Between Suffering and Liberation: Complexities of Blackness Among East African Immigrants in Minnesota in the George Floyd Moment

Abstract In this paper, we explore moments of racial awakening among East African communities in Minnesota. We examine how the events around the George Floyd protests have opened up racial conversations (and gave permission) for many East African Americans in Minnesota, to voice their own pain of being racialized. We call these private and public stories of racial resistance. We highlight stories that take place in private spaces of the community, where experiences of racial violence are silenced, avoided, or outright denied because they cause shame, which mirrors other types of supremacist ideologies within East African societies. We find that these narratives add complexity to notions of Blackness and Black suffering. By looking closer, they are motivated by a desire to struggle against white supremacy. We draw on three of our own stories from two distinct contexts: community conversations and George Floyd protest site in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We do this to examine the different discourses surrounding notions of Blackness and Black sufferings. Through lived experiences of racialization, we interrogate the issue of Black voice, and particularly Black immigrant voice as a site of complex and competing interest that seeks to reconcile different ideologies around Blackness. We put phenomenology of race in conversation with Coloniality and anti-colonial literature to tease out tensions surrounding Blackness and Black suffering in US context. We end with suggestions on alliance building that recognizes and builds on the collective humanity of Black diasporic people.

contextually, requiring us to look inside our own past and present (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).According to Clandinin and Connelly (2000), it is through storytelling and sharing that brings our vulnerability to the fore, where our own secret stories become visible and public.Through stories we explore the East African immigrant community's experiences of race, and racial oppression, as they come to terms with their own racialization as Black people, and desire for liberation.

Autoethnographic conversations
As two East African researchers and educators seeking to deeply understand the effect of white supremacy and racism on the bodies and spirit of Black youth and communities, we draw on autoethnographic conversations (Cohen et al., 2009).Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez (2016) explain that "autoethnographic conversations refer to collaborative autoethnographies in which researchers engage in conversations (face-to-face or e-mail) on an agreed-on topic with the purpose of gaining deeper understanding of the topic through a self-other analysis." (p. 46).Like Black feminist scholars (Deckman & Ohito, 2020) and those writing within critical whiteness studies (Lensmire, 2008), we draw on personal stories to help us understand how members in the East African community are making sense of experiences of race as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and an organizing framework of life in the U.S. For our purpose here, we chose conversational autoethnography as methodology as it provides analytical tools for helping us gain community insight on issues pertaining to racialization and racial oppression.According to Cohen, Duberley and Musson (2009) autoethnography is " … .notsimply a confessional tale but a provocative weave of story and theory … Through using what we might call collaborative autoethnography, we hope to further develop our understanding of our own and each other's experiences" (p.233; see also Chang et al., 2016).Hence, the movement between stories and theory, central to autoethnographic text, as demonstrated by Tami Spry (2001) also characterizes our method in this study (see also Abdi, 2020;Lensmire, 2008).In conversational autoethnography, stories are shared and analyzed in a collaborative manner (Chang et al., 2016).We started with the premise that experience and stories of marginalized people and communities are important sites for theorizing and knowledge production (Deckman & Ohito, 2020;Dillard, 2016;Dutta, 2018;hooks, 2015).We also note that people in marginalized communities have to negotiate with white hegemonic power in all aspects of life, thus stories of racial incidents are critical not only for resistance but also for survival (Lugones, 2010).In our cases, the killing of George Floyd highlighted the relevance of critical incidents for members in the East African community to reflect on the complex ways that Blackness, immigration and racial violence intersect in the U.S.

Critical incident approach for data analysis
We took a critical incident approach in dissecting experiences of race and racialization among members of our East African community in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, as we lived within multiple pandemics of racial violence, COVID-19, and the surge of emboldened white supremacist ideologies as insurrection engulfed the country.Yet, we focused on the events surrounding George Floyd's public murder to frame our thinking and writing about Black immigrant racial experiences and working toward building coalitions of solidarity.We started with conversations about experiences with other community members through our research and activism work.
We started with a weekly Zoom meeting over the span of six weeks, then we met biweekly three times in fall of 2020.All our meetings were via Zoom, with the exception of one phone conversation.Meetings lasted an hour to 90 minutes, with two of the meetings lasting a little over two hours.We started with sharing and listening to each other stories, followed by journaling.We concurrently wrote our stories.After our conversational meeting, we each produced an interpretation of our stories, which we shared in a google document prior to our next meeting, in which we then talked through and asked questions.Next, we wrote our analysis of our stories consulting the literature and the feedback received from close reading of each other's analysis, and finally we talked about it before we produced our final analysis.In what follows we tell two stories of grappling with Blackness or Black racial identity as perceived by members of East African community in Minnesota.We call these public and private stories of race.

