If there is one thing that exhausts me, it is this ongoing hostility between African Americans and Black Britons. I can’t be 100% sure of when it started or when tensions really rose to the surface. It does, however, feel like Samuel L Jackson’s ignorant comments about black British actors “coming over and taking black Americans jobs,” was the catalyst this ridiculous and reductive rhetoric. I know those weren’t his exact words, but that was in essence what he said. The narrative that has started uses a familiar and distasteful tone that the Brexit Leave campaign used to gain its victory in leaving the European Union. 

This week, Seren Sensei, best known from the American Grapevine cast, decided to go on a tirade about non-American black people and in particular Black Britons by referring to Daniel Kayuuya’s role in Get Out. The Youtuber was angry that black people from the UK & Africa seem to have to “imitate” African Americans to have any sort of career or cultural impact. While it irritates me to even write about the video - I will say her words reeked of Xenophobia and there are no two ways about it.