Why are some black Africans considered white Americans?

Why are some black Africans considered white Americans?

Al Jazeera
2017-02-16

Hind Makki, second-generation Sudanese American who works as an interfaith and anti-racism educator


Sudanese Americans, like all African American and Black Muslims in the US, suffer from invisible intersectionality, writes Makki [Stephanie Keith/Reuters]

Sudanese Americans do not fit neatly into the existing racial classifications of the American society.

I always knew I was black. My childhood was the scent of coconut oil hair cream and the taste of bean pie after Friday prayers in a Bilalian mosque on Chicago’s south side. I knew the words to Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and called Harold Washington my mayor, even though I lived in the suburbs.

My parents had immigrated to the United States from Sudan in the late 1970s and raised my sister and me to be comfortable in our skin. I spoke Arabic at home and English at school where it seemed no one else agreed that I am black…

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