Now you might think that this statement is a bit wacky because if you look at my picture I am quite clearly of the African heritage. There is however a very big difference to being black and having a traditionally African colouring. The first, being black, has more to do with the manner in which a person acts while the second, being African, mostly refers to the colour of your skin. Now, most of my life I have tried to SOLELY classify myself as African. I mean there is no running away from the fact that I am the colour that I am and I would never want to. I use to classify myself as only African because of my skin colour. To me nothing else made me African. Yes I speak my mother tongue (which is TshiVenda) but a person who isn’t “African” could also speak my language. How often have you been in Jo’burg city and the shop owner speaks all the official languages? Thus speaking my Mother tongue really isn’t helping me become more black is it? To me, being African had to do with skin colour. This was further perpetuated by the fact that ‘black’ people in America are called African American. You see. Solely because of their melanin count they were called African. They didn’t participate in any cultural event did they? Was there initiation school for their young adults? Do they pay lobola? I doubt it. Yet, they are still classified as African. So in my mind I agreed with this. I believed that I was solely African based on the colour of my skin. Then in 2011 I cut off all my hair. You are probably wondering how going bald turned me from being African to Black. There is a bit of a back story to that which I must first briefly explain. When I grew up I was bombarded with the idea that to attain beauty there were certain minimum standards that had to be met. One of those standards that was the most powerful in my upbringing was this ideal that in order to be considered beautiful my hair had to have a certain bounce, a certain silkiness and definitely a certain length. I will embark on that full story another time but for the moment it is sufficient to say that before I turned 21 my views on beauty meant that I would subject my scalp and my hair to chemicals that could dissolve a coke can all because the result would leave my hair straight and silky for a month until I had to do the whole process again. Now here I was. New hair. (or perhaps old hair since this chemical free hair is my original hair). I had to redefine who I was because I no longer fit into the mould that was expected of me as a young black woman who was striving to become a professional person. (Oh the things I could write about the professional world and having natural hair… I might just have to, anyway.) This is where the blackness set in. As I said before being black has to do with a manner of living, how you act and not necessarily the melanin count that you are born with. It was empowering to learn to be proud of not only the texture of my hair but to be proud of my blackness as a whole. It is surprising to me that it is acceptable for me to wear a traditionally patterned skirt on campus and around the streets of where I live all because my hair has changed. Best believe that if I had a weave in my hair then I would be questioned as to whether I was going somewhere special. I know this because I have been that girl with a weave in traditional clothes. Having my natural hair automatically demanded respect from other black people. I had finally embraced who I was. How crazy is that? This experience did teach me something though I slowly started to realise that I had always been black. I may speak with an accent that may have you questioning my origins. I may bring concepts like feminism into the conversation with traditional older people. I may even enjoy reading Dan Brown rather than Steve Biko but I have always been black. My preference in music does not make my skin lighter or my soul any whiter. My blackness is not the same as the next person. However, the mere fact that I don’t slaughter a goat because lighting struck my house does not negate that I am black. I speak my home language. I also speak English and Afrikaans. That just makes it easier to communicate with other people. I enjoy reading weird indie books without feeling bad about not watching the movie even though it may not considered cool to read as a black person. I don’t care that I am labelled a nerd. I definitely don’t care when you say that I am a non-traditionalist because I am a Christian. I don’t like using taxi’s because I was privileged enough to grow up in a family with cars. None of those labels that you think make me less of a black person make me less of a black person. In fact I think that these very things make me a black person. Let me explain. Black people as a race are pretty resilient in life. We have lived through being colonized, slavery and segregation. Somewhere in that we haven’t lost who we are as a people. We can be taught a strange language from across the sea and still stay true to who we are. We can be introduced to sushi but still prefer pap. So the labels you give and that I may try and convince myself are true really aren’t a true testament to who I am. I am African because of my skin colour but I am black because that is the core of who I am.
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AuthorIntersectional Feminist. Hopeless Romantic. Lover of Life. Archives
January 2018
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