“Zadi Zokou’s Black N Black (2019) is an educative documentary spanning an hour thirty-three minutes and fifty-five seconds shot in 4K resolution embodying perspectives from a plethora of disciplines, anthropology, arts, education, history, law, media, religion, on the hostilities between Africans and African Americans in the United States.

The film covers themes on the history of slavery, the Transatlantic trade, contemporary migrations, legacies and the broader spectrum of social distancing and internalised racism between African Americans and African immigrants, equal access to jobs and opportunities, name-calling, stereotypes and processes and prospects of reconciliation between upcoming Africans and diasporic generations. One of the top highlights in the film, Henry Louis Gates Jnr’s excerpt from “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” (2010), consolidates historians at Boston University, John Thornton and Linda Heywood’s findings that about “90 per cent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders.” Though it seems exaggerated and biased research tailored towards advocacy of reparations of America’s racial legacy, the prominent role of slave-trading kingdoms of Western and Central Africa in the Transatlantic movement cannot be underemphasised.

Pointedly, Wendy Wilson Fall, an African American Professor’s interpretation in the film of the complexities and contextual issues of slavery and slave trade in Africa, complements Olaudah Equiano’s slave autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), “Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping, or adultery, and some other crimes, which we esteemed heinous.” While there is untenable justification for the vicious crime of slavery, Samuel Andrews, a Nigerian American, posits in the film that the history of slavery in America is the leading cause of hostilities between the population groups. Wendy Wilson Fall corroborates that African Americans’ dispossession impacted their indigenisation, relational sensibilities, territoriality and tolerance for other races, especially African indigenes whom they assume acted as primal agents of the slave trade and betrayed their predecessors.

Despite stimulating discourses on rationales underlining hostilities between African Americans and African immigrants, Zokou’s film overlooks core questions on racial dichotomy and narratives in the United States. The following questions could have been apt for discussion: how are stories of African slavery in America told, who tells and controls them, when are they told, and how many stories are told? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” Ted Talk, in July 2009, underscores the harmful effects of interpreting a story from a stereotypical viewpoint which often leads to misconceptions, conclusions and decisions that may be biased. The Nigerian-American novelist emphasises that media and literature sometimes foster generalisations and uncritical interrogation of multi-layered and divergent stories about peoples and cultures. Thus, slave narratives fostering dispossession and malignment should instead be harnessed to empower and humanise those of African descent (diaspora and immigrants).

Most importantly, Africans and African Americans have a genetic bond based on their connection to the African roots, which equalise both historically and psychologically. Also, both population groups are victims of European slavery and neo/colonialism. Despite mutations, there are similarities in Africans and diasporic arts, culture, literature, music, and religion, which both groups could leverage to bridge the current racial rift and social distance. Central to the recommended open dialogue and mediation between African Americans and African immigrants as suggested by respondents in Zokou’s film is the Yoruba African sociological ideals of Ajobí (Consanguinity) and Ajogbe (Coresidentship), which existed originally among Africans as postulated by Akinsola Akinwowo (1983) to achieve the desired harmony and kinship.

In conclusion, the film has successfully provided insights into historical and contemporary burdens underlining African slavery in the United States. It gives a balanced outlook to reconciliation processes, which is inevitable and achievable, especially among the upcoming Africans and diasporic generations.”

Ayokunmi Ojebode, PhD, University of Cambridge, UK