Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Black brown unity

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Black-brown unity (or black-brown-red unity) is a racial-political ideology which pushes for activist alliances between peoples of full or partial African descent, usually African Americans and other African diaspora/Atlantic slave trade-descendant communities in the Americas, with peoples of full or partial Indigenous American descent in opposition to statuses quo which seem to favor American peoples of European descent at the expense of those of black, brown or red descent. Such alliances are justified by their proponents through similar experiences of cultural repression and economic exploitation since the advent of major European settlement and exploration of the Americas.

In terms of its popularity as a political buzzword, it has enjoyed its greatest usage in the United States, which possesses large African American and Mesoamerican minorities. In areas where the two populations live in close proximity (such as California and Texas), the interests of both groups intersect within the constraints of employment, gang- and drug-related activities, interactions with local government authorities, etc. Hence, political activism which intersects the intellectual minority and poorer majority of both groups often take shape in order to secure common demands. One may attest to the alliance between escaped African slaves and Native American tribes during the period of slavery as a historic precedent for such political alliances between African Americans and Mexican Americans.

References

Black-brown unity Wikipedia