Overview of stories
The first two stories are told by Eskender and is about two encounters with other East Africans, Somali and Oromo, in Minnesota.Eskender narrates private stories of race that took place between first-and second-generation immigrants of East African descent.These private stories include private family moments, where family members discussed race, racial relations and politics in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder and the civil unrest that followed suit.Minnesota has the largest East African population in North America.While the East African community includes people from various countries, with several ethnic groups, in the East African region, Somalis and Oromo make up the largest ethnic groups in Minnesota.
The third story is shared by Nimo, and is about her experience in the George Floyd protest site among other East Africans.The story recalls a series of speeches given at 38th and Chicago in South Minneapolis, the intersection where George Floyd begged for his life under the knee of a white police officer and was killed in broad daylight.The East African community in Minnesota has come to know what it means to be subjected to white violence and hate crime.Young Somali-Americans are killed by police, while women with hijabs are attacked and mosques are bombed in the Twin Cities and other metropolitan areas in the state (Ibrahim, 2020).So, the community knows xenophobia and racism, whether people admit it or not.Despite its progressive politics, Minnesota also has one of the largest equity gaps, between whites and Blacks in education, work force, health, housing, etc. Nimo narrates her feelings, thought and a conversation with a fellow Somali-American as she participated in the George Floyd protest with other Somali-Americans.
For us, these stories represent the community's efforts in working through internalized oppression as colonized subjects and the possibilities for collective resistance against white supremacy.We decided to take our three stories together for a number of reasons.First, they show a shifting context and dynamic, in which notions of Blackness are negotiated and re-imagined within our communities.The stories don't tell a linear path of becoming Black in the U.S., 1 but rather a messy process of contestation, ambivalence, resistance, denial, shame, and eventually orientation to the struggles of broader Black diasporic community, and in particular Black Americans.While the stories paint a disaggregated picture of East Africans' relationship with race and racial identity in the U.S. (Abdi, 2020), the stories also hold possibilities of meaning-making that come to rely on lived and communal experiences with white violence (Miller & Lensmire, 2020).
But we also tell these stories together to highlight Blackness as complex and multidimensional, and the ways in which East African immigrant communities grapple in coming to terms with the various aspects and realities of Blackness that counter premigration conception of Blackness.Ultimately, the stories illuminate the relevance of heterogenous Blackness that offers multiple entry points for the East African community in Minnesota in resisting against white supremacy and state violence, which indeed allows for a solidarity with Black Americans.Our hope is that these stories will provide a glimpse of various aspects of Blackness that African immigrants take up as racialized group in North America.Lastly, we hope that the interpretations of these stories have implications for greater unity and coalition with and between the African Diaspora and the immigrant experience as well, specifically through the use of coloniality and anticolonial framings.

