Most of us don’t know where we came from, we don’t know what tribe we’re from, and we don’t know who our ancestors are, so to an extent we should stop claiming Africa as our own.
For black Americans tracing our history is one of the hardest things ever done. Why? Our lineage wasn’t documented, our native names were changed, and many of our ancestors who were slaves didn’t know where they came from. Sadly, we’re lost to an entire culture that once belonged to us and we have no idea of how to reconnect with it. The common idea is that “getting in touch with your African roots” includes wearing a dashiki or celebrating Kwanza (this holiday wasn’t started in Africa by the way), and that’s not right. It’s not our fault that the enslavement of Africans left us without knowledge of our ancestors, but we don’t have to find ourselves in cheap westernized ideas of Africa.
First off, not all black Americans hailed from Africa. That’s what they’ve told us for centuries but it isn’t true. All of us didn’t come here on slave ships, all of us weren’t victims of slavery right away. It’s extremely hard to tell who came from where but we shouldn’t assume that we all came from Africa. And if we did, Africa’s a large continent and just saying “my family’s from Africa” doesn’t give any more insight to who you are than saying “my family’s from Europe”.
Where in the entire continent of Africa are you from? It’s a hard question to answer and though we wish we could, many of us can’t. My family and other families have tried to piece together bits and pieces of our family tree. This great great great grandfather was a slave and his father was a slave owner, and his mother died before she was free– my tree looks a lot like everyone else’s but all we really have are our stories. That’s enough for me. I went through the period of trying to find myself through my African roots and it didn’t work out. I felt the disappointment of not being able to know who I really am but then I realized I will never fully be that person anyway. It’s been too long without my family knowing and the experiences that I have in place of those I don’t are what make me who I am.
To say that we are appropriating African culture is a stretch, we aren’t. Appropriation comes from not recognizing or acknowledging where a culture stems from. Every black American taking part in African culture knows where it came from, for the most part. It also suggests that we have the power to erase or take away from that culture, that we gain something more than the people who exist within it. We don’t. The problem comes from us not being able to give specifics and still running with it. We can’t continue to be apart of a culture that generalizes Africa while also trying to be a part of African culture. We appreciate the culture, we respect it— we just feel left out of it. They aren’t our experiences anymore, and they haven’t been for a very long time. Our struggles as black Americans are recognized, no one blames us for the things we can’t control; except for ourselves.
I’ve heard people say they want to get in touch with their roots because they feel too westernized or because they’ve lost touch with their African ancestors. Those feelings are justified, it’s normal to want to know more and to want to escape the confines that slavery has kept us in all these years later. However, we can give ourselves African names and push our way into experiences we never had but we won’t ever regain what we’ve lost. Claiming a chunk of Africa as your homeland (without really knowing if that’s where you came from) is undeniably ridiculous. Our experiences as black Americans are different from those of black Africans. They don’t match up all the way but they do connect. If we could find the connections between the two instead of trying to be a part of something we never had that would be good enough.
As much as I would love to know everything about my lineage, I want to do it respectfully. I don’t want to be a part of the generalization of Africa anymore. My stories are my stories, they belong to my family. Some of us will never have the full family tree that we want but we will have the stories and experiences that mean something to us. Don’t claim something you don’t know especially when there’s a chance you never will. There are other ways to learn about yourself that don’t include Googling African culture and following the western idea of what Africa is. There are black African people who understand and want to help. But as always, the first step is asking your own family questions, there’s always something to learn there.
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