It took a "Black AR" conference for me to realize the distinct complexities of the Black experience. I see it not as a binary term, but a common launching point for expressing individual Blackness with a unified community of support and shared experience.

The stats of oppression's impact also show stark differences in Caribbean-American, 1st-2nd Generation African-Americans, and African-Americans descended from Southern slaves.

An aside on your history, Paul: When is the Haitian Revolution story going to be told by Hollywood? The script needs no dramatization to be awing.

Born from the French Revolution, overthrew the French masters, 100k died, then repelled the British when they tried to take it over a couple years later, to abolish slavery and colonial rule. Then l'Overture is captured by Napoleon (the Haitian Revolution persisted after the French Revolution died) as the French again establish slavery and colonial rule. But his general and former slave Dessalines rose the people again to finally defeat Napoleon's professional army a year after l"Overture dies in a French prison. Against all odds and the greatest empires of the world. Epic - even this hack version.

I remember a single paragraph on it in my history book growing up. And thinking, The Patriot is reaching to glamorize American "Revolution" when the impossible happened a few years later in the Caribbean?