Theoretical commitments
Our conceptual framework is grounded in theories of racialization, coloniality and anticolonial that seek to center construction of Blackness in a historical backdrop of colonialism, and domination (Dei, 2017).We rely on literature that interrogates multiple perspectives about Blackness including Blackness both as a political project born out of a particular socio-historical context (Asante, 2005;Dei, 2017;hooks, 1990, 2015;Yancy, 2005) and Blackness as an essentialized identity (Asante et al., 2016;Ibrahim, 2014).The former offers a critical reading of Blackness while the later views Blackness mainly as an imposition.These two readings of Blackness are not exclusive, but rather are interconnected and interdependent.We trace conception of Blackness by Black scholars.We also draw on literature about immigrant racial identity to show how Blackness operates in the lives of Black immigrants in their encounter with racialization.Eventually, we are interested in conceptions of Blackness that can forge unity among African diasporic people in their struggle against coloniality and white supremacy (Asante, 2005).In addition, we are also interested in how East Africans' Black racial identities evolve, moving from an imposition to embracing Blackness as dynamics to struggle through (Ohito, 2020).For this purpose, we find George Sefa Dei's (2017) conceptualizing of Blackness as an example that offers ways to theorize Blackness with its multiplicity in relation to African immigrants' experiences in North America.For instance, Dei (2017) differentiates between contemporary global understanding of Blackness and critical conceptions of Blackness.For us this means interrogating the tension between a colonial reading of Blackness/Africanness and anti-colonial understanding of Blackness.We understand that all Black diasporic people experience both aspects of Blackness.We explore this tension in the racial stories of East Africans that we offer here.
Coloniality is used to explain the processes in which white racial superiority became hegemonic globally, even after direct colonial rule ended in many parts of the world.Coloniality of white power (Quijano, 2000) explores modernity as systems, in which European/American hegemony came to materialize through colonization of land, labor, people and resources.Hence, coloniality addresses how issues of domination and oppression became biological-that the construction of racial hierarchy became intertwined with questions of knowledge, and knowledge production (Wynter, 2003).Hence, coloniality of power solidified white supremacy discursively and materially globally (Mignolo, 2000).It is important to highlight that African immigrants, like other immigrant groups, in North America internalize the global hierarchy of whiteness (Abdi, 2020, Dei, 2017).However, once in the U.S., as dark-skinned people, it is impossible not be rendered into Blackness, a construct meant to dominate and exploit by white power.George Yancy (2005) explains that Blackness is experienced and lived through the white gaze: How can we, as Black people, fail to raise the question of who we are when white racist America constantly forces us to engage in existential and ontological self-interrogation?But this is the situation into which we have been thrown.I, personally, did not create the hyper racial and racist situation in North America.Like those who crossed the Middle Passage, I inherited this nightmare.Indeed, the whole issue concerning the so-called fact and meaning of my "Blackness" is a question grounded within a racist historical context … the historical process that shaped the white imaginary and, hence, how I am seen, was beyond my control.This raises the issue of socio-ontological constitutionality; for the meaning of my "Blackness" is constituted through the medium of the white gaze, which is a historical phenomenon.Within the present context, then, the meaning of my Blackness is found within history.Indeed, the historicity of my "Blackness" places it within a narrative historical context that is open, not closed.(p.237) Yancy (2005) acknowledges that Blackness exists only within the consciousness that comes from a socio-historical moment of domination and oppression, in which Black people did not create but continuously made to suffer for it.This however, does not mean that Blackness constitutes only suffering, and bounded by the essentializing impulse of whiteness.It is because of its marginality that Blackness evolved into many things (Asante, 2005;hooks, 2015, 1990;Ohito, 2020).bell hooks (2015) explains that the generative power of Blackness is due to its marginal relationship with white power.She explains: I named marginality as a site of transformation where liberatory black subjectivity can fully emerge, emphasizing that there is a "definite distinction between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive structure and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance, as location of radical openness and possibility.(p.50) Colonial rendering of Blackness means delegating the dark body to the sphere of nothingness (Yancy, 2005(Yancy, , 2008)), which was used in justifying colonizing African bodies materially and discursively.Hence, Blackness and anti-Blackness racism are based on an objectification of Blackness by coloniality of white power (Wynter, 2003).Moreover, we can't take up anti-Blackness without considering the coloniality of whiteness (Dei, 2017;Grosfoguel, 2013;Lugones, 2010).
For our purpose here, on the one hand, we see how East Africans resistance of Black racial identity may be read as not relating to this social and historical processes that created the Black other.Indeed, much of the research on Black immigrant racial identity offers similar explanation without taking into account how the global racial hierarchy also influences how notions of race and racial relations exist in East African societies (Habecker, 2012;Kusow & Eno, 2015).On the other hand, it seems that 1.5 and second generation East African immigrants are making sense of all the various aspects of Blackness in the U.S., compared to their first-generation immigrant parents.Next, we explore Blackness in African and Caribbean immigrant literature to situate the various ways that Blackness is conceptualized.

Blackness among Black immigrants
Much of the literature around Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean focuses on the essentializing nature of Black racial identity and the processes in which these immigrant groups either resist or embrace aspects of Blackness.In the literature, we found three main emerging lines of thought around Black immigrant identities and their complex relationship with race in North America.
The first line is based on empirical work mainly sociological/anthropology; this literature describes how African and Caribbean Blacks tend to distance themselves from African Americans to gain social mobility (Asante et al., 2016;Treitler, 2013;Waters, 1999).As a way to gain social mobility within the racialized hierarchies of their newly found society, African and other Black immigrants may distance themselves from African Americans (Abdi, 2020;Bashi & McDaniel, 1997;Treitler, 2013).The second line of thought focuses on ethnographic studies of urban young Black immigrants.Here, researchers explain young urban African immigrants' understanding of what it means to be Black in both U.S and Canadian contexts is a multi-dimensional and nuanced process (Ibrahim, 2014;Chacko, 2019;Asante et al., 2016;Creese, 2019).Ibrahim (2014) explains that the reason for this complication is because prior to African immigrants' arrival, excluding those from South Africa, race was not a defining representation of their identity.Thus, as they migrate to Western societies (e.g., U.S. and Canada) where Black bodies are signified and objectified as other, race becomes their primary means of identification.And the third line of work is based on taking Blackness as a political and decolonial project among African scholars writing about Blackness in the diaspora (Abdi, 2020;Dei, 2017Dei, , 2018)).These scholars, even though miniscule in number, approach Blackness from anti-colonial perspectives.
These three expressions of "immigrant" Blackness provide an entry for an anti-colonial and political consciousness of Blackness.Our expressions serve as a reflection of our way of being and thinking, which can be conveyed through the articulation of our identity.In our public story of race, many Somali/East African youth voiced their frustration of racial violence, participated in poetry readings, and their clothing reflected an infusion of East African cultural traditions with urban hip-hop influences.As East African immigrants take up expressions of Blackness, how may they find their way toward a full embodiment and political consciousness of what the anti-colonial representation of Blackness demands?In other words, how may these outward representations of a particular kind of Blackness open ways for a decolonial project amongst East African diaspora?Perhaps these external expressions may be utilized as tools toward a political and decolonial project of Blackness.

