Well I had a good Kenyan friend in high school who was responsible for me graduating. By my Jr. year I was ready to bounce from school, just sick of all the lies being taught, I felt I was too militant to finish my catholic school education. This Brother taught me that I could maintain my African Identity even within the Whitest surroundings, as long as I was grounded in who I was; he’d also show up at my door on the days I didn’t go to school. I’d often go to school just to keep this Giant Kenyan off my doorstep. LoL!
I learned much about community, and communalism from being welcomed into the multigenerational homes of my Ethiopian, Kenyan, South African, Gambian, Senegalese, and Muritanian friends over the years. I receive a Continental quality education from those interactions, and I’ve always been welcomed into the local migrant communities in the places I’ve lived over the years, the same goes for the West Indian communities.
Over the years I’ve had a number of brilliant African professors who took a keen interest in my and my Pan-Africanism. I can’t count how many books, how many hours of debate and conversation, how much patience and understanding I got from Africans born, raised, and educated in African; those experiences are central to my overall understanding and life mission.
Trust me, the vast majority of my interations with Continetial Africans has been positive, that’s way I can easlily dismiss those New Negro Africans and their rejecitons of the Afriaon Diaspora.