Episode 4 Conversation with Dr. Yvette Butler – Yeboah on African Immigrant Experience & Black Experience

Dr. Yvette Butler – Yeboah, an African American sister who is the founder and executive director of GapBuster.Inc, a non-profit organization that focuses on the empowerment of our youth within our community. The program engages in Leadership and Community Outreach. GapBuster. Inc is also intercontinental, and in 2019, she opened a center in Ghana. Dr. Yeboah also hosts a live show every Friday called American Africans United.  This discussion focuses on race as it relates to Black Experience and race as it relates to African immigrant experience. When it comes to racial identity, Dr. Butler is identified as an African American. As an immigrant, I identified as a Nigerian American that recognizes my two heritages Nigerian (cultural identity to be specific Yoruba) & Black American related to the race the institution placed on Dr. Butler and me. For African immigrants, we have to navigate between these two worlds, the world of blackness and the world of immigrants. The black experience is historically unique, but the black experience is foreign to African immigrants. Historically, African nations were colonized by Europe, African immigrants in America do not know what it is like to be black in a racialized society before migrating to America. We never live in a racialized society. Dr. Butler talked about Black Experience as it relates to developing unique black dialect, religion, music, food ETC and how these were developed after years of losing their original culture. We further discussed “The talks” regarding racial struggles and educating African American children about racial cues or signs when contacting authorities such as law enforcement, educators, or in corporate America. We discussed the Reality of Racism and its institution. Does the reality of racism exempt African immigrants from these experiences even though we reside within the same community as other people of color, exposed to the same low-quality education, housing, and every other aspect of inequality experienced by African Americans? We concluded on an approach to finding commonality within our community and acknowledge our differences.  To learn more about Dr. Butler and GapBuster, please go to her website @ www.GapBuster.org