Private and public stories of race
In this section, we present our stories.The first and second authors of this article share their conversations and experiences with other East African members of their respective communities.The stories reveal contestations and negotiations with, within, and around both local and transnational notions of Blackness.As we share our stories, we also look for possibilities of solidarity between Black East African immigrants and Black Americans, who face the same Coloniality of Whiteness.The private discussions versus the public faces of Blackness point to several tensions that East African immigrants face when dealing with race (whether themselves being racialized, or merely experiencing white supremacy/Coloniality).We first share private stories, and then public stories of race that emerge from the East African communities in Minnesota.As we tell our stories, we shift our language into the first-person; below, the second author is sharing the stories of private conversations and the first author is sharing her public story on race.

Private stories of race 1: Conversation with Fatima
In a conversation, I had with a Somali American educator, Fatima, we discussed how the murder of George Floyd impacted the self and the East African community at large because it brought their own racialized trauma to consciousness.Fatima revealed that this event provided a lens toward understanding the systematic oppression of African Americans and her own racial identity as a Black Muslim woman in America.Among the many protesters in the wake of George Floyd's death, there were a vast number of East African immigrants.So much so that Black American protesters acknowledged the presence and solidarity felt from members of the Somali community.From a video on twitter that went viral, a Black American protestor exclaimed: I want to give it up to the Somalian community, we need to learn a lot from y'all, y'all are one of the strongest allies we have.And we have disrespected y'all and y'all showed us that y'all are on the front line with us.
This acknowledgement indicates the emerging solidarity felt and a desire to learn and unify against white supremacy.Fatima would provide context to help deepen this understanding.
Fatima recalled how she shared the video of the George Floyd murder to her parents and distinctly remembers the visceral response.She said: you know, the murder of George Floyd really allowed my mom and dad to see that the system isn't fair and that the problem is not because of African Americans.The problem is the system that does not recognize the humanity of Black people.
Afterward, she then reflected on her parents' prior views on race and particularly on Black Americans.She recalled her parents' early experiences with racial representations in America.She explained that during the process of resettlement to the U.S., immigration officers provided videos meant to teach Fatima, and her parents with other families, about life in the U.S. as new immigrants.She explained that "this video, meant to ease the incorporation of newly immigrants, showed a diverse group of people doing all kinds of things, capturing the multi-racial and multi-ethnic identities representative of America."She then expressed to me that the video displayed Black Americans "just sitting around outside." These two reflections by Fatima provide a lens toward understanding the pain produced by the public execution of George Floyd and a desire to collectively struggle against white supremacy.The highly traumatizing, dehumanizing video that captured the murder of George Floyd, forced the older and younger generations of East African immigrants to interrogate their previously held notions of Black American life.A life of "just sitting around outside," a stagnant life that does not participate in the American dream of productivity.It seems that Fatima's parents are shocked to see how that life is easily taken away by a white man.Juxtaposing the George Floyd video, to the video shown by immigration officers upon their arrival, disrupts the negative tropes, and racialized stereotypes, providing an uncut lens into the Black experience in America.The George Floyd video showed a different reality in which Black lives were undervalued and even killed.Black people were not "just sitting around outside," they were prosecuted by whites with unsatiated desire for Black suffering (Hartman, 2008).The same white desire that also killed Dolal Idd, and Isak Aden, two young Somali men in the Twin Cities.Fatima and her parents recognized the urgency of the situation, the whole world was watching and talking about the events surrounding the killings of George Floyd, more importantly about anti-Blackness racism, and the disregard for Black lives.
We suggest that Fatima's story is important for two reasons.First, it shows a step toward critical examination of Blackness in the US among some East African immigrants.Second, the cruelty of the George Floyd murder by a white man opened up conversations for an anti-colonial and political awakening among Fatima and her family.As Dei (2017) indicates, this anti-colonial rendering of Blackness proposes a collective understanding of Blackness for all racially Black people of the world in order to resist white supremacy and create better future possibilities.These two points rest on the egregious ways that a Black man's life was taken.We see the significance of Fatima and her family choosing to reflect on the videos in tandem, because the visual imagery speaks to the question of representation as a central element in the construction of Blackness (Hall, 1990;hooks, 1990, 2015).Fatima's story seems to present anti-Blackness racism as an unfortunate phenomenon that one encounters upon entering the US, where immigrants have to learn about Black Americans and aspire to be a good minority by avoiding to become African-Americans, who are "just sitting around outside." More importantly, while Fatima's story centers on structural racism and white supremacy, it also avoids engaging with anti-Blackness ideologies held by East Africans (Abdi, 2020;Kusow & Eno, 2015).These anti-Blackness ideologies may be held by East Africans prior to arriving in the U.S. (Abdi, 2020;Asante et al., 2016).Asante and colleagues (2016) explain how some African immigrants might have been exposed to negative representations of African American through popular media (e.g., movies, TV) prior to their migration.This exposure to racialized tropes of African Americans strongly influences their perception of African Americans and how they interact with them in America.Adding to this notion, Abdi (2020) argues that these anti-Black ideologies of African Americans are rooted in Somalis socio-cultural histories.She puts forth examples of contemporary anti-Black sentiments, expressions, attitudes, and practices to illustrate its connection to Somalis' societal practices.Importantly, these ideologies promote a sense of superiority and can operate as a racializing project that advances racist ideas of African Americans (Abdi, 2020;Pierre, 2004).
In the next story, we explore how racial discourses within the East African community complicates Fatima's story about coming to terms with the interconnectedness between anti-Black racism sentiments and experiences of racialization and racial trauma.We tease out these tensions by examining Eskender's conversation with a young second-generation Oromo man.

