It’s been nearly two years since Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were shot and killed by U.S. police officers within a day of each other. While they hailed from different regions of America,  they shared many similarities. Both victims were black and had their last moments caught on camera, which was ultimately watched and shared by citizens across the globe. Their deaths marked a summer of political activism, catapulted to a peak by the upcoming presidential election. Twitter exploded into a social media hotbed for political discourse, with hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter becoming increasingly popular across the web. Activists, driven by grief, frustration, and a sense of righteous indignance, took to the streets  demanding the world acknowledge the atrocities that had unfortunately become all too commonplace.

Others processed these events through satire. Dr. Ulysses Burley III coined the term “Blaxit”,  posting on The Salt Collective a long list of ideas and people that would comprise a mass exodus of blacks from the United States, from sports industries and key musicians to beauty trends. While Burley coined this term sartorially, it connects to a larger, older discourse within the African American tradition. From Martin Delaney to Marcus Garvey, the question of “To Stay or Leave” has lingered at the root of Black social theory from its very founding. Knowing this, #Blaxit isn’t a new phenomenon at all. However, it became a vehicle for contemporary reimagining of Black social mobility without America as the epicenter of growth and uplift.

Black political empowerment has always had a Pan-African leaning, made clearly explicit in this quote by the UK branch of the Black Panther movement.

“Black Power provided the political slogan which gives expression to the pent up fury that rages in the oppressed peoples of the world.” Anne-Marie Angelo described this in her article, The Black Panthers and the ‘Underdeveloped Country,’ of the Left. Many Black Panthers followed through on this statement. Kathleen Cleaver chartered the first international wing of the Black Panther Party in Algeria in 1969. John McCarney, Ruth Reitan, Jeffrey Ogbar, and others became international leaders of the Black Panthers, spreading the movement’s influence worldwide.

 

“The end game is land ownership. The endgame is our own government in a nation within a nation. We want to control the politics in our community…And we most definitely want to control the…school system, where they are teaching and misrepresenting the true history of the Black man here in the United States,” said Babu Omowale of the People’s New Black Panther Party.

 

Half a century since the peak of Black Panther activity, the causes they fought for still resist change. While people of color make up almost 30% of the United States’ population, they account for more than 60% of those imprisoned. According to the Bureau of Justice, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white counterparts, contributing to a higher number of incarcerated youth of color. The list of disheartening statistics goes on and on, and it becomes clear that virulent racial prejudice has grown roots far into the very bedrock of American society. And so, the answer for many, is #Blaxit.

So where to turn? For many, Ghana has become the destination of choice for those seeking an ancestral connection in Africa. Ghana, from whose shores upwards of 15 million Africans passed so long ago, around 3,000 have attempted to make Ghana a home once again. One such Black ex-pat, wrote, “I was so ready to turn my back on the United States,” he says, adding: “We did so much for the US, yet they don’t want to see us as first-class citizens.” This may be true, but for many African Americans who have made the journey, the transition hasn’t been without its fair share of obstacles either. For Black expats who moved to African countries expecting to feel a familial bond, many have found that their blackness has been erased. Seen as American first and black second, expectations had to be adjusted. One woman spoke about her experience living in Ghana, saying, “You are a foreigner here…they still consider me to be ‘white’”. Others critique calls for black migration as a continuation of the cycle of colonialism enacted by Americans in centuries past. The alternative, migrating to European countries, like so many Black thinkers have done (James Baldwin, to name one), also carries with it its own set of problems. When speaking about the experience of migrating to Sweden, Azaa Ahmed Ali remarks, “There is a feeling of racism here, but nobody wants to talk about it because they want to be politically correct…People will tiptoe around you, but those microaggressions are constant.”

So, it is difficult for me to fully conceptualize what a large-scale #Blaxit could look like in practice. Because while America is not the land of freedom that it so proclaims, there is not yet a clear “Eden” for Black Americans elsewhere. For those who do not have the resources to leave, and for those whose families have been here for generations, a life outside of America feels aspirational at best. And so #Blaxit might just remain as a hashtag and not a reality, for now. As for that mountaintop that Dr. King so eloquently and richly described 50 years ago, his clear vision eludes us today. It is unclear to me, where on the globe it could rest, and how Black citizens around the world will get there, in the event that we ever find it.