The ADOS Movement: Policing the Boundaries of Lineage

This paper examines the anti-immigrant rhetoric and nativist attitudes of American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), a grassroots organization that promotes a lineage-based identity and advocates for federal reparations. I show that the group’s politics of difference, which is a strategy of building political power behind the struggle for reparations for slavery, undermines Blackness as a unifying political and cultural category that historically served as a predictor of political affiliation and race-based alliances. By foregrounding lineage, ADOS distinguish themselves culturally from American-born Pan-Africanists and Black immigrants. They seek recognition and status within the American social order by emphasizing the uniquely American and exceptionalist character of their ethno-racial identity, but they also resort to anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobia. Applying Niambi Carter’s concept of conflicted nativism (2019), I analyze an online show hosted by ADOS cofounder Yvette Carnell to explain how ADOS’ protectiveness of the boundaries of lineage emerges partly in response to post-1965 demographic shifts and their political and economic impacts on Black Americans born in the United States. Christina Greer’s findings on the adaptations made by Black immigrants, encapsulated in the notion of ‘elevated minority status’ (2019), provide a partial explanation for ADOS’ nativist attitudes. Finally, I illustrate how ADOS’ hostility towards Indian nationals immigrating to the U.S., driven by efforts to protect lineage, blurs the delicate boundary between conflicted nativism and more overt, unrestrained forms of nativism.