by Geraldine Amakihe, Contributing Writer
Sudanese model Alex Wek
Ethiopian Liya Kebede
I didn’t know I was African until I left Africa.
A loaded statement coming from a Nigerian; an Igbo girl. Nonetheless, it is exactly the way I used to feel, before my family relocated back to the States from Nigeria. Before I left the confines of my father country, declaring me an African person was redundant- a statement of the obvious – so I never had to consciously think about it. In Nigeria, particularly in my Igbo culture, my father’s name and my education were the two most important cultural indicators.
When I moved back to the US I quickly realized that I was now “African” and was constantly expected to represent a billion people. And that being anything other than “that African girl” was considered an upgrade.
Countless numbers of people thought they were complimenting me with reassurances that I didn’t “look African”. Some would wonder about my last name, and upon discovering that I was Nigerian, would give a range of responses;
“Oh wow! You’re African??”
“I thought you were just ‘regular’ black”.
“Oh! So, THAT explains your features!”
I remember an instance when a teacher told me that he just knew I was African because of my “big features”. I also remember cringing inwardly as he emphatically stressed that my African look basically boiled down to my full lips. That day, as I sat in his classroom, I fiercely wished that I could be the complete opposite of what he thought was the African look. I wanted to be thinner lipped and lighter skinned, solely to force him to recognize that his so-called African look, as dominating as the idea was, was a fallacy.
Whenever the African phenotype is mentioned, the stock image is usually the stereotypically flat description of dark skin, full lips and backsides, wide noses, and highly textured hair. To delve into the misconception even further, let’s lay out all the cards and attach “poor”, “dirty”, “backwards” and “starving” to the description. People seem to find it difficult to reconcile the notion that there are just as many people who might look this way, as there are people throughout the continent who don’t, but still identify as African, and that these people fall into all levels of social status. It’s irritating when we allow ourselves to mindlessly gorge on misinformation dispensed by myths and media, and continue to dismiss people for not fitting a narrow margin of the supposed African look.
Shouldn’t it go without mention that different people identify as African, and the current categories should be expanded? However, common sense ideas often seem to be the hardest to understand or implement. For instance, with a country like Nigeria, which is an arbitrary amalgamation of hundreds of ethnicities from Fulani to Igbo, facial features and body types vary incredibly. If we step outside of Nigeria, Alex Wek and Liya Kebede are both from East Africa.
They look amazingly different, and yet, by looking at them, people would assume only Alek as the “pure African”. None of these regions are homogenous, and prevailing features run the gamut from the deepest to the fairest of complexions.
Let’s continue to extrapolate that example and apply it to Africans in the diaspora; Colombians to Canadians, Americans to Argentinians and the catch-all African phenotype begins to dissolve. The African look is a multi-dimensional one, and we shouldn’t rely entirely on the media to provide accurate information. We should constantly challenge ourselves to think outside the proverbial box and to question ourselves, because in doing so, we can expand our familiarities, and in turn, challenge the status quo. It is also our responsible, as black people, to stop associating certain African features with poverty and backwardness.
We need to totally rethink Africa and, by extension, our perception of African beauty.
igbo kwenu! as i’m getting older, more and more people are telling me i “look african”, probably because i’m natural now, but it makes me happy. I am 100% Nigerian (raised in the States) but i never used to look especially Nigerian. the fact that now people are recognizing my features as African brings me lots of joy.
I am West Indian and I actually get EXCITED when anyone makes a reference about the ‘African-ness’ that they might be read in me. In DC this summer, a Nigerian guy asked me if I was African and said he guessed I might be from Sierra Leone. Some years aback, again in DC, an older East African man thought I was East African. I really do have a craving to connect to my people and roots which were lost during the transatlantic journey to the Caribbean and when I hear things like these, I wonder what they are reading in me and what they might reveal about a whole unknown family tree or connections. I mean, I don’t really have a lot of answers either! And I have no money for conclusive DNA testing like the celebrities. The Nigerian guy, I actually asked to explain why he thought so. Much of it was phenotype and body type. (He was also trying to holla but whatev) Whatever the case, for me personally, I love it. It doesn’t happen a whole lot but when it does, I perk up some more–smile and think wonderful thoughts about who my people might be.
Thanks for this post. The comments are always are a good reminder that we are sisters in a boat TOGETHER! My mother is Ghanaian and my father is black American and I have experienced both sides (too african/not african enough).
Then, of course, I went to Ghana and saw family members who ran the spectrum from black as night to almost white as snow and that showed me that “African” is so many things. This post also reminds me of Kodwo Eshun’s book “Black Gold of The Sun”. He went back to Ghana looking for his “authentic” Ghanaian experience and history and got a real shock to find Europeans (and maybe even Arabs) in his “pure” African bloodline. Everything is everything! If people don’t want to know the true, then that’s their loss!