Private story of race 2: Conversation with Abdi
During a casual phone call, I had with Abdi, a young second-generation Oromo male, we discussed how the many racialized events (George Floyd, racial protests, U.S. capital insurgence) sparked his own racial awakening.Abdi expressed that these events "made me more aware of the racial issues in America" and provoked a desire to learn and respond to this awareness.This newly found desire motivated him to vote for the first time in his life.In fact, the 2020 presidential election produced record numbers of citizens and Minnesota had the highest turnout of any state (Desilver, 2021;Fabina, 2021).
In our discussion, Abdi and I talked about the absence of conversations about race within our community and families.I asked him if he had any discussions about race, like the conversation we were currently having, with other community or family members.Abdi hesitated, then explained how topics of race or racialized violence are rarely discussed.I've known Abdi for a few years, he openly reaches out to me for advice and mentorship which has allowed me to pick up on some of his patterns of behavior.This hesitation suggested that he was struggling to bring forth the topic of race into various community/family conversations.This would become apparent as our conversation continued.
Keeping with the topic of voting, Abdi expressed that his father and uncle voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.He nervously chuckled as I responded shockingly, "No way!Did they tell you why?" Abdi explained that his father and uncle voted for Trump because "Trump never bombed Iraq."This young, second-generation East African immigrant indicated that upon hearing this justification from his father and uncle it bothered him internally, however in the moment Abdi explained, "I avoided the conversation and quickly changed the topic."Abdi's comment was puzzling to me due to the highly racialized and polarized context surrounding the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The 2020 election was a highly contentious race.Media reports and several news outlets engaged in public discourse and conversations about white supremacy, systemic racism, and the Black condition in America.It was ubiquitous that those that voted for Trump were supporters of white supremacist ideals.For example, after the election results and Trump's days in office winding down, he evoked a crowd of supporters by stating: "We fight like hell.And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore … ."Continuing by calling on protestors to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and get to the capital because the election was "stolen."The crowd heard and obeyed his calls; they stormed the capital.What is important to note is the symbolism during this insurrection was unarguably representative of white supremacy (e.g., confederate flags)-all indicating what Trump and his presidency represented.Abdi's desire to vote and his discomfort with some family members voting for Trump symbolizes his action toward this new racial awakening, however this comes with some evident tensions.
Abdi's story is important for two reasons; it demonstrates how conversations of race may be (un)consciously avoided and silenced by East African immigrants, and secondly reveals the troubling prioritization of whiteness over Black suffering.Abdi's story reveals the tensions of how becoming more racially aware may evoke an (un)conscious avoidance and shame paired with this awakening.This is reflected in Abdi's subtle avoidance and shifting of the conversation after learning his family members voted for Trump.Abdi's explanation indicated that there was no rejection of his racially Black identity, but there was a hesitation in accepting what it may call for.As Dei (2017)

argues:
To be Black is to be an embodiment of struggle and resistance challenging White supremacy and dominance.For me calling oneself "Black" or "African" is claiming an identity that is synonymous with struggle, politics, oppression, and resistance.Evoking Black identity and Blackness for anything else is a betrayal.The logic of survival for Black bodies rests on a preparedness to define, fight, and insist on oneself and the collective, the existence of our collective humanity and destiny.(p. 20) This embodiment is not only an alignment of our collective struggle against white supremacy, but also our ability to be prepared to defend this identity both individually and collectively.Without the proper tools, it may comprise the future possibilities.
Secondly, the rationale that "Trump never bombed Iraq" suggests a prioritization of whiteness over notions of Blackness and Black suffering through the religious classification of their identity.Solidarity and coalition building amongst Muslims across diverse racial and ethnic identities is well understood (Husain, 2019).However, the utilization of this justification in this specific context demonstrates how East African immigrants, especially those that identify as Muslim, employ their religious identification as a tool to avoid self-identification with their racial identity (Ajrouch & Kusow, 2007;Guenther et al., 2011).This avoidance separates and distances them from other African Americans, regardless if they share the same religious identification.The danger is not only in the action of voting for Trump and what he represents, but more deeply, it reveals the dark desires of many racially Black immigrants.The aspirational mindset toward obtaining whiteness which requires a distancing from the bottom group (i.e., African Americans) (Abdi, 2020;Treitler, 2013).To become more American, many immigrant groups culturally integrate by adopting values aligned with conservative white American culture even at the conscious cost of cultural and linguistic identity loss (see Ngo, 2017).
This private conversation about race reminds us how nuanced and multi-dimensional the path toward coalition and solidarity building for East African immigrants can be.
Abdi's story highlights that though there may be a desire toward embracing a collective racial Black identity, especially in second-generation immigrants, that spark needs to be nurtured.This means youth may feel a motivation toward embracing an anti-colonial perspective of Blackness and what that identity calls for, especially after national moments of racialized events.However, that inclination quickly dissipates within private spaces of the community.How do we nurture the internal desires of this embodiment with external contestations of what that embodiment represents?In other words, as second-generation East African immigrants become more racially conscious and develop a desire to respond to this new racial awakening(s), how may we cultivate these desires to facilitate the political consciousness of what Black solidarity building represents?
Public stories of race: At the George Floyd protest site in Minneapolis, Minnesota I found myself pulled to the familiar site of long flowy abayas and colorful hijabs as we walked through the crowds gathered in 38th and Chicago.This was the Somali niche of the protest, a small group of people, probably 20-30, who looked like younger versions of me (but without my accent), gathered to talk about Blackness and anti-Blackness.They were mostly Somalis, some whites, and few other people of color, mainly nonwhite Muslims.As I listened to the speakers.I was intrigued that all the Somali speakers referred to themselves as Blacks and used Blackness as their own.The speakers' Blackness was performed through speeches, poetry, and freestyle.I was a bit surprised that none of the speakers used the term Somali-American in their various modes of expression.There was hardly any reference to distinction between Somalis and African Americans in many of the speeches given, except once by a first-generation Somali woman.
As I listened to the different speakers, I was feeling uneasy and a bit unsettled.I realized that I was having conflicting and contradicting feelings, about hearing my community members embracing Blackness so easily and openly.The reason being I am familiar with the deep ambivalence around Blackness within the Somali community in North America and in the diaspora.As someone who has an African-American spouse and children, I have experienced anti-Blackness in the community on multiple occasions.I have experienced, first hand, anti-Blackness racism and sentiments toward African-Americanism (Abdi, 2020).Despite my feelings of hesitation, I found myself moving toward the crowd.I was more than curious; I wanted my assumptions about Somali's relationships with Black racial identity to be challenged and proven wrong.I hoped for the acceptance of my African American sons among my people, but more importantly, I knew what was at stake for Somali American community in the U.S. I knew that it really did not matter whether Somalis embraced Black racial identity or not.
Within white supremacist society, they were seen as Black and subjected to racial violence as other Black bodies.It did not matter whether Isak Aden considered himself Black or not, the police saw him as a Black man.Similarly, the state saw Mohamed Noor as a Black man, who killed a white woman.The State of Minnesota did not see Noor as a man, who was fearful of his life as a white woman barged toward him in a dark alley (Ellis & Olonso, 2019).Noor, a Somali American police officer, and the first law enforcement ever convicted for police killing in the state by killing a white woman.
The white supremacist state unleashes violence in its attempt to control, and possess Black bodies, and when met with the slightest resistance it murders Black bodies.To the white power that choked the life out of George Floyd, it is irrelevant whether a Black man is an African immigrant or African American.In the dark body, the only thing that the white gaze sees is an object to be dominated.
Blackness was invoked both as a connective (Yancy, 2005) of East Africans to larger Black struggle, and as performed identity through speeches, poetry, and free-style by several young Somali activists (Ibrahim, 2014).I was acquainted with few of them, and even though I did not know them closely, I have been in the same spaces in and around the Twin Cities.It seemed to me that many of the young people speaking were working through their own Black identity in a public way.Young Somali-Americans were expressing their own understanding of Blackness, or to be exact Black Muslimness as they refer to themselves.
I could feel what Awad Ibrahim (2014) calls "the rhizome of Blackness" reaching its tentacles and engulfing me as I got close to the speakers.The scene had a distinctly Somali-American vibe, many of the young Somalis dress and carry themselves with an urban style.While this is particularly true for the males, with their Afro haircut and baggy clothes.There is also a notably Somali-American/Canadian female urban style, that flaunts long black abayas with sneakers, hoodies and caps placed on top of colorful hijabs.After giving salaam, to the young Somali woman, standing next to me.She returned the salaam with a smile then I said to her "it is nice to hear about Black Muslim experience, but how come no one is saying the word Madow today?Don't you think that Madow Muslims are Black Muslims?I said provokingly, not knowing how she would respond to my uninvited inquiry.
She turned her body toward me to respond as if she was surprised.It was difficult to see her facial expression, because she was wearing a face mask.
She explained: You know when the police killed Isak Aden, they saw him as a Black man and not as Somali.It does not matter what we say about Madow or Black people, from the outside, we are also seen as Black.
Nimo: "So, you agree with the sentiments of these speakers?"Young woman: "Yes, I do, even though we are also oppressed by the police regardless, whether we say we are Somali, and we are not Madow, none of that matters, really.I think these people are here because they also want justice for their own people." We paused to listen to the young Somali woman speaker.
this is why I love Black women [she quoted a Black woman author about the killing of another Black woman some sixty years ago] … … I am a Black woman … .I want to make space for Black people.I am tired of coming to protests, I am tired of speaking, I am tired of being angry, I am tired, [giggled nervously] I am never gonna be tired of being Black, but I am tired of having to explain my Blackness, I am tired of having to make space for people who don't want to make space for me, I am tired of non-Black people in the Muslim community … .
Nimo: "Who are the Black Muslims, she is talking about, you think?" Young woman: "I think she means Somalis, in relation to non-Black Muslims, the Arabs, also discriminate against us.Everyone knows that." I was paying attention to the term Black and anti-Black as I listened to different speakers, mainly paying attention to the young Somali activists' speeches.Other speakers included the leader of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Somali-American man, and few Arab Muslims from the Twin Cities community.I was intrigued by how all the Somali-Americans that spoke used the term Black in talking about issues of oppression, police brutality, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant racism.In other words, they seemed to not differentiate between Somali-Americans and African-Americans as they invoked Blackness and Black suffering.Phrases like "we Black people … .have been facing this for so long" seemed to suggest that Blackness encompassing for all that (Yancy, 2005).In particular, the speakers connect their own lived experiences with that of Malcolm X, "as our Imam [a religious leader in Islam]," Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Isak Aden, and George Floyd.These phrases did not distinguish Black people by religion, or national origin, despite that in the privacy of their homes and communities they may see very deep distinctions between themselves and African Americans.Yet here, the speakers seemed to be drawing on important aspects of Blackness.
In the next section, we want to follow Blackness and anti-Blackness at the George Floyd protest site.Inspired by Sara Ahmed's reading of whiteness, we are interested in how the term Black was taken up, and what it was/not doing for the Somalis and other Muslims that don't identify as Black, or at least privately.To follow Blackness helps us understand how Blackness sticks to bodies in public spaces, whether imposed or embraced.We also want to follow Blackness, in private spaces, when Blackness slides off bodies, and becomes a stigma to be avoided.More importantly, we want to understand how Blackness is mobilized by those involved in activism, in particular in the George Floyd moment, and how Blackness is engaged in family and community spaces.We want to follow the speeches but also the silences that surround Blackness.Eventually, we want to understand how Blackness is mobilized publicly and privately to forge connections among oppressed communities disconnected by the demands of whiteness and white supremacy.

