About the Author

author photo

A young, black, professional, Spelman College and UNC Law grad, and new mommy who practices law in the Chicago suburbs.

Other posts by Kimberly

“Where are you from?”

March 14th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

Young Black Professional Guide to African ContinentHave you ever schooled someone on something that they didn’t know anything about? And afterwards you can tell how much they appreciated learning that bit of information. That’s a pretty damn good feeling. Fredric can attest to the fact that, at times, I have issues with patience. But definitely not when I am educating others about something that is important to me, such as my race, heritage, and culture.Part of my job as Project Manager for MyBnk is to go into schools and facilitate workshops on entrepreneurship. Today before our session began, I had an interesting conversation with a girl from Ghana who was about 14 years old. The reason she even approached me was because of my “American accent,” something that many young Brits seem to be infatuated with. They tell me that they “love my accent” and even try to prompt me to talk “pure English.” I always playfully deny even having an accent, accusing Britains of being the ones with accents. At any rate, from my dialect, she knew I was American, but continued to ask me where I was from. Here’s how the conversation went:

“Miss, where are you from?”

“Chicago, in the United States.”

“No, where are you from?”

“I’m from America. I’m African-American.”

“Say what Miss? You’re what? What did you say? Africa?”

“I am from America. I was born there, and so were my parents and grandparents. [By now two more students had joined us] But I know that I am of African descent; my ancestors came from Africa.”

Then I continued to explain descent, ancestors, and slavery, and how without using investigative resources like ancestry.com, most Black Americans do not know what country in Africa they “come from.” To this they still questioned, “But why don’t you know where your family comes from?” So after a few more details about slaves being forced to change their names, separate from their families, and their inability to keep records, they started to understand how thousands of Africans lost their identities when they were brought to America. These British students didn’t know this. They were never taught this, not even during UK Black History Month. This was all new information for them and I had 10 minutes to give them this important lesson about my history. But even with only 10 minutes, I know they will always remember what I said.

When someone understands you, that means something….that means they get what you were trying to tell them. That may sound simple, but think about all the times when people don’t listen to you and don’t understand, sometimes leaving you both frustrated. I knew the girl got it because of the look on her face. She said “That’s sad. No, not sad, that’s very, very sad.” It reminded me of the episode of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart was comprehending that Al Sharpton’s great-grandfather was a slave. Like, wow, this was your grandfather’s father…he was a slave…And you could see the look of revelation on Stewart’s face, as if he were thinking, wow, slavery really wasn’t that long ago… deep.

But our history isn’t sad. To the contrary, as I stated in my Black History post, we have history like no other group in the world. Our history is unique, special, and should constantly be shared with others. We know where we come from-we come from struggle, we come from accomplishment, and we come from triumph.

Unfortunately, every time we think we’ve come a long way up from slavery, judicial racism occurs in small towns like Paris, Texas, making us feel like, on the road of progression, we’ve taken giant steps backwards. The case of Shaquanda Cotten proves that we can never get too comfortable in this country- we must stay on our toes to ensure that we are treated with the respect the American Constitution affords us. We are American, yet we are still treated as if no one has any idea where we came from.

Viewing 10 Comments

 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus