Diaspora Divisions Discussion

There was a recent discourse on social media regarding Somalis in Selma and the backlash it sparked among some Black Americans. It became a widely discussed topic within our team, and it echoed something I have been thinking about for a long time.

There are divisions within parts of the Black diaspora. This is something I’ve understood for years through personal experience, observation, and conversation. The Black and African community at large is not always

connected in the way we assume it is, and that lack of cohesion can become an obstacle to meaningful collective progress.

In my personal life, there was a time I was surrounded by African and Black women who were very different from me culturally and experientially. I struggled to form deeper connections in that space, and over time this led to misunderstandings, resentment, and assumptions on both sides. Looking back, I could have accepted that disconnect as permanent. I could have given up on community altogether on my identity,

my people, and even my sense of belonging.

But I didn’t.

Through growth, reflection, and a deeper understanding of both where we come from and where we are now, I’ve come to believe that unity is possible. Not forced sameness, but grounded solidarity that allows us to hold both shared experience and real difference within the diaspora.

That belief is what eventually led me to spaces like Ayada Leads, where I now work alongside powerful Black and African women who are both similar to me in many ways and completely different in others.

In my personal life as well, I’ve built friendships across the diaspora relationships where difference does not become distance. I have Black American friends with whom I share genuine bonds rooted in mutual respect and the understanding that we are stronger together than apart.

And that is what I fear we are losing sight of.

The more we position ourselves as oppositional, the more we reinforce systems that benefit from our fragmentation. History has shown repeatedly that unity creates leverage. When we are aligned, we gain power; when we are divided, we are more easily overlooked, undervalued, or exploited.

We have seen this before with the Black communteies in america. We were not able to get this far by being divided, we stood together in the 1950s and 1960s during boycotts and marches, and those moments of collective action reshaped history.

Now, it feels like there are forces trying to reverse that progress, and the targeting of specific communities is one of the ways division is maintained. This is not new. It is a repeating pattern meant to weaken collective momentum by turning us against one another. And when we forget that history, we make it easier for it to

repeat itself.

It is time for us to come together. As the saying goes, all skin folk is kin folk, but beyond the

phrase, the deeper truth is that solidarity has always been one of our greatest tools for survival and progress.

We’ve also seen what unity looks like in practice. Creatives like Issa Rae have built spaces that bring Black women together on screen and behind the scenes, expanding opportunity and representation.

Gabrielle Union has also spoken about how Black actresses support one another in negotiating fair pay and pushing back against industry undervaluing ensuring that individual wins can become collective standards rather than isolated exceptions.

These are reminders that solidarity is not abstract, it is practical.

So what does real unity actually require?

It begins in everyday life, across three core spaces: interpersonal relationships, the workplace, and families.

In interpersonal relationships, unity starts with curiosity over assumption. Instead of interpreting difference as distance, we learn to ask questions, listen fully, and resist reducing people to stereotypes tied to nationality, accent, or background. It also means staying present through discomfort rather than turning it into rejection, because misunderstanding is often the beginning of understanding.

In the workplace, unity looks like collaboration without hierarchy of identity. It means advocating for fairness not only for those who feel familiar to us, but across the board. It also means sharing opportunities, mentoring where possible, and refusing to participate in systems that isolate or tokenize Black and African colleagues. When one person is undervalued, it should be treated as a collective concern.

In families and close communities, it means unlearning inherited narratives that encourage separation, whether between African and African American identity or between ethnic groups within the broader

diaspora.

It requires intentional conversations across generations about history, migration, and shared

struggle, while also respecting the reality of different lived experiences.

None of this requires perfection. It requires intention.

Change overnight is not easy. But transformation begins with small, consistent choices made daily.

Evenone decision to pause before reacting, to question an immediate assumption, to notice when history is repeating itself in how we interpret one another, matters more than it may seem.

A key part of this work is also learning to actively challenge our own internal biases and preset assumptions. We all carry inherited narratives, cultural conditioning, and past experiences that shape how we see people before we even engage with them. Combatting this requires slowing down our first reactions, questioning where a thought is coming from, and being willing to revise it in real time.

Growth in unity begins with this internal accountability before it ever becomes external action.

We also have to be honest about the reality that division weakens us. When we turn on each other, we unintentionally reinforce systems that benefit from our separation. That is not paranoia, it is pattern recognition shaped by history.

So the work becomes conscious. It is the daily decision to choose understanding over assumption and connection over distance. To resist the urge to see one another as opposition, and instead recognize shared stakes in each other’s futures.

This is not limited by nationality, background, or migration history. Whether Black American, African, immigrant, or otherwise connected to the diaspora, we are part of a larger story still unfolding. If we are going to shape that story rather than be shaped by it, we have to learn how to move together more often than we move apart.

Arm in arm does not mean identical, it means intentional unity in spite of difference.

We must come together and remain committed to understanding one another. That means recognizing history, acknowledging difference, and still choosing to build something collective beyond it.

Thank you for reading.