-Africans.  The enslavement of blacks in the Caribbean ended nearly two generations before it ended in the U.S.  and it ended there without the still lingering racially-inflamed bitterness of the American civil  war.  Perhaps the most important difference is that African and Caribbean countries always had non-white majorities, some of whom were intent upon denying African Americans (and certain other non-whites) full economic, social, and political benefits of citizenship.

Children of African immigrants also do not have living grandparents who experienced officially sanction segregation and discrimination and much worse in their native land.   To claim that they grew up "as American as any other black child" completely ignores  the oppressive social climate in which native born African Americans were created.  After nearly five hundred years, North America is African Americans' only homeland."

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Reply

10. Rita Lupino

New Mexico

Nov. 8, 2019

"There is no acknowledgement of class difference in your comment: in fact wealth and education and upward mobility are starkly different depending on whether a person is descended from slaves, or not. To say, for instance, that a middle class child of educated, property owning Nigerian immigrants has the same opportunities to flourish in this country as a fatherless child of a home health aide in a public housing in Compton, a child with no educated relatives, a child who attends schools where 90 percent of his classmates are on the free lunch program and less than half, sometimes less than fifteen percent, meet state educational standards, is misleading and false. There is a world of difference between the two kids despite the same racialization of “black.”

Being stopped by the police is equal opportunity, which is why, as James Forman Jr points out, it’s a popular issue for black politicians and other elites. Many issues affecting poor black Americans are not “equal opportunity” and more devastating. Like chronic generational unemployment and incarceration.

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Reply
11. Afi

Cleveland

Nov. 8, 2019

"@William Wallace I'll share examples that support your observation: Patrice Durismond; Abner Louima; and of course, Amadou Diallo."

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Reply

12. JNC

NYC

Nov. 8, 2019

"Your comment begs us (and the NYT) to ask whether and in what ways is the situation of African American descendants of slaves different or similar from the children of immigrants from black majority countries.  And why is that black immigrant children are disproportionately admitted to elite colleges?  Does this correlate to economic class advantage, immigrant self selection, or other things?"

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Reply
13. Matt

California

Nov. 8, 2019

"@William Wallace but black immigrants and their children do much better economically than ADOS. That matters."

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14. Gordeaux

New Jersey

Nov. 8, 2019

Times Pick

Another way to divide Americans to Trump's advantage.  Frankly, I agree that American descendants of slavery are owed a special debt by this nation.  And that that debt may not be owed to those of African descent whose ancestors were not enslaved.  But determining who is in which category will be divisive.  And, of course, the conservatives promoting the interests of American descendants of slavery never seemed to care much about them at all until the divisiveness of the issue arose.  Another obstacle that needs to be overcome for 2020.

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