Let's talk about "tethers". For grass-touchers, "tether" is a term recently developed by the African American community to refer to Black immigrants (first or second or third gen) who are not "Foundational Black Americans" or FBA.
Now FBA are basically Black people who have been in the US for centuries, they suffered slavery, oppression and contributed to building up the economy.
FBA want to "delineate" themselves from the growing African Immigrant community in the US (Nigerians, Somalians, Ghanians, South Africans etc) and put emphasis on their unique shared culture, heritage, history etc.
On the face of it, its just some harmless IDpol. But there is a darker underlying conflict between these groups that caused the development of this term in the first place :
First let's look at the POV of tethers. Some tethers believe that FBA culture has issues which need to be corrected, namely family breakups, crime, domestic and gang violence, lack of achievement. Their rhetoric on this topic is very similar to black conservatives. Some famous tethers are Candance Owens, Emmanuel Acho , Winsome Sears, Fresh and Fit, Colion Noir etc.
The FBA POV is that tethers criticism of FBA is unfair. They believe tethers are Uncle Toms (some FBA use the even more acerbic term "coon") who aim to use white supremacy to gain a leg up in the racial hierarchy of the US. FBA also believe that their culture and heritage is unique, and tethers are parasitically taking advantage of FBA cultural aura while simultaneously downplaying FBA's problems and struggles.
Now from the communist perspective, it's easy to call all this FBI cointelpro (and maybe the FBI does have a hand in this) but that wont make this conflict go away. The FBA-tether conflict has the potential to weaken black solidarity.
It's also part of a trend where minorities are increasingly becoming more diverse politically.
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