Edward: And what will you do with your share of the treasure, Ade? Return to Africa and become a king?
Adewale: I cannot return to a place I've never been. I was born in Trinidad, a slave from my first breath!
Edward: But wouldn't you feel more at home there?
Adewale: Would you feel at home in, say, Paris?
Edward: Fair point.
They were already in their homelands, meaning the only lands they’d ever known. They were generations or centuries removed from where their ancestors were trafficked from, and intermixed such that none was from any one African people, place, or culture. Usually all familial history was lost. It’s hard for us wypipo to appreciate how much was lost. In contrast, I can trace my lineage back to the Mayflower and even before.
In contrast, I can trace my lineage back to the Mayflower and even before.
This is really strange to me. I have no knowledge on my family any further back than my great-grandparents, and that only through stories and photos from my grandparents. Beyond that i've never been really interested in the topic.
It was a source of pride in my family, and the lineage kept in family Bibles.
My great grandmother came over as an infant/toddler from Calabria, Italy in the 1920s. That's about as far back as I can trace my family history. If anyone knows how further back it goes I either never met them or they never shared it.
The United States is the only home I know, and much as I hate the empire and all it begets I'm not sure if I could live anywhere else and not feel like a stranger in a strange land.
Beyond that i’ve never been really interested in the topic.
Me neither, but my aunt was interested, and records of Mayflower descendants have been aggressively tracked by WASPs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Society
I will not be able to do the topic justice so for better insights I would suggest looking at African American culture and identity. I've read some very enlightening things over the years about the impact of being a stolen people.
The trans-atlantic slave trade went on for an exceptionally long time. The vast majority of enslaved people in the United States at the time of emancipation were born into slavery. The US was their homeland.
It didn't stop people from trying though. Lincoln sent people to Haiti because he was a white supremacist, and others wanted to send people to Africa.
The American Colonization Society (lol) existed until 1964. This resulted in the founding of Liberia.
The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest among settlements reported with modern recordkeeping.[1][2] Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived (39.8%).[3][4]
One of the reasons they died is because they were colonizing! The indigenous population was not amused.
There was also Freetown, Sierra Leone which is where the british (including canada) encouraged people to go.
They already had roots in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean (Haiti, Barbados, Jamaica, etc.), South America, etc.
They already had a distinct set of cultures even if related to an extent.
It was all they knew by then, in a sense (don't mean to simplify, just giving the short of it)
because it IS their homeland. so many uniformed virtue signaling (mostly white) people dont know what that means. not saying its OP here and i know that this question is in good faith. however, many people are just regurgitating the ”woke” version of remigration propaganda saying it would be better if black diaspora went back. i remember a while ago i had an argument with this german ”person” saying that im inherently a victim for living in europe and i should go back to the ”homeland” my current country destroyed?
also, abolition of slavery was not slave to free citizen overnight. many people were impoverished and in a feudalism scheme basically. by this time nobody felt connected to africa anymore but their current countries. even if they wanted to ”return”?? (to what exactly) nobody would have had the funds for international travel nor the permission to leave.
The colonizers deliberately did everything they could to make that impossible. Besides they weren't going to let free labor just go away like that, they needed to continue to exploit us.
Look up the history of Liberia.
Why should they build a place with their free labor and then go to a continent they weren't even born in without receiving any reparation?
their cultural connection to those homelands was deliberately destroyed by the slavers. if slavery had been ended in one generation then maybe repatriation would've been possible, if they had the means somehow or the government paid for passage.
children of voluntary immigrants lose their connection to their culture nearly as quickly as well, for that matter. There's a discussion James Baldwin had with some white guy i can't find at the moment and he talks about how he can't "go back" to africa any more than the other guy can "go back" to europe.
There is economic conditions and social conditions behind it which deincentivised going back to "where they came from", because for one following their abolition they weren't given the farms to use as their own, the wealth they got were less than others in their own field even after, and they couldn't get proper representation until decades after
Plus, the African Americans had lived a life entirely within American territories itself, by now it was their own culture, they became not one defined by where their ancestors were bought and then abused but by how they survived this abuse, developed and grew a syncretic culture in their new homes
This meant that had economic conditions not been as bad, them leaving would've not been a wish to return to where they came from and reunite, because for them there was nothing to reunite with, they were separate people culturally and possibly even linguistically
Bad example, Liberia was a colonialist project where the Freedman were put in the upper classes and the natives were underclass. Most Liberians had little to nothing on common with African freed men coming from the US, and were mistreated and abused. Calling Liberia a return to homeland project is like calling Israel a return to the Jewish homeland.
Also some to Sierra Leone
It was too expensive, there was a huge language barrier, and the quality of life wouldn't have been been better in most cases.
Because they were born and raised americans?
exactly and slavery lasted centuries. how exactly is anyone in the 1800s supposed to just look up their ancestry from the medieval ages?? another flaw in this question is treating africa as one big country and not separate nations. imagine an asian person from malaysia gets kidnaped to the US so they just deport them back to asia vaguely and they end up in mongolia.
Some didn't even come from Africa.
The first group that did was just dropped on random wasteland coast near today Monrovia and abandoned, most of them died.
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