Black Americans: “Nigerians come here and act like they’re better than us”…

Im a Nigerian-American, born in and living in America.

Not all black Americans do this, but I’ve encountered a few that treat me a certain way when they find out that I am Nigerian. Some will try to tell me that technically I’m an American and it’s just my family that are Nigerian because I wasn’t born there… I went to school in Port Harcourt for four years starting from when I was seven years old. I only know how to cook Nigerian food… my mom came here legally and works a good job as a nurse. She has her doctorate degree, and she lives in a very nice gated community in the suburbs, and that was how I grew up for the majority of my life. As a result, I’m often told by others who are fluent in AAVE that I think I’m “better than them”. Sometimes they accuse me of “pretending” to talk the way I do. Which is interesting because when I went to school in Nigeria, I was met and welcomed with open arms despite the fact that I have an American accent. In Nigeria, I went to private Christian school. My mom stressed, the importance of getting good grades and I didn’t grow up with a mom that used foul language (as in cuss words like fuck, damn, shit… even “oh my god” is foul language in my family). When I was in Nigeria, my family told my cousins and I that they don’t speak pidgin around us so that we don’t pick up on it (because duh kids will try and copy what they see adults do).

I’m just confused as to why black Americans try to ostracized me and make me feel bad for growing up the way that I did because I have and would never put them down for their accents or their vocabulary and things like that. I feel like as long as you’re a polite and decent person, there should be no problems.

On one occasion a few of my BA peers on campus were talking about “struggle meals” they had to eat growing up, things like Vienna sausage, cup of noodles, hamburger helper, etc. they were talking about how good hamburger helper was and I simply stated that I had never eaten that before. If you see the way, their mood and attitude changed??? Then they were trying to make it seem like I’m so bougie and my family is so rich and all that simply because of the way I talk. I’ve never even talked to them about my mom‘s financial situation and they don’t know the struggles that I had with my mom growing up (I posted it in this sub. It was my very first post on Reddit and I don’t have too many posts so you can go on my profile to read it).

My thing is first of all, are we competing over who struggled the most? They act like I was making fun of them for what they had to eat when they were low on groceries. My mom is Nigerian, why would she go to the grocery store and pick up “hamburger helper“?? Of course I saw the commercials growing up, but I never ate it. What would my mom know about “hamburger helper”? If we ran out of groceries, I would fry plantain and make some egg sauce or a small batch of stew for my brother and I to eat… it’s just frustrating.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that they think “we sold them off to the colonizers” hence why “they can’t trace their roots”. That is another thing that some black Americans say that makes no sense. If Nigeria was also colonized, what makes them think regular civilians have the power to sell other Nigerians to be slaves??? if anything, the politicians played a bigger role in that then average Nigerian people. They failed to realize that the colonizers were destroying families by taking the people that they believed to be the most fit to “get the job done”

Edit: i’m not going to change my post, but I do want to acknowledge my tone and how it came across after reading the constructive feedback I received in the comments. A lot of of this has been bottled up, so there is a lot of anger and arrogance some of you make sense from the post. It’s been bottled up because I don’t share it with anyone. I’m sure other African-Americans would tell you that they have been told that they don’t “act black” by other African-Americans because of their upbringing as well. My whole thing is that people trying to make me feel bad about it has made me agitated and think “why should I feel bad? I grew up in a great environment. How is that a problem to you?”. If I did defend myself by saying this to them, it would validate what they already think about me because I have fallen into their trap. Especially if you are extremely dark skin like I am and you prefer to stay to yourself, it comes across as me thinking that I am better than everyone else🤷‍♀️