😅 No, I'm saying you're still buying into the idea that black people are devalued.

Devalued according to whom?! Who gets to define our value? Why do you care about their opinion? Whose approval do you need before you can say that black people are no longer devalued? And how does focusing on a time when black people were legally devalued help that?

The people and cultures that "get called black" never called themselves black. As you say, they called themselves Yoruba and Igbo and Chamba and so on. You're buying into framing that was invented to justify slavery and then complaining that that framing isn't favourable. Why not just reject the framing altogether and be you? An individual, whose history is the history of the whole human race.

If you want to learn about your Bakongo ancestry, go ahead! Who would dare suggest that you shouldn't? Certainly not me. But that's not who you are. It's not authentic to "live by those traditions" simply because you have that genealogy somewhere in your family tree. Any more than it would be authentic for you to live (or define yourself) by the traditions of the slave owners you said lay elsewhere within it.

I think our disagreement is based on the fact that I fundamentally don’t accept there’s anything unique about the people beneath any label. You and I are not the same because we’re “black.” And you and I are not fundamentally different because we have different degrees of “black” ancestry. Culture is interesting, but people are people. With all of the attendant flaws and virtues. This simple fact is precisely what makes all bigotry so wrong and stupid and evil.

Happy New Year to you too😁