Discussion and conclusion
In this article, we share our stories of interaction with other Black African immigrants from our communities in the U.S. of African immigrants.We found that the private stories of race were complex and exposed serious tensions around essentialized notions of Blackness and the power of Blackness as dynamics to struggle through.The public stories of race demonstrated opportunities for Black solidarities, while the private stories highlighted East African immigrants attempt to resist these essentializing aspects of Blackness, in other words, Blackness as imposed by white supremacist society.In our assessment, we see three broad considerations for solidarity around Blackness for East African American Blacks: how East Africans "follow" Blackness, how Blackness can be transformative, and how it can be connective and generative.

Following Blackness
Following Blackness within our East African community means two things for us.It means to investigate Blackness in its multiplicity, as an imposed identity that labels dark bodies as subhuman (Fanon, 1952;Wynter, 2003), and Blackness as a site of liberation, connecting, and healing for people of African descent and ascendant.It means to explore how the United States' newest Black community comes to terms with or navigates Blackness in its totality, as a site of suffering, but also as a site of resilience, perseverance, brilliance, and creativity (hooks, 1990(hooks, , Ohito, 2020)).We are interested in how these various aspects of Blackness are taken up by African immigrant community through stories and conversations that take place both in public and private spaces.

Blackness as transformative
For us following Blackness among East Africans means also reading what is said, and what is not said.It means reading the subtle ways that Blackness is embraced and rejected at the same time by the community and by the same individual at times.Because Blackness also demands engaging race, as Blackness while pre-ontological (Dei, 2017) is also intimately connected to history of racial violence and exploitation (Yancy, 2005(Yancy, , 2016)).So, while we are inspired by multiple readings of Blackness (Dei, 2018;Yancy, 2005), we also acknowledge Blackness as an imposed identity that is essentializing (hooks, 1990).Hence, a critical engagement of Blackness also means engaging race, and racial oppression.We agree with Fanon that to account for race is to offer a different reading and understanding of the world (Ahmed, 2014).It is to see the hypocrisy of hegemony even in spaces occupied by people of color, who are themselves marginalized.It also means coming to terms with the ways in which one is implicated in various contexts.For the East African community, engaging race means coming to terms with social hierarchies in mainstream and within the community, such as race, cast, or tribe.It means working against categories in which one is subjugated but also in categories in which one is privileged.Asante (2005) sees Blackness having a transformative power for all that are oppressed, because it "possesses a political and social sensitivity and sensibility directed against all forms of human oppression."Thus, by upholding these critical elements of Blackness, one's orientation shifts.Asante explains: Blackness is a virtue, not unlike justice, differing only in the object of application.To do justice is to participate in correcting actions deemed to have transgressed civil, criminal, or commercial codes.To do blackness is to participate in an assertive program of human equality, indeed, affirmative behavior to eradicate doctrines of white supremacy.Thus, "not by color, but by their words and deeds you shall know them" might be a new axiom.(p.215) The speakers at the George Floyd protest site seemed to be drawing on the transformative nature of Blackness as a new value that is used for political mobilization against oppression (Asante, 2005).Since East Africans are racialized by institutions as Blacks, they too come to experience the lived reality of race in the US, albeit temporarily.It seemed that the activists at the protest site were taking up Blackness as a political project in order to challenge white supremacy.The young women's comment "It does not matter what we say about Madow or Black people, from the outside, we are all seen as Blacks" suggests a consciousness and understanding of a common struggle in the hands of law enforcement.

Blackness as connective and generative
To return to the young woman's speech about her Blackness and the tiring effect of what it means to constantly explain oneself to both white America and Black America about one's Blackness as African, is to grapple with long history of anti-Blackness among immigrants of color.It is to grapple with Somali society's own racial and cast history, and to grapple with the reality of white supremacy that marks the dark African body as Black without regard to any differences among people of African descent.While, it is not helpful to blame our own internalized racial and cast hegemony on white supremacy, even though white supremacy's relentless appetite for Black suffering is urgent (Hartman, 2008).The speaker's "I'm tired of explaining my Blackness" could be referring to whites, African Americans and/or to other East Africans, who may not see Blackness as part of their reality.In addition, her statement highlights the unbounded nature of Blackness as theorized by many Black scholars (Dei, 2017(Dei, , 2018;;hooks, 1990;Ohito, 2019;Williams, 2016;Yancy, 2005).
Meanwhile, Esther Ohito (2020) draws on the writing of her students (both Black and white) to theorize what Blackness means for them.For Ohito an important point of thinking about Blackness is to foreground it in the experiences of Black people, including Black youth.For the youth in her study, Blackness is many things, most importantly, Blackness is a site of production and creativity, beauty and love.Ohito explains that Blackness as something more than an abiding source of suffering and abjection.Blackness predates being (Dei, 2018).We agree with Dei (2017) that Blackness with its multiplicity has to engage with the diverse reality of those interpellated to its realm.That is Blackness must respond to the lived reality of all Blacks, including the African immigrant.Dei (2017) explains: Scholarship about Blackness must also respond to Black and African peoples' concerns, hopes and aspirations, and particularly what our intellectual projects as learners mean to our people and communities.Black and African scholars must be answerable to our communities however contested, diverse or heterogeneous these communities are.Our scholarship cannot study our communities "from a distance."Our scholarship cannot be about scholar detachment, separation or abstract claims of objectivity and science.Our scholarship about Blackness must subvert Western hegemonic systems of knowing that historically have articulated majority interests over our communities.(p.77) As East African immigrants are absorbed into the diasporic Black community, the boundaries and meanings around Blackness also expand.For 1.5-and second-generation Black immigrants, adopting Black speech and dress style (Ibrahim, 2014) may provide an entrance point to the multi facets of Blackness.However, our analysis indicates that while Black esthetics and youth culture may provide avenues for coalition building among African immigrants and African-Americans.A more poignant explanation is experiences of racialization and racial violence of East Africans that paves the way for mobilizing Blackness for political resistance against white supremacy.In addition, our analysis also showed how the stories surrounding the murder of George Floyd were taken up by different immigrant generations in the community and the meanings they drew were vastly different, but also connected to larger narratives about race in the U.S. and globally.We worry that a narrow conception of Blackness laden with racist ideologies, among some immigrants, is also detrimental to the anti-colonial efforts.Yet, we