As Soon As You Cross a Border, You Become a Different Black Person
In the last 3 and a half years since I crossed the America border, I have ran to the streets, protesting as a refugee, a gay individual, and now for being black, but protesting is not enough. Like my mentor Kevin Jennings said to me, “You have been trying to save people from drowning, and now you going up the stream to see who is throwing them in, in the first place”
As soon as you cross a border as a black man, immediately your identity takes on a different meaning. Arriving in America as an African migrant, I became a different type of black man, a person that brings fear and misunderstanding to a gathering simply because of my skin color. I never knew what it meant to be a black man in America before migrating. On the contrary, when a black man from America steps foot in Africa, his identity as a black person takes on a different meaning. They are either welcomed as a Black American or a child that just returned home after a long adventure.
In the wake of the recent protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, social media has become a place for many people to air their grievances., Some of my family members in Africa started sending me videos of black people rioting, asking me what is happening here. I tried to explain to my aunt about the injustice black people suffer in America and it sounded like I was speaking to the wind. My aunt has a double masters from a prestigious Nigerian university, yet she is naive to the injustice black people suffer in present day America.
I decided to speak with my mother, who has been uneasy about the protests and fearful that my life is in danger. As an activist, she believed I must be on the street protesting. I called her in my local dialect to console her and explain to her what was happening. You won’t believe that my mother does not know what the world “RACISM” means, This made me pause for a second and ask myself: may be some people in America do not understand systemic racism, which may be why they provide a counter argument that systemic oppression of black people is non-existent.
I myself did not know what racism was until I came to America, the only idea of racism I knew was watching soccer games and seeing white people labeling African players with racial slurs. The same goes to many people on the sideline trying to understand what the anger and rage of black people is all about. They will never know what racism is because it is easier to learn about it than to experience it.
