July 25 marked the United Nations’ International Day for Women and Girls of African Descent, established to recognize their achievements and challenges. Amjambo Africa spoke with African American and immigrant Black women about their experiences in the United States.
Chemire Brown grew up in Maryland with three brothers and sisters. At nine, while attending a soccer camp, she had an unforgettable encounter.
“A white friend told me, ‘Anyone darker than you is considered African,’ and I told her, ‘My mom is darker than me.’ She replied, ‘Well, your mom is African then,’” Brown, an African American, said.
Now 35, she said that tracing her family’s history has been an adventure, but she remains unsure whether she feels connected to those roots. “It was very cool to find out where they came from, but I don’t feel a connection with those ethnicities. I do still feel I belong in this country,” she said.
Brown’s experience reflects one side of what it means to be a woman of African descent in the United States. While many African Americans see themselves first through the lens of nationality, Black immigrants often reconcile their cultural identity with how they are perceived in America.
“Starting over in the United States feels like an evolution of my identity. It forces a psychological shift where we are suddenly categorized by the broader society primarily as Black,” said Angelina Deng, a South Sudanese woman resettled from Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp in 2024.
Sudanese former refugee now living
in the United States
When race shapes perception
Over 21 million Black women and girls live in the United States. Studies suggest that race often influences how they are treated, whether they are African Americans or immigrants. A 2025 survey by Gallup found that 64% of Americans believed racism against black people was widespread in the country.
Deng noted that the discrimination she’s experienced in America is different from the social frictions back home, where social bias is often tied to classism, political alignment, or ethnic tensions.
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“Coming to the United States, you are discriminated against before you speak, before your voice is heard. They don’t need to listen to your story. They don’t need to know who you are before they judge you. Your color tells them who you are, and they start treating you based on your skin,” Deng said.
For Monica Bodewa, a Nigerian who has lived in the United States since 2013, racial discrimination is often subtle rather than overt.
“The racism that I have experienced is very nuanced. They’re not saying anything, but the way they’re behaving tells you. I don’t let it get to me,” Bodewa said.
“We’re undervalued”
Racism often shapes Black women’s day-to-day interactions, and its effects extend into the workplace.
“Being a Black woman lawyer is a revolutionary concept. Even though there have been Black women lawyers in the past, we still only make up 2% of the overall population of lawyers in the United States,” Ashley Cloud, an African American lawyer, told Amjambo Africa.
Cloud explained that Black women experience wage inequality. This claim is supported by a 2025 study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which found that the average weekly earnings for Black women working full time were $942, compared to $1,108 for white women. The study also found that Black women heading households with children under 18 had the lowest median income among major racial and ethnic groups.
“I think we’re undervalued, underpaid, and expected to save everyone without being properly compensated. It’s just us being taken for granted with our history of having done much work for free; it’s almost like a foreign concept to now demand that we’re paid what we’re worth,” Cloud said.
Expansive Blackness
Despite their shared challenges, Black women in America do not always experience or understand Blackness in the same way. Their histories — from slavery to voluntary migration to forced displacement — shape how they see themselves and one another.
“When I come across Black women who come to America, I never really know their story of why they came here. I do see cultural differences when I socialize with them,” Brown said.
Like Brown, Bodewa emphasized that shared racial identity does not erase different lived experiences. “I can empathize with a resettled refugee, but I can’t relate to her story because I wasn’t displaced by conflict. It’s the same way I can’t relate to an African American woman’s story because I didn’t come to America as an enslaved Black person,” Bodewa said.
In an interview with Amjambo Africa, Sanyu Mulira, an assistant professor of African Diaspora and Black Women’s History at the Georgia Institute of Technology, highlighted that Blackness can take different meanings depending on whether Black people are the majority or the minority where they live.
She noted that while immigrants and African Americans can find solidarity in being Black, sometimes people don’t want to have to deal with the negative connotations of Blackness or of the history of racism in America.
“You can’t choose the positive aspects of Blackness and then also want to deny or ignore the negative history that racism has played in America,” Mulira said.
On whether Black women should be categorized, she explained that a broader understanding of Blackness is more helpful. “We need to see Blackness as more of an African-descendedness, rather than siphoning people off into Caribbean, African, or American, because historically [these] Black people have gained a lot when working together, when finding their commonalities,” Mulira said.
For Cloud, finding commonalities begins with fully understanding one’s history and ancestry, which she admitted is difficult.
“There is a notion that we all know our history all the way back to the transatlantic slave trade. We don’t, and it’s not necessarily our fault. It’s just that the information isn’t there, so there’s definitely a disconnect with being able to really tie our history all the way back to its origin,” Cloud said.
