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Why some Black Americans are leaving the U.S. to reclaim their "destiny" in Ghana
CBS News ^ | September 21, 2021

Posted on 09/21/2021 3:32:53 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia

Accra, Ghana — In 2019, Ghana's president invited African descendants in the diaspora to mark the "Year of Return," commemorating 400 years since the first Africans arrived in the colony now known as Virginia on a slave ship. The invite prompted record tourism to Ghana, and an increase in Americans who applied for visas to stay.

But it was the events in the United States in 2020, and the Black Lives Matter movement, that drove a real surge in people looking to move out of America and into Africa.

The Elmina Castle on Ghana's Atlantic coast is more than 5,000 miles from American shores, but the five-century old structure occupies a particularly dark place in U.S. history. Hundreds of years ago, it was a central trading hub where African people from around the continent were sold into slavery.

As the U.S. continues to confront its racist past, Ghana is turning that history upside down, and welcoming Black Americans back home.

Sonjiah Davis was the epitome of Washington cool. She was a well-connected, successful therapist trained to deal with emotional health. And yet, living in the capital of the United States, she says she was constantly looking over her shoulder.

"I was living what people would consider the American dream," she told Patta. "I was educated, professional. I had friends. I was a socialite… but I never felt safe."

Davis believes trauma is embedded in her DNA, from the transatlantic slave trade to the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 that saw some of her family displaced from their homes.

(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: africa; backtoafrica; ghana
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

A wonderful gesture by the government of Ghana. Certainly there will be some blacks to take them up on the opportunity and I suspect they will be happy and prosperous. What more does anyone else want.

I would never discourage anyone for making the move.


81 posted on 09/21/2021 5:40:05 PM PDT by elpadre ( ying them.)
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To: ready2brd

Sorry. But you simply don’t know. Proof: no link provided.


82 posted on 09/21/2021 5:40:26 PM PDT by freedomjusticeruleoflaw (Strange that a man with his wealth would have to resort to prostitution.)
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To: 17th Miss Regt

“..The United States should try that! ...”

We did during the industrial revolution and thousands of European settlers moved to America - legally!!!


83 posted on 09/21/2021 5:43:27 PM PDT by elpadre ( ying them.)
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To: lee martell

They may well be sorry but we won’t. The ones that go are the very ones a lot of us would like to see go.


84 posted on 09/21/2021 5:45:02 PM PDT by arthurus ( covfefe gh)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Fine with me. If enough smart educated black people go to Ghana it will be good for Ghana. Of course we set up Liberia for just this purpose, but somewhere that idea got lost, I guess..


85 posted on 09/21/2021 6:00:22 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative.)
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To: Angelino97

Recent research on epigenetics says she may well be right. You need to update your information on “how DNA works.”


86 posted on 09/21/2021 6:09:00 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative.)
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To: hinckley buzzard
"Recent research on epigenetics says she may well be right."

Yup.

87 posted on 09/21/2021 6:18:50 PM PDT by blam
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To: TangoLimaSierra

Do they have a GoFundMe page?

Lol


88 posted on 09/21/2021 7:01:25 PM PDT by Carry me back (Cut the feds by 90%)
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To: freedomjusticeruleoflaw

US DOJ.

Presumably they have better figures than a random dude on FR who pulled his numbers out of his fat ass.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2021/jun/1/us-doj-statistics-race-and-ethnicity-violent-crime-perpetrators/


89 posted on 09/21/2021 7:01:50 PM PDT by ready2brd
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

he Elmina Castle on Ghana’s Atlantic coast is more than 5,000 miles from American shores, but the five-century old structure occupies a particularly dark place in U.S. history. Hundreds of years ago, it was a central trading hub where African people from around the continent were sold into slavery.

______

Elmina castle was built by the Portuguese to facilitate slave trade. The people of the cost of Ghana were delivering slaves to Elmina, in exchange for Portuguese stuff. Portuguese never ventured to the African continent, since they could no last there too long.
So those people, going to Ghana, are actually relocating into the society which sold them to slavery in first place.


