Too often, I see arguments about who is “allowed” to claim their Blackness. Who counts as Black, who doesn’t, who has the right to call themselves part of the African diaspora? These arguments, which are the loudest online, are exhausting. Imaginary lines, colonial borders, and different languages don’t determine if you’re Black or not. Race, after all, is a social construct rooted in phenotype. No one group of Black people has the authority to decide whether someone else is Black. What determines your Blackness is your lived, embodied reality: your physical appearance, being a descendant of African people, being racialized as Black in the world around you, and, in some places, simply having one Black parent.
Lately, the “diaspora wars” have been popping up like weeds in a neglected yard. Every time I scroll, there’s another flare-up about who is or isn’t “really Black.” And honestly, it makes me think: Cointelpro never died, it just learned how to tweet. These same state surveillance programs that once targeted Black leaders, infiltrated organizations, and sowed distrust in movements now thrive in digital form, algorithms doing what FBI agents once did.
Recently, Cardi B mentioned in an interview that she identifies as Afro-Caribbean, and immediately, the internet decided to cross-examine her Blackness like she was on trial. For the record, I’m not here as some ultimate judge or spokesperson of the Black identity. I’m a white-passing mixed woman, fully aware of my position and limitations in these conversations. What I do know is that these debates are a distraction, petty skirmishes that ultimately serve the goals of white supremacy.
That’s why I want to invite you to have this conversation with your family, friends, mutuals, and colleagues. Because the truth is, we’ll never be free if we’re too busy being xenophobic and prejudiced against each other. This piece is meant to examine how white supremacy has always excelled at pitting us against ourselves, weaponizing our differences so we carry out its work. What follows are some of the most common arguments I’ve seen fueling these diaspora wars, and why they’re not only shallow—they’re dangerous.
1. “You don’t know where you come from”
This one usually gets lobbed at African Americans, as if the violent erasure of their ancestral records somehow makes them less Black. The funny thing about this accusation is that it’s ahistorical. Jamaicans don’t know their exact ancestral villages either. Neither do Haitians, Dominicans, Trinidadians, or most Black people across the Caribbean and the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade didn’t exactly come with family trees. We were all kidnapped, scattered, and dropped off in different places, given different languages, and oppressed under different colonizers. The biggest distinctions between us today often boil down to whether our ancestors were colonized in their homelands or shipped across oceans, and which empire claimed dominion—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, British. The “where” is less about bloodlines and more about geography and oppression.
Many of us managed to hold onto more ancestral traditions than others, but even when cultural memory feels fractured, that doesn’t mean people don’t know who they are. It’s in our DNA, our rhythms, our foods, our rituals. African Americans in particular have been at the center of global Black culture, inspiring movements across the diaspora. Their dances mirror West African movements not by accident, but because ancestral memory is stubborn and unkillable. Hoodoo in the States exists because enslaved Africans refused to let go of their spiritual practices. African Americans may not know their exact tribe, but their ancestors walk with them daily. Anyone suggesting otherwise is choosing ignorance over history.
2. “Are you Spanish or Black?”
Now, I have to pause here because the question itself is absurd. Spanish is a nationality; it refers to people from Spain. Just because you speak Spanish does not make you Spanish. Colonizers dragged their languages across oceans like suitcases, and now we inherit them whether we like it or not. Black people can and do speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, and yes—even English. That doesn’t make them less Black. Being Latine is not a race; it’s an ethnicity cobbled together by colonial violence. Afro-Latine people exist. They always have. Their language doesn’t cancel out their Blackness any more than me writing this article in English cancels mine.
Black and Latine/x are not mutually exclusive. Afro-Latine/x people exist. Because of how anti-Blackness works, the language they speak does not magically strip them of their Blackness and their lived experience.
3. “Colored people are negating their Blackness”
Then there’s the debate around “Colored” people, which reveals how context gets lost when we project our frameworks onto one another. In the U.S., “colored” is a Jim Crow-era relic, a demeaning term used to segregate and oppress African Americans. In South Africa, however, “Coloured” refers to a distinct, legally codified racial group under apartheid—one born out of mixed ancestries that include African (primarily Khoisan), European, and Asian roots. Do both uses stem from white supremacy? Absolutely, but they’re not identical. Our different socializations around race reflect the ways colonial systems operated in different regions. In the U.S. and U.K., mixed people are often racialized as Black. In other places, you’re read as you present. Neither perspective is universal, and forcing them to be is intellectually lazy.
If your racial or ethnic identity shifts depending on where you are or who you’re speaking with, then we have to admit the obvious: even though we live in a profoundly racist world, race itself is still a social construct.
4. Anti-Haitian Rhetoric
And of course, no conversation about diaspora tensions would be complete without addressing anti-Haitian rhetoric. Dominicans are often called out for it, and yes, anti-Haitianism runs deep in our history, but let’s be clear: not all Dominicans share this sentiment. My own family, for example, is one where you will never hear that kind of rhetoric. The truth is, this prejudice isn’t limited to Dominicans; it exists across the Caribbean. Haitians have long been scapegoated and marginalized, not because of who they are, but because of what they symbolize. The Haitian Revolution terrified colonial powers by proving that enslaved Africans could rise up, overthrow empires, and build a free Black republic. That revolutionary audacity was punished with crippling debt, international isolation, and centuries of propaganda designed to demonize Haiti and its people. Anti-Haitianism, then, is not some “natural” tension between neighbors; it is colonial punishment, passed down and internalized. It is the fear of Black freedom, repackaged as prejudice.
How the Media encourages diaspora wars
So why do these tired arguments keep surfacing? Because the media makes sure they do. The media has always thrived on amplifying differences while burying solidarity. Every viral comment about whether someone is “really Black,” every clip engineered to provoke outrage, every algorithm that rewards conflict, these aren’t random. They are features of a system designed to keep Black people divided. It’s the same playbook used against Garvey, Malcolm, the Panthers, and every Pan-African effort before us. The names change. The tools change. The strategy doesn’t.
This is why diaspora wars are so dangerous. They are not just internet squabbles. They are distractions that sap energy from collective liberation. They are fractures that prevent us from building the kind of solidarity capable of dismantling oppressive systems. The truth is, wherever we were dropped off, whatever language we inherited, whichever colonizer we endured, our struggle is interconnected.
Instead of questioning each other’s Blackness, we should be questioning why these systems want us so invested in proving or disproving it in the first place. Unity doesn’t mean pretending our differences don’t exist; it means respecting those differences while refusing to let them be used against us. Because until we grasp that, we’ll keep reenacting the very divisions white supremacy depends on.
At the end of the day, diaspora wars are not about identity; they are about control. And if we keep falling for the bait, we’ll remain exactly where the system wants us: too busy fighting each other to fight for our freedom.
