The first time I had lunch with my study group in Business School, a conversation about race popped up and I do not remember what the conversation was about but I remember saying to one of the ladies on my team that “When I go to countries where the people are predominantly non-black, I identify with the cause of the black people there even though I do not have their history or experience. I do this because when people in these countries see me on the street, they do not see African, they see black and whether or not I have been groomed in their environment, they view me as black in their context”
Until I went to Germany for the first time, I didn’t recognise how black I was. When you grow up in Nigeria, the differentiators are tribe and not skin colour and though people often associate certain physical features to certain tribes, they are not as distinct as race. However, when I was in Germany, I realised that every server was especially nice to me as though compensating for something. I eventually got why but it felt strange.
Since being in DC, black people nod at me on the streets as if to say “I see you” and one even took the time to yell out a website I should visit to get ‘free’ funding for college. It feels like a unique community to be adopted into, one that acknowledges your existence and even tries to support you to rise. I identify as African before I identify as black, and that part of my heritage is extremely important to me because being a black woman who was groomed outside of the context of frequent stereotyping enables me to spot when something is significantly off in social interactions with people of other races, it allows me to fight for the causes of black people outside of my home country objectively. So, when I fight for black people everywhere, I fight for myself too but I am also careful that I cannot drive all the conversations on racial discrimination and stereotyping because, on topics such as these, I have only experienced them a few times and so widely spread apart that I do not have sufficient context to fight properly.
If black is more than a colour, it is a community and communities build and protect each other. While everyone cannot be the same in one community, building these communities allow us to learn so, I will nod at the black people I see on the street, smiling at them not because I know them but because a part of me lives in them. Every time an opportunity arises to fight for, protect, or even support a black person, I will take it because that’s how we will grow and glow.
❤