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New filmmaker Kobina Aidoo explores the impact of immigration on the term African American
"Are you African American?" is the question filmmaker Kobina Aidoo asks in his new documentary, "The Neo-African-Americans."
Aidoo's film examines the dramatic rise of voluntary immigration from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States in recent decades, and the ways this development has altered the African American landscape.
The central question, "Are you African American?" was posed to about a dozen of these immigrants throughout the film, and their answers revealed the complexity of black identity in America today.
"I'm more Haitian American than African American, but more American than Haitian," said one.
"No," said another. "I am Afro-Latino American."
"Yes," answered one woman whose parents were born in Ghana. "I am African American; I'm a true African American."
And one white man responded, "I grew up in Africa, and I'm an American."
Through the wide range of answers, Aidoo's point becomes clear - America's black population is growing increasingly diverse, and, as a result, "African American" may no longer suffice.
After legislative reform in the mid-1960s removed, quotas for immigrants from non-European countries, the numbers of African immigrants in the United States began to increase. But the most dramatic growth occurred in the 1980s, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed undocumented African immigrants to become permanent residents in the United States. Between 1980 and 2005, the foreign-born black population tripled.
Today, there are over 3 million African-born blacks in the United...