I Am Black American, Not African American

It was the first time I was asked, “Where are you from?” And in my memory, it was on this occasion that I realized that being black was not the answer.

For a sixth grade project, each student had to draw and describe their family coat of arms in order to present their origins. I obviously knew my ethnicity, but not the exact place where my ancestors came from. And while most of my classmates, mostly white in this Connecticut elementary school, could take pride in having grandparents — or great grandparents — from Ireland, Italy or Greece.

I was forced to admit that I had no idea of the country where my ancestors lived. they had been brought here against their will and all the documents proving their origins had long since disappeared. My grandparents and great grandparents, on both sides of my family, were born in the South and on the Atlantic coast of the United States. A story without much interest.

But where are your parents?

Recently, I was asked again where I came from, several times. But in a very different context since it was during a wedding in Kenya.

There, I once started a conversation with a young armed guard (and aspiring engineer) standing guard near the entrance to the secure complex where we lived with my friend and several guests abroad.

“But where are your parents?”, he asked, clarifying his question after I told him I was an American tourist. “They are also American,” I replied, slightly hesitant about the meaning of his question.

I suddenly understood where he was coming from: he was asking me the same question as that of the sixth year project. He wanted to know which country, other than the United States, my family came from. Kenya? Nigeria? Both? I tried to explain to him that, as far as I know, I had no family, close or distant, outside the United States. My answer only seemed to satisfy him.

Later, it was another Kenyan, the bride’s cousin, who asked me the same question at the wedding party. He had a flattering split: “You could pass for an African however!”

And I am partly African, genetically at least. A few years ago, my father had indeed undergone a DNA test claiming that my ancestors were from Nigeria. But I don’t consider myself as Nigerian-American, or even as African-American. I come from the United States, I am black American.

My father tried to instill in us a sense of pride in being not only black American but also African American. Throughout my adolescence, the terms “black American” and “African American” were thus perfectly interchangeable. While not knowing, because of the loss and destruction of their birth certificates before the beginning of the 20th century, which country came my ancestors.

Despite my father’s efforts, my first in-depth discussions with first or second-generation Americans with close relatives in an African country led me to question this “African American” identity.

In my opinion, the term perfectly corresponds to people who are tangibly linked to their family’s country and who have real access to both cultures. But for me who grew up with the feeling of being above all black American and with an approach to African culture seen through the American prism, the term “African American” does not seem appropriate to me.

I felt like a stranger, on several occasions

This did not prevent my father, on my return from Kenya last month, from asking me in a (more or less) joking tone: “Did you feel different when you touched the ground of the motherland?”

He obviously wanted to know if I had felt “at home” in this place where I had never set foot before. Some people have spent their lives hoping to find their own Zion, the lost paradise of the Rastafarians. Had I found it?

Source: Roots Photo Leslie Uggams, Louis Gossett Jr., Madge Sinclair, Todd Bridges

I replied, without hesitation, that this had not been the case. At least not as he intended.

I felt different in Kenya, but like anyone visiting a completely new place for the first time, like a tourist. And I imagine that visiting Nigeria, my other supposed country of origin, would have the same effect on me.

Aside from obvious things like transportation and living conditions (in Kenya, cattle roam the streets everywhere, including in urban areas), I had discovered other more subtle cultural differences, but also more significant.

For example, if the marriage followed traditions that were familiar to me, such as the bouquet throwing (naturally accompanied by this universal hymn that became Single Ladies ), the ceremony also had many moments in Swahili, the second official language of the country with English. Some jokes from the master of ceremonies delighted the Kenyan guests but completely passed me over. One of the guests, a cousin of the bride living in the United States, had to explain to me later.

But the difficulty in grasping humor was not the only thing that made me feel alien on several occasions.

Having to constantly explain who I am — an American with American parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents — underscored the gap between my understanding of the concept of race and that of the Kenyans. For those I met, having black skin necessarily meant being African. For me, being black means nothing else … than being black.

During this project in sixth grade, I envied the apparent ease with which my comrades were able to trace their family tree until the beginning of the 20th century.

My teacher had probably intended to make us proud of our origins and to show the diversity of the paths that had allowed each family to immigrate to this country. And the presentation, made in the mid-1990, was to be part of the American obsession of the time for “hyphenated” identities (“I am Irish, so I bring good luck!”), Born in the decades following the civil rights movement.

America, “nation of immigrants”

As Matthew Frye Jacobson noted in his book Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (which studied the revival of white identity in America in the 1970), the development of black nationalism in The 1960 and 1970 then coincided with the advent of the idea, for white Americans, that the United States was “a nation of immigrants.” But for him, the two phenomena are linked.

“This has reduced the impact of the civil rights and black pride movements while relieving the conscience of a country that had just begun to recognize that one of the worst moments in its history had been wrought by white supremacy. “

As thought then, Americans can trace their ancestry to the great wave of immigration, that of those who arrived at Ellis Island in the early 20th century, could indeed be held responsible for the horrors of enslavement or reconstruction that followed the Civil War.

In retrospect, I did not have to be ashamed: even if I could not pretend to know with certainty the origins of my family, the family coat of arms that I had created was as valid as that of other children.

But it was not the last time that I felt this feeling of inferiority. Later, when I ended up at the university and met African immigrants or first-generation African Americans, it came back.

The term “black American”

The term “black American” highlights the similarities between all black people: from the racism we experience to common cultural phenomena

Since then, I have also evolved on this subject and I agreed to define myself by my education rather than by the country where my ancestors could be from. In recent years, the distinction between “black American” and “African American” has indeed been shown, both at the semantic level and by extension culturally.

I now know that I am not the only one who wishes to identify myself as a black American. And I believe that every individual, especially people of color who have so often seen their lives defined by the standards of the white majority (remember, for example, the “ one-drop rule “ that it was enough to have a single drop of black blood to be considered black), should be able to define themselves according to the terms of their choice.

I do not believe that my preference for the term “American black” is a way of denying or distancing myself from my African genetic heritage. On the contrary, it is for me a way of highlighting the similarities that exist between all black people, beyond our differences: the racism that we suffer from non-black people (from police violence to the question the criteria of beauty ) to common cultural phenomena, such as the aesthetic concept of “ black cool “, born in West Africa and recently adopted by the black American art.

Having never lived in the country of my ancestors, I will never know what it means to be Kenyan, Nigerian, or, more generally, to be African.

But during my last trips, especially while crossing Kenya from Nairobi to Mombasa on the coast, I was able to experience a real immersion in an African country. I felt a certain closeness to the people I met there: it was indeed fascinating to spend time in a country where the majority of the population is not white, to meet people of such diverse social and or the inhabitants of the cities.

Finally

After years of distance learning, I was able to see for myself a small patch of African culture. Today I want to continue to deepen this knowledge, even if it is only as a tourist, not as a member of the family who has been lost for a long time and who is now back “at home”.

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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.

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