‘Come back to the motherland’ in Africa, Spike Lee tells African Americans

In an interview with FRANCE 24 in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, the producer Tonya Lewis Lee, discussed their appointment as thematic ambassadors to Benin for the African American diaspora in the United States. The West African nation is offering citizenship to descendants of enslaved Africans without requiring investment. “Our brothers and sisters in Benin are telling us: come home, welcome us home, come back to the motherland. Come back [to] where your roots are,” Spike Lee said.