Not African Enough in Africa
When I was 10 or so, my father won an all-expense paid trip to Senegal. “We’re going to Africa!” my mother gleefully exclaimed. So we took the Amtrak train to New York to fly out of JFK and ignored the warnings of a pending Nor’easter, thinking the sheer and desperate determination of three Black Americans to make it to Africa would hold off the worst of the snow until we were airborne.
It didn’t. New York City was shut down for three days, and by the time the airports opened, it didn’t make sense to fly out. We pushed the trip back indefinitely, and never made it. And so began my obsession with Africa, the place my even-tempered mother spoke of like it was some sort of Disneyland for Black people.
Some Black Americans, and I’m referring mostly to those that call Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina their “Old Country,” tend to be awe-struck at the idea Africa, like Nas at the end of Belly. Once we get a full picture beyond what we’re taught in school, where the largest continent and birthplace of all mankind is reduced to being the starting point for the Atlantic Slave Trade, there becomes an eagerness to migrate back across the Atlantic. The yearning is not unlike some immigrants who seek entrance to American shores. Except we’re not seeking the opportunities and streets of gold that Fievel and his family expected; we’re seeking the “home” that the Middle Passage erased.
I get why. For many American Blacks, the overall American experience has never really felt like a place where you can kick up your feet and recline all the way back. You get moments where that happens, of course, but then you also get a startling awakening— like when people are surprised you don’t have any children out of wedlock, or you happen to be “so articulate,” or despite carrying a purse while you shop, you find yourself explaining “No, no, actually I don’t work here.” Those things remind you not to get too comfy. America is home in the sense of being the devil you know, a bit like a stereotypical step-child, the one you tolerate but don’t really love like your own.
In recent weeks those feelings have surfaced again for many who struggle to make sense of the injustice of Trayvon Martin’s killer walking around freely, the ignorance displayed in conservative columnist John Derbyshire’s piece for The National Review where he wrote of advising his children to avoid Black folk, and the obnoxiousness of those Twitter-racists who found outrage in a sympathetic book character being Black or Awkward Black Girl landing the Shorty Award for best web-series. I find, similar to Cinderella, we dream of an escape to a place where we fit, like a glass slipper on the correct foot. For me, that place was Africa, any country, any part.
I’ve experienced this – going back to my parents’ homeland (Jamaica) and being called ‘English’ everywhere I went. That not-your-culture shock happens when you don’t know that just because you have roots in a certain place, and look like everyone else (it was my first time, aged 13, in a majority black country), it’s no guarantee that you’ll be accepted as one of them.
You’ll be accepted in your own way, on their terms, for who you are… just not as a native. You’re not one, no matter what your genetics or family tree tell you. Accept that, and you’ll be fine.
Sidebar: even though I’m born and raised in the UK, Amsterdam is one of the few places I’ve felt totally accepted and at home – because it’s a very mixed city and I look like I’m Dutch Caribbean. Oh, the irony…
I guess it shows that, especially for those of the diaspora, ‘home’ isn’t really where we expect it to be. So go where you’re going without expectation.
I love this! You hit the nail right on the head. The “Africa” of mythology exists in the abstract. The real Africa… a totally different story. No one can really claim an identity as broad and abstract as “African” and expect it to go unchallenged. Believe you me, if I took my East African self to Western or Southern Africa, I would feel every bit as foreign as you did. And I would be reminded that I didn’t belong by somebody or something, every single day. I often read “treatises” on pan-Africanism by Nigerian and Ghanaian and Senegalese thinkers which, quite frankly, are their own projections of what it means to be African and have little to do with my corner of Africa. African Americans too have their own ideas of what being African is that are projections of their specific experiences.
For Africans, as for other people globally, identity is often localized. We come from specific nations, ethnicities, cities and villages. It is only rarely that I hear Africans speak of coming from “Africa” or going back home to “Africa.” When they do so, they are typically speaking to an American audience or happen to have roots in more than one African nation.
Just as a White American with roots in Ireland can’t expect to go back there and be embraced as a local, neither can Black Americans. I understand the strong desire to re-connect with one’s roots and origins, but it needs to be in a different way. As many others have attested, even those of us with direct connections to an African country but have grown up in the Diaspora aren’t perceived as ‘locals’, and rightly so. We don’t live there and we don’t live their day-to-day lives; but we’re still of both worlds, dual-nationals, ex-pats, returnees, Afropolitans, what have you. The same way that a new African cosmopolitanism has developed, so too can a new relationship with Africans and brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. We shouldn’t be trying to discourage the development of these ties by throwing accusations of being ‘ignorant’ or ‘uppity’ at the author. Rather, Black Americans, Africans at home, and those of us in between, should be looking at ways to build and strengthen these ties. The next time you’re visiting home, invite along an American friend that’s interested in visiting the continent. They get to have an amazing experience, and you get to take your BFF as your travel-buddy.
