It’s Tuesday morning, I’m drinking my Hausa koko and planning my tasks for the day when my partner calls me to watch Kendrick Lamar’s performance (pictured) at the Grammy’s. I missed his performance because I spent all night debating the role the Ghanaian Diasporaplay in the development of Ghana with my newly acquired Sierra Leonean friends.
During our discussion, I argued that most “returnees” had a romanticized view of Ghana and needed to accept that until we address our ingrained lack of direction at the national level, all our efforts were going to waste.
“Dziffa, regardless of how you see it, the Diaspora returning and seeing problems as opportunities has contributed to Ghana’s growth. In Sierra Leone, we do not have such a high rate of sophisticated Diaspora returning, so we are still economically where Ghana was a few years ago,” my friend said.
I rushed to YouTube to watch Kendrick’s performance. Hearing an African-American man proudly say, “I’m African-American. I’m African,” and placing his neighborhood in America inside the African map is by far one of my most proudest moments (pictured).
Growing up in the Bronx, being African was an insult.
The African-American kids would either call us “f**king African” as an insult or make fun of our blackness. I could not relate to my friends who complained of racism from White people because all the racism I experienced were from my African-American classmates.
Granted, a lot has changed since my elementary and high school days; I had many conscious African-American friends in college who knew more about Africa than I did, and some of my customers at Dziffa even reach out to me about my experience with starting a business in Ghana and my thoughts on them moving to Ghana.
As many blacks are reclaiming their Blackness, we come to a point where we need to address exactly what to do with our drive to redefine our Blackness.
0 Comments