90 posted on 09/21/2021 7:08:23 PM PDT by AZJeep (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0AHGreco RomNQkryIIs)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

I have a friend who came to the US from Ghana because of the great opportunities for women entrepreneurs. Also to escape family who wanted to marry her off to a pre-selected man.


91 posted on 09/21/2021 7:08:41 PM PDT by meowmeow (In Loving Memory of Our Dear Viking Kitty (1987-2006))
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To: ready2brd

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2019, the most recent I could find, blacks were responsible for 51.2% of all murders and non-negligent homicides, whereas whites were responsible for 45.8%.

The information contained in your link didn’t include murders or non-negligent homicides


92 posted on 09/21/2021 7:51:34 PM PDT by Micro aggressor
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To: eyeamok
Do they have a GoFundMe....

They could hold a telethon.

RIP Richard Pryor.

93 posted on 09/21/2021 8:01:16 PM PDT by Jane Long (America, Bless God....blessed be the Nation.)
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To: Blood of Tyrants

to add to, with another story.

“The chiefs and peoples decided, ‘All right, we will not talk about it.’ They created a mythology that we were innocent bystanders whose land was raped by Europeans.”

Nat Amarteifio

“I was able to let go of that conscious thought about race,” Boyd said. “It was like having a psychic burden taken off of your shoulders, and you could just move.”

She didn’t realize she had more of that psychic burden to shed until a few years later. In 1994, then-Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings apologized for the African role in slavery. Other leaders and chiefs slowly followed Rawlings and gave their own apologies.

“And it just made me feel so much better,” Boyd said. “I stopped feeling resentful, you know, towards Africans about slavery.”

Mona Boyd

https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-20/willful-amnesia-how-africans-forgot-and-remembered-their-role-slave-trade

In particular, I found that Mrs. Boyd expressed she was happier in a homogenous population, but while she feels a sense of peace in accepting the apologies of tribal representatives who were involved in slave trading long before the first Portuguese showed up, she is still hostile towards America in spite of the opportunities given her, and equally hostile towards America’s apologies, unable to shake the blame America not Africa not Muslim Chiefs, mentality.


94 posted on 09/21/2021 8:23:32 PM PDT by blueplum ("...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017) )
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To: ready2brd

I suppose you are somehow less random…? Such a star. Go live in the hood Braveheart.


95 posted on 09/21/2021 9:47:34 PM PDT by freedomjusticeruleoflaw (Strange that a man with his wealth would have to resort to prostitution.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Sounds like a great adventure!


96 posted on 09/22/2021 1:29:39 AM PDT by Clutch Martin (The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

When the stoopids need serious medical help, ya think they may come back here or rely on Ghana’s meds?


97 posted on 09/22/2021 4:53:37 AM PDT by Joe Boucher (Dementia Joe and the Whore, leaders of the Free world. ( F-you dementia Joe.))
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To: 17th Miss Regt

**Muslim** Africans enslaved other Africans and then brought the slaves to the castle to be sold to European slave traders, **who never set foot on shore because of the horrific diseases**.


98 posted on 09/22/2021 4:55:55 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: ready2brd

Link seems to say that the reports on race are based on victims identification, not on arrests or convictions.


99 posted on 09/22/2021 5:00:34 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: AZJeep

in exchange for Portuguese stuff.


Which were guns and black powder


Portuguese never ventured to the African continent, since they could no last there too long

Actually they did. The first Portuguese went ashore and stayed a while in the wooden African cities which featured running water and sewers from Roman times. Living conditions were far better than in Portugal (the super power of the age) so they petitioned the King to be allowed to remain. With the advent of the slave and gun trade, all of that fell apart and the cities were depopulated and lost in the jungle to rot.


100 posted on 09/22/2021 5:06:00 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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