What About My Cultural Anxiety?

There’s nothing so fraught as being the American-born child of an immigrant

Protesters demonstrate near the entrance to a rally that US President Donald Trump will hold later in the evening at the BOK Center on June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Much has been written about burgeoning cultural anxiety in the U.S., thanks to the political divisiveness of the Trump era. But I’ve come to disagree with the sentiments expressed by many authors.

For many White Americans, there’s an inextricable link between cultural anxiety and White supremacy, and it’s an inverse relationship: White cultural anxiety increases when the traditionally privileged majority senses chipping away of absolute power.

There were no articles about people like me, a firstborn and first-generation American-born Black man who is a direct descendant of a Nigerian immigrant with inextricable ties to other Nigerians in Africa and the U.S.

I am a Black man with a culture: African American. Historical events within my cultural sphere have kept cultural anxiety at the forefront of my thoughts. And I’m not satisfied with how writers and scholars have presented information about cultural anxiety as it relates to people of color. It should be a broader term, encompassing more than just a focus on White fragility. It doesn’t include the…