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Growing up, it has never been difficult spotting me in a crowd. Just look for the brown blip in the sea of pallor and you have a 99% chance of picking me. In a city of Mary Smith’s and John Johnson’s, “Michaela Benyam Zewde” sticks out like a sore thumb. My pride in my Ethiopian-American heritage is a characteristic I refuse to keep hidden. Understandably, in the rare occurrence that a peer shares their knowledge of Ethiopia, it often times revolves around its famine. Being from such a small town, I am likely one of the few people of color (let alone Ethiopians) that my classmates will be able to know personally before venturing off into the real world. With the recent increase in racial tensions and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,
Schmidt, Dana Adams. ?Africans Protest Prejudice in U.S.? New York Times 21 Jan. 1961: 4.
Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics of their own inherited culture. Therefore, in an African American society, a search for self identity is a pervasive theme.
Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative provides insight into cultural assimilation and the difficulties such assimilation. The writer embraces several Western traits and ideals yet guards his African virtues jealously. In doing so however, he finds himself somewhere in between a full European and a displaced African. This problem of cultural identity Equiano struggled with is still present in modern American society. The modern day African-American appears to also be in the process of deciding the between two competing cultures and often being left somewhere in middle becoming a victim of cultural identity just like Olaudah Equiano some 250 years ago.
One of the most destructive forces that is destroying young black people in America today is the common cultures wicked image of what an realistic black person is supposed to look like and how that person is supposed to act. African Americans have been struggling for equality since the birth of this land, and the war is very strong. Have you ever been in a situation where you were stereotyped against?
Since Carraway’s voyeuristic ways allow him to fill in so many blanks that he otherwise would have had no knowledge of (particularly his knowledge of the cigarettes Gatsby smoked during the war, or how Jordan Baker was, in addition to being a liar, an occasional shoplifter), it is fitting that African-Ameri...
Johnson, Charles, Patricia Smith, and WGBH Series Research Team. Africans in America. New York: Harcourt, Inc. 1998.
Gabriel, Deborah. Layers of Blackness: Colourism in the African Diaspora. London: Imani Media, 2007. Print.
I don’t think I would get up and move to a new area just because my political issues aren’t being heard. I feel that if you get up and leave that you aren’t really being heard because that issue is going to still be a problem at that place you were once at. Instead I feel like I would start a movement to be heard so that change could take place a close mouth never gets fed. If people like Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks would have never did what they did then some things would have never changed this place we still might be segregated. I was always taught if you start something no matter what it is you always finish it especially if it going to better yourself or many people in the long run. I think if you run
Ofcansky, Thomas, and LaVerle Berry. 2011. A Country Study: Ethiopia. Washington D.C.: The Library of Congress. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/ettoc.html.
As the partition of Africa and the marginalization of its descendants continues, survival and socioeconomic ascension remain diasporic priorities. In America, there are oft unspoken yet resounding parameters for the phenotypically Black. It is understood that a Black person “shrinks” themselves in the presence of a police officer to avoid an untimely death, dilutes their opinions about race in White spaces to “keep their nice liberal friends comfortable” (Adichie, 359), and penultimately avoids wearing their natural hair in public so that they may appear “professional”, “pretty”, “non-threatening”, and “clean-cut”. It is paramount that the upwardly mobile Black person adheres to Eurocentric beauty standards because they reflect the morality
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright is a photo and text book which poetically tells the tale of African Americans from the time they were taken from Africa to the time things started to improve for them in a 149 page reflection. Using interchanging series of texts and photographs, Richard Wright encompasses the voices of 12 Million African-Americans, and tells of their sufferings, their fears, the phases through which they have gone and their hopes. In this book, most of the photos used were from the FSA: Farm Security Administration and a few others not from them. They were selected to complement and show the points of the text. The African-Americans in the photos were depicted with dignity. In their eyes, even though clearly victims, exists strengths and hopes for the future. The photos indicated that they could and did create their own culture both in the past and present. From the same photos plus the texts, it could be gathered that they have done things to improve their lives of their own despite the many odds against them. The photographs showed their lives, their suffering, and their journey for better lives, their happy moments, and the places that were of importance to them. Despite the importance of the photographs they were not as effective as the text in showing the African-American lives and how the things happening in them had affected them, more specifically their complex feelings. 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright represents the voice of African-Americans from their point of view of their long journey from Africa to America, and from there through their search for equality, the scars and prints of where they come from, their children born during these struggles, their journeys, their loss, and plight...
My understanding of race has certainly changed over time. I spent first fourteen years of my life in a country that was predominantly white. I was not aware of racism simply because I did not encounter anyone who was not white. In fourteen years I saw one Black gentleman who was attending a Medical University in my town as an exchange student. My classmates and I saw him as someone exotic from the other side of the world. He was a matter of a conversation for about fifteen seconds before we went on about our daily lives.
As I heard the gun shots outside the glass window, I ran terrified behind the old, brown couch in our living room and hide myself there. My heart beating increased, and currents of panic and fear ran through my body. I made an effort to connect my shivering hands and started praying, hoping that my mom and siblings were safe since they were out buying some groceries at the store that was five blocks away from our house. Fortunately, nothing happened to my family, they got home within an hour later after the shooting was over. Minutes later after their arrival, a neighbor came to our house warning us to stay inside the house until the police announce that things were back to “normal”. I was six years, and living in a neighborhood where there were daily confrontations due to gang violence and rivalry wasn’t easy. However, my family and I aimed for something better, and that meant moving to a new country, starting from zero, struggling economically, and gazing into my parent’s heartbroken expressions every time they couldn’t afford a new pair of shoes for me.
“The water is not dirty,” the village elder told me. I traveled 8,000 miles to a rural Ethiopian village to help a community fulfill their request for an improved water supply, yet I was greeted with these words. Immediately, my naïve confidence in the simplicity of the intended transaction disappeared. As the only non-Ethiopian of our visiting team, I stepped back and listened as a delicate, culturally-complex conversation unfolded. The discussion revealed an important dichotomy in our respective understandings of the problem. Through this experience, I learned that
On Monday, October 11, 1999, in a hospital in Nigeria, I was born. If questioned about the early part of my life, I would not be able to respond. I cannot recall memories of elementary school, let alone early childhood, everything was hazy. I was not born in the United States, but I have no memories from Nigeria. In my childhood, I felt separated from my African side, like I could not be called Nigerian and the only remnant of my African identity was my name. I felt on a similar level, what civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, called the double consciousness, of how I did not feel like I could choose a side. My nationalities were in conflict because I was hesitant to accept the Nigerian culture, and I could not call myself an American. I would become apathetic when Nigeria was brought up in conversation. I was more attune with identifying myself as an American rather than being a Nigerian, I was afraid of claiming a nation that I did not belong to.