Not African Enough in Africa
On my only excursion to the Motherland, I landed in South Africa only because a close friend from Brooklyn, by way of the Mid-West, decided she’d had enough of America and moved to Johannesburg to start anew. I decided to follow her (for three weeks) and boarded a plane full of naiveté and hope for a place where I finally felt like I belonged.
There are many reasons to go to Africa, particularly South Africa. In Johannesburg, the eclectic feel of Brooklyn meets the trendiness of Los Angeles, and Cape Town is loosely like Miami–cubed, but with far better scenery. But belonging isn’t one of those reasons to take the 17-hour flight. The only parts that felt like home were the racial-awkwardness, an expected offering from a country navigating past Apartheid, which ended about two decades ago.
Though I was Black in a predominately Black place, my American-ness stuck out in about the way I imagine Hester Prynne’s “Scarlet A” did, but without the shunning. My first stop, Johannesburg, is a city of continent-wide transplants, and even among them, my American-ness was announced long before I opened my mouth. It was shouted in the way I carried my body, my facial features and body-type, and the way I dressed.
I quickly developed friendships that have endured, soaked up the history, marveled at the monuments and the cuisine (everyone must have proper malva pudding once in their lifetime), but I never got past comparing and contrasting a new culture to the one I knew, regrettably the home that didn’t feel like such. In Africa, I felt the same way I had in Paris or Rome or Amsterdam: never more American.
That feeling hit all the way home for me when I was standing outside Mzoli’s, a butcher-shop in Gugulethu, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town. Every Sunday afternoon, the butcher hosts a day-party where thousands of people show up. There was a vendor selling sunglasses on the sidewalk and a woman trying on a pair. She turned to me and spoke. I didn’t understand and asked her to repeat herself. She did.
Me: “I’m sorry. What?”
Her: She rolled her eyes first. “Oh, you only speak English?” The question dripped with disdain.
I actually got by on a ten-day solo-trip thru three cities in Spain on my Spanish, and since I visited Haiti in December, have started learning French. But neither of those are one of the official 11 languages in South Africa, one of which she had been speaking to me, and in my American-ness I couldn’t understand. Begrudgingly, I recognized it was time to let go of my fantasy.
On the never-ending plane ride back to New York, I thought of a scene from “School Daze”, one of my favorite films. It was where “Dap” confronts “Julian” aka “Big Brother All-Might-Tee!” Julian denigrates Dap, dressed in a military jacket with Kente cloth details and a kufi covered in cowry shells, for all his “Mother Africa” talk.
“Without question, we are all Black Americans,” Julian declares. “You don’t know a got damned thing about Africa. I’m from Detroit. Motown!” For years I thought Julian was wrong on that one. Now I think he’s right.
Demetria L. Lucas is the author of “A Belle in Brooklyn: The Go-to Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life” (Atria). Follow her on Twitter @abelleinbk
Dear Belle,
This last paragraph from your blog was unsettling (although honest!):
“My trip to Africa was the sh**. I made friends. I went to great parties. I stood in clouds. I saw breathtaking views. I got a song trapped in my head that I still can’t get out. I had a great time that I shared with a lot of people. I liked Jozi so much I looked at real estate. Oh, and I dropped the “African-“ from the way I identify myself. I’d say that’s a great trip.”
I think you are still generalizing Africa.
WHENEVER someone travels to an African country and still says just “Africa”, I cringe.
I dunno, am I overreacting here?
The honesty that I LOVE is your blatant desire to drop “African” from your identification. I have never seen it illustrated that way and I think that says a lot about the Black American/African relationship. Maybe that is a way to begin clarifying definitions, instead of accusing one another.
I just wish there wasn’t such a divide…
I don’t know where to begin with this.
I think part of the problem with American Blacks being alienated from (and being alienating to) other Black ethnic groups is the very term “African American.” I will get flack for this but here goes: it is not accurate. From my perspective, people are co-opting “third world”, post-colonial experiences that they know absolutely nothing about: the Black American reality is *extremely* different from any other Black ethnic group in the world. The term assumes a direct ancestry and almost unbroken cultural heritage — that’s completely false. American culture with its radical individualism is radically different from any other in the world. When you contrast it with African culture, the differences are dramatic. The more appropriate term for the Black population here would be “Africans and African descendants.” That terminology is simply true of all Black people in America.
I also suspect that there is a cultural chauvinism and arrogance that is a mimicry of the general American outlook on the outside world. There’s a weird assumption of superiority and ownership, and Americans tend to erroneously think they have an objective, authoritative understanding of other peoples’ cultures: it’s imperialist.
I cringed as the author described Africa as a “Disneyland,” and the repeated references to “Africa” as though it was a country. Americans abroad tend to treat the rest of the world as existing for their pleasure or enlightenment and tend not to perceive or understand people on their own terms. American Blacks react to ideas about African and other Black nations in the same way White Americans react to ideas about Europe. There’s a lot of paternalism, jingoism, and condescension, without a healthy respect.
I’ve known White Americans who regularly visit India as some sort of spiritual escape, all while claiming Indians seem “happy” in poverty. I’ve known White men who’ve gone to Northeast Asia to have sex with Asian women, as though ordinary rules of decency and ethics didn’t apply. Are American Blacks starting to treat “Africa” as some place over which they can claim ownership, while not even acknowledging or comprehending the lived experiences of Africans, who often do NOT get to speak for themselves about their tribes/nations/people? I hope not.