Well-written post and interesting comments. My experiences with “looking African” have been quite different though. Where I’ve lived, it is viewed better to be/”look” African than “regular black,” because to be African from Africa is to be exotic, and exotic is good, plus there are positive connotations associated with the mentality of Africans as opposed to African-Americans, who are stereotyped as stupid and lazy. This is frustrating for a whole load of reasons, one of which being that it shows how fragmented and complex African identity is among African-descended groups and non-Africans alike.
I am American with no recent familial ties to any continental African cultures. I was raised in a pretty diverse community with a lot of immigrants who’ve excelled in the US, while most of the blacks are still pretty bad off. I went to college in a predominantly White, small New England town and in both environments people would ask me where I was from and America was never a suitable answer for them …but being a “regular black” that’s really the only answer that I had. Both white people and black Americans tried to exotify me and when they realized what I was they seemed to be disappointed. One black girl once told me that I look exotic and I could be Ethiopian, as if there was something wrong with just being me! That is not to say “looking African” was never used as an insult to people in my community—but it was only applied to darker-skinned Africans and African-Americans.
My most hurtful experience with “looking” African was with an African student from Botswana during college. This kid asked grilled me about my ethnicity and when he found out I was as American as they get, he looked at me with disgust and proclaimed that I didn’t have an African identity whatsoever. it really pissed me off because i interpreted it as meaning that my African community is deemed non-African for whatever reason, be it phenotypic or cultural or a combination thereof. It really saddens me because even though my family is not from X country in Africa and I don’t speak Y language or know my family’s history in Africa, black Americans and blacks everywhere, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia, have had to pick up the pieces of shattered families and marginalized cultures in order to make something of their own that perhaps isn’t “100% African” because it wasn’t made in Africa, but that doesn’t mean we have gotten rid of our African identity. There has been a lot of back and forth between Africa and the rest of the world and today no culture operates without outer influences. On a happier note, my darker-skinned “regular black” friend who has phenotypes that are “more african” (full lips, wider nose) went to Morocco and she had a very positive experience as a black American. People would address her as “Mama Africa” because of her looks, and even when she told them she was black American, the Moroccans would end up telling her that they shared an identity in Africa with her. This struck me because North Africans are oftentimes painted as being ashamed of their black African ancestry, but these people, who don’t “look African” were very much aware of the fact that they ARE African to the point that they would tell someone who they thought “looked” African that they were one in the same.
I think the fact that African-descended groups show so much diversity is amazing and I hope that one day we can embrace it all. I was in Indonesia last summer where there were like no African people, and being natural many people thought I was from Papua New Guinea. But whenever I met someone from Papua or another Pacific Island and told them I was African-American, we used our phenotypic similarities as a stepping stone to navigate our vast ethnic and geographical differences, much like my friend in Morocco’s differences lead to a common ground with the people she met there. I pray that one day, us people of African descent who find ourselves spread across the world with phenotypic differences and similarities, will acknowledge the common thread of our shared, complicated history. That is not to say that there aren’t important differences between African cultures because there surely are, just as all Europeans are not all the same. But given all of the crap that we’ve had to endure, I think we need to stand together in order for any of us to be uplifted. It needs to start within us and right now there is a lot of self-hate :(.
Great piece! I really can’t stand the fact that the people still don’t realize that Africa in itself is not one entity–it is made up of different countries, cultures, customs, looks etc. Even within one country, you will find hundreds of ethnic groups. But even more so, I hate that even to this day there is a negative association with Africa.
I’m Jamaican (born and raised for a few years) and I’ve heard the “You look African thing too” but because I grew up with relatively few negative opinions on Africa (somehow… or maybe I just ignored them?) I was always confused/took it as a compliment. Two incidences stick out the most to me:
1. I was walking through NYC when a black women stops me with my friends, stares at my fro and then looks me in the eye and asks me what part of Africa I’m from. I just stare back, a bit shocked at the random question and respond that I’m Jamaican. She turns to her friend as if expecting something and just walks away. It was very odd and my friends found it amusing, though we were all confused about she would have done if I had said I was.
2. A very light skinned black guy stops me in a line at Mickey D’s and asks me where I’m from and since I thought he was a creeper, I refuse to answer until he says Africa? I shake my head no and he says You’re American? I shake my head yes just so he’ll leave me alone and he gives me an odd and strangely disappointed look and replies “It’s odd, you *really* don’t look American” before walking away.
