CHOSSA: A Meta-Ethnicity Celebrating a Global Black and African Awareness

Black people are not a monolith. How many times have we heard that statement? While it’s true, most often we hear it within the context of noting that we have a variety of different interests, opinions, thoughts and ideas. I’m with all of that and I’m also with emphasizing that we don’t all have the same history or ways of being. We know this, of course, but it is sometimes easy to forget as we all snuggle together under a blissful blanket of Blackness. This is, however, precisely why I use the word CHOSSA to specifically describe the Children of Stolen & Sold Africans.

This word applies to all of us in the Diaspora who, despite the languages we speak or our uniquely different cultural traditions, all come from the same experience. Stolen from Africa, our ancestors were forced to labor solely for the benefit of Europeans who also sought to literally destroy their humanity in the process. Oh, but how our ancestors survived!

Through the sacrifices of our people, a meta-ethnicity has formed. CHOSSA is who we are. Regardless of our different languages, our different passports, our different cultural traditions, our varying hues or the particulars of how and where our ancestors were abused, we celebrate the impressive resistance and resilience which kept them alive.

Meta-ethnicity is a relatively recent term (or neologism) occasionally used in academic literature or public discourse on ethnic studies. It describes a level of commonality that is wider (“meta-”) and more general (i.e., might differ on specifics) than ethnicity, but does not necessarily correspond to (and may actually transcend) nation or nationality. In colloquial discourse, it usually signifies a larger group of related ethnic groups who identify with each other.

I’ll admit that when I first created the word CHOSSA, I had no idea what a meta-ethnicity was. A fellow CHOSSA who goes by the name @RGShalom whom I have the pleasure of knowing through Instagram recently hipped me to the meta-ethnicity concept. As it applies to CHOSSA, it was like another set of hands kneading and shaping and caressing a lexeme that celebrates who we are. All of us are Black, yes. But as a word, CHOSSA, speaks to the meta analysis of how our collective Blackness came to be. Everyone has a story to tell and CHOSSA is exclusively ours.

This meta-ethnicity has no borders. CHOSSA are Haitian, Jamaican, Brazilian, Belizean, Mexican, Guyanese, Dominican, American and more. We are everywhere because we are CHOSSA. Had it not been for the displacement of our forebears, we would be Yoruba, Ewe, Bakongo, Krobo, Ashanti, Mende, Fon and so forth. Our ancestors were not Black when they were forced aboard those ships. They weren’t even African! They weren’t either of these before Europeans entered their lands and began defining them through their own points of view.

Most of what we know of their lives before they were taken into captivity has been lost or — more accurately — erased from their and our memory. Even their genealogy has been jumbled as the forced, coerced and natural mixing of people has made it impossible to identify ourselves by just one people group on the Continent (I purposely avoid using the word ‘tribe’). The remaining truth is we are born of many!

CHOSSA Are Borderless and Tribeless Africans

So all borders have been erased from our memories and our bloodlines. The result is that we are a unique type of African. One void of tribalism while wholly embracing our Africanness like a blank canvas ready to receive every magnificent stroke of Africa’s brush. We long to explore ourselves as African beings and to rest in the arms of our Motherland as we literally are the ancestors finally coming home.

We Rep an Unrivaled and Incomparable Layer of Black Africans

Though we come in a variety of hues and physical features, we want the world to know we are still Black, still African and all beautiful. CHOSSA as a meta-ethnicity is a celebration of survival and hope. As Africa’s proud children, regardless of where we were born, we are one. Bound by the horrific experiences our ancestors endured and survived, WE ARE ONE. The word CHOSSA is but a baby step in our realization process as we take the time to come together and harness the power inherent in our numbers, our abilities and the awareness that we are part of a broad group of Africans outside of the Continent uniquely positioned to help Mama Africa thrive.

If you are CHOSSA and happy to represent, leave a comment telling us where you’re from and what you’d like to see us accomplish as we come together. If you’re African, but not CHOSSA, we welcome your comments as you are our sibling we’d like to know better. How do you think we can strengthen the bonds between us and most fully celebrate our global Blackness and African awareness?

For those wanting to learn a bit more about CHOSSA and how it all came to be, I encourage you to read the backstory here:

You can also read more about my thoughts on embracing Africa as our Motherland here:

Or read a longer, more in-depth version on my B(l)ack to Africa Movement website here:

Please don’t forget to hit the follow button here on Medium and if you’re on Instagram, please follow me @ChossaNation, as well as on my other page @blacktoafricamovement.