I understand how you feel. I’m an American black woman who has travelled to several many times to Africa. In my opinion, it’s all in what you expect. If you expect Africa to be some sort of black utopia, you’re going to be sadly disapointed. Africa (especially South Africa) has it’s share of racial issues, even within the black race. No matter where you go in Africa, you will always be looked at as a foreigner. You’re NOT going to blend in, so get that out of your head and you will be more open to what Africa really has to offer.
Even though I stand out like a sore thumb every time I’m in Africa, I still love going. I still feel wamth from the people there, and feel honored to be able to connect with such a distant part of my culture. You just have to take it for what it is.
Although South Africa is beautiful and much more western-friendly than most of Africa, I found much more “connection” in west Africa, specifically Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Liberia. Not the most affluent countries, that’s for sure. But we share much more history with them than we do with many other parts of Africa. Go visit the slave castles in Ghana, Sierra Leone, or Senegal and see if it doesn’t move you. Listen to the similarities between Sierra Leonean Krio and American Creole and see if you’re not amazed.
For a black American in Africa, you need to approach it with an open mind, know that you are NOT going to blend in, but be open and genuine. Do that, and you will fall in love with the continent, like I did.
Really enjoyed this comment. Thank you.
Very well said
Where to start?
If as an African woman,I came to America,would you embrace me for being your long lost sister separated by slavery?
You went to a country that had their first black president in 1994 and used that as your measuring stick? SA is great,but welcoming African village it isn’t.
Why should they care about you? Would you care about them if they were visiting Brooklyn?
African Americans need to let go of this notion that Africa is your mother and you are her long lost child. Africa did not stop moving on because you were taken from us. We kept advancing,fighting,living. If life didn’t stop when you left,why should it when you return?
News flash. There isn’t a monolithic African identity,just like there isn’t a singular black experience.The problem isn’t that you aren’t African enough,just that you had pre conceived notions of what that meant. Africa isn’t the problem,you are.
I could say a whole lot more,but then Clutch would have to pay me. This is an extremely myopic article that needs a rebuttal from an African
@Shiks – to answer your question, many African Americans in America, well the reasonable ones, do accept African immigrants as their own and genuinely want to get to know them, befriend them, marry them. And let’s face the facts, many of the advances in immigrants rights (which includes African immigrants, Latino immigrants, Asian immigrants) were made on the backs of African Americans during the the civil rights era. And also during the civil rights era, African Americans also involved themselves in several African independence movements (with some reciprocation from Africans as well – think Nkrumah). Pan-Africanism, while born in Africa, is largely fostered by African Americans, which could again explain the nostalgia.
While on the flip side – you may find that some Nigerians in Nigeria (where I am from) would be more willing to be accommodating to white people (or now, Asian, since they are the new colonial masters) than black Americans. But this is not unique to the black experience – so I don’t fault Nigerians in particular for this. I think in general, unless you’re in Hicksville, USA, Americans are more accommodating to accepting and integrating foreigners than other, more monolithic countries. America has a history of receiving your poor, tired, masses yearning to be free, more so than a country like Nigeria or South Africa or Indonesia or the Ukraine. In some of these countries, which are less diverse (in terms of people emigrating from different countries), it is perhaps okay to point out (and sometimes with disdain) someone’s foreignness and otherness. In fact, I have oftentimes heard, even among well-educated Nigerian immigrants, the word akata freely being thrown about – and it is oftentimes not used is the most uplifting of conversations.
There exists a very real segment of the African American population that desires to connect with Africa, and may hold on to some nostalgia. And there is a very real segment of the African population, particularly those living in America, who will continue to look at, with disdain, the idea of pan-Africanism, as it relates to African Americans. While I agree with some of the commenters, that author’s conclusions from the experience were myopic – in that she projected the annoyance of one South African to the entire continent, the divide between African Americans and Africans is nonetheless glaring. We can either decide, oh well, everyone else (the Irish v Irish Americans or Italians v Jersey Shore) is doing it, so we are excused too. Or we can decide to bridge the divide that has existed between us for 2-400 years.
I think at the heart of the matter is the African American desire to embrace pan-Africanism while for many Africans in disparate countries, this desire for cross-country brotherhood may not be as strong, or even desirable. You have to remember, a Ghanaian person is as foreign to a Nigerian as an Austrian to a British person, talk less of someone who did not grow up on the same continent.