I find when people gauge that question with me, it’s either because of my hair (and what I guess they think Africans look like?), the way I dress isn’t really typically American (?It’s more bohemian) and with guys who ask (rare to begin with) I find when I say I’m not, they seem sad. Maybe African girls are a hot commodity? lol
Still not sure exactly what makes people ask but I’ve always liked the way my face looked, so I take it as a compliment to be honest.
@CollegeChick
I think you might find this article interesting.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2007/03/07/17622/
DBCO
That must have been a very embarrassing experience. Its happened to me before. Especially when you are wearing a head wrap. It is very insulting and crude.
Whats ironic about Alek representing Sudan is that you can tell that she is from the South. Liya on the other hand could pass for a Sudanese but from the North.
“Oh wow! You’re African??”
“I thought you were just ‘regular’ black”.
smh @ “regular black”- LOL! if that’s not ignorant I don’t know what is- some people just don’t realise how ethnically diverse Africa is.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I live a Kenyan living in Sweden and someone once told my fiance that I have european features and don’t look African at look.
It blows my mind how some people love to dwell in their ignorance!!
I’m Ethiopian and I can soooo relate to this. I always get that “Oh but you don’t look African” type of comment. Some people need to understand that Africans are extremely diverse, they can be lightskinned, chocolate, short, tall..it dont matter!
The media does influence but how shallow would we all be if we allowed the media to be our ultimate source of information. I too am Zimbabwean (located in the southern region of Africa) and have experienced many interesting situations… the surprising thing is that it mostly comes from other black people. I hope for the day when we could all embrace each other in truth and not ignorance.
I forget where I read this, but: There is more DNA diversity in the African continent alone than in the other six continents COMBINED. Regardless of where you fall on the evolution-creationism scale, if you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.
I am dark-skinned with Afro-textured hair, full lips, and a full butt that’s starting to droop with age. :) I also have high cheekbones and a straight nose, which people have claimed as evidence of my non-African ancestry. I tell them, “Maybe so…and maybe not.”
I never got the “Are you African?” comments until I went natural, and then it would be from other Africans who would tell me I looked like their little sister back home. I lived in Chicago for many years and sometimes black Chicagoans would ask me if I was from Africa because they said I had an accent. Um, no…it’s called standard English. (No offense…but that used to piss me off though.)
I do find CollegeChick’s comments very interesting…and I’ve witnessed that same thought process as well working in a university. Even though I’m staff, I do sometimes think I’m treated differently because I “look African.”
Well, just to chime in, it goes both ways. Recently in grad school I heard an African classmate on many occasions refer to some of the lighter-skinned girls with long hair as being mixed(they are definitely not). She saw a picture of my mother and said the same thing(again she is not, and the picture shows my whole family, including me and my sister, also with long hair). I overheard her and another African girl (each from different countries) discussing my (rather long) hair. I think that to her, seeing my mother’s picture cleared it all up. They were asking me questions about “What kind of hair I had” when it wasn’t straightened (I’m dark-skinned so I guess I disrupted their theories). I wasn’t supposed to have long hair b/c I was dark, the light girls had long hair because they were mixed. They didn’t learn that from any of us, it’s what they really believed.
We’re such a hodgepodge…different ethnicities, different racial mixes (and let’s not ignore the influx of people from the Arab world into parts of Eastern Africa…it’s what spread Islam across the continent and into Spain after all). And Tutsis were favored by the Belgians for their “straighter” “European” features, and the resentment from that lasted well over a century and into the genocide in the early 90′s.
I just get tired of people acting like the ignorance only comes from Black Americans. We all make silly assumptions about each other.
Oh, and not Ethiopian but I get tired of hearing people try to put them all in the same box in terms of features, etc. as well. I’ve heard people insist that they all have the same hair and skin tone and make silly comments about that. So I’ve heard people told that they were too dark or their hair was the wrong texture to “really” be Ethiopian or Eritrean…
Do any Africans get grilled by other Africans abou tnot “looking” or “being African”? I get that A LOT. I’m at a point now where I have to fake a “Ghanaian accent” around Africans just to avoid being questioned about MY being from Ghana.
MissyD, Ayanna and mek summed up so much for me. I just want to say that I’m enjoying reading these comments and I’m learning a lot from the various experiences. Thanks BGLH and Geraldine for putting this out there.
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If I had a dime for anytime I’ve heard that “But you don’t look African” comment. I am of Ghanaian descent and many people wouldn’t know unless I told them my name. They would ask where my name originates from and then sparks the dialogue. Mostly other Africans know that I am African without having to ask. They would look at my last name or my features and automatically know exactly where I’m from. I have the full lips, wide nose, dark skin, high cheekbones and big butt, but I still get that perplexing question, “You’re African??? Really?” It’s crazy to me.