Dont get me wrong, in the US, UK saying that your black makes sense but not really in africa since in those places they have a shared history and similar expirience, a black person from L.A and N.Y can relate on certain topics BUT a somali and a yoruba not really. Especially if the're older or havent been exposed to american culture or havent left there homelands which there are alot more than those who left

I have a bone to pick with pan-africanist since they are so popular especially in the US, UK but in africa the sheer amount of tribalism, genocide, ethnic violence, civil wars, civil strife etc... should be a clear indication that pan-africanism doest work and that a collective black identity only exists outside of africa but they remain popular which kinda annoys me.

I think its an ideology created by western educated african in as a reaction to colonialism (and it was during the cold war which might be why its followers are often communists/socialists/left leaning of some flavor)

I also think that today the movement is kept alive by relatively wealthy college educated 1st gen migrants(from africa) and africans who go abroad for college and africans back home who just know it as the movement that stands up for africans especially when there is anti-colonial rhetoric in the air like right now in Mali.

I kind of think of them as cowards who write books and hold lectures from the comfort of outside africa(not to say africa doesnt have comfortable places(incase someone reads into that)) while in africa thugs like Robert Mugabe, etc... use pan-african rhetoric to justify their regimes. I think pan-africanists have prostituted their ideology (which has an appealling message hence the popularity) to thugs, nationalists, dictators and the like. They havent fought for their ideology at all (which atleast the aforementioned figures did).

I think as africa develops more and more and the differences in these identities become clearer to outsiders the ideology will fizzle out since africa being wealthy proves that we are not oppresed and the wars that would ensue between the new powers on the african continent would kill any myth of africaness the same ways that all the wars europeans fought made the myth of a white european nation united in anything impossible(same kind of applies to pan-asianess after the japanese atrocities of WW2).

Would Like some critical feedback.