Divisions among Blacks in New York surrounding Nafissatou Diallo

In 1999, twelve years before the alleged assault of Nafissatou Diallo by DSK, the murder of a Guinean man crystallized the rivalry between Africans and African Americans. It is April 1999. Black America is mourning the death of Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant shot down by 41 bullets on February 4 by four white policemen in the lobby of his Bronx building. He was unarmed, suggesting a racial crime.

Reverend Al Sharpton, a figurehead of the civil rights movement in the United States, organizes a tour across America to raise awareness about police violence towards blacks. At his side is Amadou Diallo’s mother, Kadi, who came from Guinea with her husband to see their son’s body.

Two profoundly different visions of the United States

The second leg of the trip in Chicago marks the beginning of the end of the relationship between the African-American pastor and the Guinean woman. Kadi Diallo’s growing impression that Sharpton was exploiting her was at the origin of this separation. The latter paid for a hotel room in New York and offered her a dream team of lawyers to help her obtain financial compensation from the city.

The New York Times, which devoted a long piece to the mother in 2000, suggests that the pastor transformed her against her wishes into a symbol of the fight against racial injustices while she was in the United States to repatriate her son’s body.

The Times also says that the two reportedly had a deeper disagreement concerning their visions of America. Kadi Diallo had apparently grown tired of the aggressive rhetoric used by Sharpton and his mentor, Jesse Jackson, against the United States. Concerning the tragedy, the latter said, “It’s open season on Blacks,” a remark that Kadi Diallo considered exaggerated because it was too far from the reality that her son knew.

“No! He [Amadou] was in the right place,” she supposedly responded to a black militant who told her that her child was just “not in the right place at the right time.” “He loved America more than most Americans,” piped up one uncle.

After Chicago, Kadi Diallo limited her contact with Sharpton. Substantive differences had taken over.

Twelve years later, Nafissatou Diallo

Specialists in the African-American community see the crystallization of two perspectives in this situation. On one side, there’s the African-American vision of an America based on race struggles and on the other, that of the African immigrant coming to the United States in search of opportunities.

Twelve years after the death of Amadou Diallo, these two perspectives meet again in New York, around another child of Guinea, Nafissatou Diallo, the alleged victim of attempted rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

On July 10, a coalition of African leaders and African-Americans held a press conference in Harlem to ask the district attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr., not to drop the charges against the Frenchman.

“We do not want others to use us.”

This coalition, gathered at the call of charismatic black Senator Bill Perkins, included politicians, leaders of advocacy organizations and African-American clergy. On the African side, Miss Guinea North America and other representatives of the Guinean community were present, the French-speaking Harlem imam, Souleimane Konaté, as well as members of the Senegalese Association of America (ASA).

Behind this united front, there lie complex relationships shaped by tradition, religion and different experiences in relation to the “white man.” As an indicator of this complexity, one of the African participants contacted by telephone a few days later admitted his concerns over Bill Perkins’ initiative: “We do not want others to use us,” a distant echo of the fears of Kadi Diallo 12 years earlier.

These disputes have not always existed. In 18th century New York, descendants of African immigrants and new migrants coming to the United States via slave routes shared the same neighborhoods, the same social settings and were buried in the same cemeteries. Against their will, slavery defined their identity.

A gap between African Americans and Africans

According to Mamadou Diouf, professor of West African history at Columbia University, the gap between the two communities widened with the arrival of a new wave of African immigrants in the 1980s. The community grew. Their aspirations changed. The differences became more defined:

“In Africa, the white world does not exist, while the African-American has been molded by racist discourse. This results in huge misunderstandings. African Americans feel that Africans compromise themselves with whites, while Africans see African Americans as somewhat closed-off.”

He continues:

“Increasingly, Africans have adopted the logic of the migrant at the expense of the race. They think that America is an opportunity: If you invest in your family and education, you will be fine. This is the typical approach of the migrant. Among Africans, it has become the dominant view.”*

When the Amadou Diallo case began in February 1999, Guineans in New York were the first to inform Sharpton the day after the tragedy. They took part in many demonstrations that followed the death of the Guinean man. But the leadership of African Americans in these highly reported protests was ill received.

In an article on blacks in the Bronx from the Columbia Spectator in 2000, a Ghanaian restaurant owner commented:

“It’s the African Americans that have stood up but it should be us — he is one of ours.”

The disagreements surrounding Nafissatou Diallo

The continuing tensions between the two communities pose the question about the strength of the current mobilization for the hotel maid, an effort in which the protagonists were seen by her side on Thursday at her first press conference in a Brooklyn church.

Souleymane Diallo, director of the Union for the Development of Fouta Djallon, a Guinean Association of the Bronx, stated:

“Union with Black Americans is a force. We could not have done this without them.”*

But not everyone agrees. Souleimane Konaté, Ivorian imam of Harlem and member of the pro-Nafissatou coalition, suggested that Africans in New York could host their own show of support to avoid any risk of appropriation: “When Africans march in the city, they will be heard.”*