In the States, being Black is multi-faceted and the experience differs from person to person with the most common denominator being the fact that you know that you are oftentimes thought of as "the" minority when people talk about affirmative action and that you probably have been the only person of your race in the room at a given moment. So, to be honest with everyone reading, and myself, I will admit that when I thought about coming to Ghana, where W.E.B. Du Bois is laid to rest and Pan-Africanism was nursed in its infancy, I thought that there would be more acceptance of my "Blackness". I was not deluded enough to believe that I would look like everyone else or that people wouldn't think I was American/rich/a potential walking green card, but I did not expect the experience that I have had. I will use two examples to illustrate what I mean.
While traveling to see the beautiful waterfalls from an earlier post, we had to find a driver to take us to the park where the waterfalls are located. After standing in a crowd of taxi drivers all trying to pull us in different directions, we finally decide on a car. As I got into the car, and was about to close the door, a man looked directly in my eye and said, "You're too white." I'm sure my face was nothing less than shocked, because he started laughing at me. Too white? Me?
So let me get this straight... I'm too Black in the States, and too white in Ghana. Perfect. My initial thought is that we should take reparations from the US government, every European country involved in the US slave trade, and every African country with any number of slave castles or who had known ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. No? Yeah, I didn't think it was all that feasible either, but it made me feel better for about 3.95 seconds...
Then I thought about it from another angle. I remember once talking to my African-American Studies adviser and telling him that I believe that African-Americans often feel like that hyphen between the two words; caught between two worlds. We are tied to Africa by the resonating pigmentation of our flesh and the kinks in our hair, but we are not African. We also have, and still do, struggle to achieve equality in America. We have had one of the most traumatic experiences as a group of people in the United States. I am in no way saying that our experience is more intense, demoralizing, or painful than any other minority group that has been discriminated against, experienced "ethnic cleansing", or been targeted for genocide around the world. Right now I'm not trying to compare the experiences of other groups, but think about the experience that is closest to my heart.
See, when I bargain with a vendor here, they laugh at me if I say I am not rich or that I'm running low on money. At home, when I walk into certain types of stores, they assume I am too poor to afford any of their merchandise. Here, if I wear my hair out and curly, people assume it's a weave or ask me what I did to it. In an interview with a law firm, I would be considered militant or my hair would be called unprofessional. And on top of it all, the White tourists in Ghana receive the same preferential treatment here as in America for the most part. Meaning, while I am assumed to be rich, my skin denotes the fact that I will never be as rich as a White person. Which leads me to my next story...
For lunch, I often frequent a chop bar, which is like a street vendor in DC/NY except it's not movable. The women who work there are all Ghanaian and Black. The group I often venture to this chop bar with is mixed: Black, White, male, female. One day in particular, I'm the first of the group to arrive, and I order for myself and my roommate, who is also a Black woman from America. Behind us, three White men order similar dishes. We all sit down and as we sit down, I say to one of the White men, "Watch, you're going to get your food first, and I'm going to be pissed." Guess what happened...
Not only did the three of them receive their food first, when I pointed out who was eating and who was waiting, they all paused and looked around. My White male colleague quietly said, "This food tastes like guilt..."
The realization sank in that racism not only comes from people in the "dominant" race when you're a minority, but in nations that are predominantly of the same "race". I don't expect to be welcomed with open arms into your family's home and given preferential treatment, but I do expect to be treated fairly. But then again, why should my expectations of fairness be any different in a nation that was "founded" by the same people that established the country of my birth? Europe has really done a number of the brown populations of the world...and the effects seem to be everlasting.
And at the same time, I cannot sit back and expect for Pan-Africanism to be accepted by everyone and that all Africans and descendants of the diaspora will join hands in unity. There are a lot of differences and variations between all of us that may keep that from happening.
However, I do have hope. I have hope that, at some point in the future of this world, all of us will love our Blackness, in whatever way it manifests itself. I hope that Black people will get over this issue of color and not question others' pedigree or doubt their experience. I hope that our beauty will stop being ignored or fetishized. I hope that, someday, when I hear someone say they are color blind, I don't have to be afraid that they believe that, with Barack Obama's election, all of the racism in America was erased. I hope that, eventually, being articulate won't make me an exception, having a graduate degree won't make me an anomaly, and having natural hair won't make me different.
I hope.
PREACH!
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