“I Am Blacker Than You”

This paper attempts to place the African immigrant and the African American in the context of their conditions in the United States. It addresses the issue of Americanization and the development of multiple identities that is fundamental to the contestation of “Blackness” in the United States. More importantly, the study discusses resource allocation and appropriation as critical to understanding the schisms between the African immigrant and the African American, focusing especially on how the conflict and tension potentially benefits other racial categories. It highlights the fact that conflict and tension between both groups result directly from the dominant White racial framing, wherein powerless groups unable to effectively challenge the forces that oppress them, attack themselves or people like themselves. To explain this complex interaction between Whites, African immigrants, and African Americans, this paper develops the theory of manipulative deflection, the central tenet of which is the subjective experience of deprivation that diminishes the construction of a holistic Black identity and produces confusion and conflict among Blacks in the United States.