What Kind Of Black Person Are You? Part II

 On Race, Identity and Relationships

In our previous chapter, we established a background and a history about myself, private school, coons, and the one guy I met who I thought was a real coon before I got to know him. 

This guy was the type of black guy everybody just naturally assumes likes white girls only. Even though he had been blatantly been flirting with me, this all flew over my head because I couldn't even fathom that he was attracted to me. Everybody, me included, still has this impression of him. I screamed myself hoarse during our relationship and like a week after it ended, that everybody had gotten him wrong and misunderstood him, and that I really knew him, and he did like black women. But there was never really any public proof of this, and I couldn't pull out conversations where he'd said he likes Tems, or that he "doesn't discriminate" and finds any woman attractive regardless of race. A friend of mine said on the day he dumped me, "The major red flag about him, was that the women he was attracted to, were white women. And even though it's possible for someone to say they're attracted to all races, with (Insert name) he was licking the white man's ass." I tried to defend him and say well no, he was attracted to me wasn't he? But I realized I can't and shouldn't bother myself trying to change people's perceptions of him, especially since I have absolutely no ties to him and it doesn't benefit me in any way shape or form. If other black people just naturally assume that you are anti-black, it means there is something funny about the way you present yourself.

I never have to defend myself against allegations of hating black men and only wanting to date white men because I have never presented myself this way. In Part I of this duology, I stated that sometimes there is a disconnect from other black people because you might have already other-ed yourself. I felt a disconnect from my peers when I was 15 because I had already separated myself from them; I had created a barrier between me and them. If they thought I was aloof, it is because partly, I presented myself as aloof. This is not to condone bullying of black kids who are into traditionally "white people shit." If other black people thought this black man didn't like his own, there was nothing I could do to change their perception. Just because he dated me, a black woman, doesn't mean he likes black women in general. Since I had suffered from identity issues, a black man who is 'different' might like me because he thinks like him, I'm also 'different.' I might have been the exception, not the rule. We have all made jokes that we know he's going to go back to dating white women after this.

I had heard that his type were 'brunettes', and with the way he presented himself, it was easy for not only me, but everyone, to believe he just liked white women. So you could imagine my surprise when it turns out he had asked for my number and started talking to me because he wanted me, romantically. The entirety of our relationship we had a running joke that my greatest insecurity was a tall white girl with short hair seducing him, and his was a traditionally black guy seducing me; a guy who could quote Thomas Sankara and was multilingual. This one joke probably summarizes both our personalities, and the identities we assumed: I was secure in my identity as a black woman and he was insecure in his identity as a black man.

A few weeks ago John Boyega was receiving a lot of media attention because he stated in an interview that he "Only dates black" and "[He] [likes] his women black." A lot of people had a problem with this, but he elaborated that he said this is because there is cultural familiarity with a black partner. Within black people and other people of color, don't bash me, but I don't find an issue with us all preferring our own race, given the history of white supremacy and racism. Having a preference doesn't necessarily mean you'll only end up with a black partner, it just means you will usually choose someone of your own race, who will relate to you on every level. When I talk about preference for your own race I'm not talking about physical attraction, but rather social and cultural things. You can be attracted to everyone, but prefer your own race for cultural familiarity. The shared history and experiences that come with sharing the same race. I appreciate white allies, but I would want to be partnered with someone who will fully understand the black experience. This is partly why I was so attached to the one guy I dated. We were both into hyper-specific niche things that are unfortunately mainly popular with white audiences, but we were both black so it was nice to find someone who I might have talked to about my interests AND things to do with race, colonialism etc. 

I do have a preference for black men, but he didn't have a preference for black women. He didn't have a preference at all, and this might be because he felt he could relate equally to white women and black women. Make of that what you will. So this inevitably resulted in me feeling a strange insecurity in that relationship that eventually he would leave me and make a comfy nest with a white girl, especially since he was going to Europe: every black man who loves white women's heaven. 

Anyway, I realized something earlier today when I was bird watching: People with no sense of identity cannot create nor maintain long term relationships. They are like water, which changes its shape depending on the container it's in. I had never thought about identity issues and how they can affect relationships, but essentially, like a chameleon, people who struggle with knowing and understanding themselves, change who they are depending on their environment. They have no personal foundation, and for a long term relationship to work you need to establish foundations as a couple, and you can't do that if one of you has no idea who they are, and so they will keep drastically changing all the time. 

I had a conversation with someone (it may or may not be this same guy) about homesickness after leaving Zimbabwe. I talked about how I'd pack so many boxes of Cerevita and Mazoe because I would miss these things; Zimbabwe isn't an amazing country but I would miss so much of it when I left. I am deeply upset by the fact that I can't create a stable life for myself here, and that I have to be shepherded to foreign lands where I will never truly belong because of the economy. He however, said maybe he'd miss certain things about home, but not really, wasn't the whole point of leaving kind of starting anew and forgetting everything? I thought this was strange, and was a big red flag, considering the fact that he sometimes straddled the line of being a coon. I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him and yell that he must never ever forget where he comes from and who he is, that he is black, Zimbabwean, Shona and Ndebele, and African. I have always understood that when I leave Zimbabwe, even if I attain citizenship in another country, this is my home. This is the land of my forefathers. This is the soil that birthed me and knows me intimately. It seemed that this man never thought of these things.

It felt as though I was fighting a battle with a part of him that valued whiteness and Eurocentricism, and when he left the country, I was losing. I noticed that with a lot of people who leave Zimbabwe, there is an unfortunate and kind of anti-black self hating shared sentiment. Everybody believes the country is a shit-hole and it's our fault. They then go to the UK, Australia, Canada, Europe and idolize these places. They forget to remember that part of why they have to escape Africa is because of these first world countries that have plundered and destabilized us in the first place. The wealth of these countries has been built on the backs of slaves, of stolen minerals, of genocided African peoples. The foundations of that prosperity have been laid in blood.

Now I know I sound a bit like Dr. Umar, and I'm not trying to force anyone into political consciousness, rather that we should never forget important things like this. You will always be a foreigner in those lands, victim to xenophobic and racist attacks, and living in fear of policy changes that could see you deported. Do not waste your energy wanting to be loved and accepted by a place that will never accept you.

Moving on, as black women, we all have a collective fear of being fetishized. Of meeting white men who call us "Melanin Queen," "Spicy," or meeting black men who will call us "Nubian Queen," or "African Goddess." This is why I'm kind of wary of white men who date black girls. Not white men in relationships with black women, but white men who love to say that they date black women, because they really mean that they fetishize the hell out of black women. They end up dating black women and making cringey interracial TikToks about their partner taking off her wig and finally unveiling her real hair. 

The black men who usually fetishize black women are the pro-black Pan African types, who don't see black women as people, but divine creatures from a different dimension. This is also pretty harmful, and also objectifies black women. I never really thought about fetishized by the one guy I dated, and only realized pretty recently that he might have fetishized the hell out of me. I was his first serious black girl, so I will forgive him and assume some of the things he said were said out of excitement and naivety. I cringed inwardly when he called me stuff like African Queen, and another term I will not say because it is so offensive to me. Funnily enough, he once called me one of these terms after spending time with a white woman, and probably thought he was being sweet by complimenting me when he was really showing how much he might not have seen me as a real person. I never said anything about these comments regretfully, because I loved him, and understood that he couldn't possibly have known how demeaning these things were because he was very disconnected from certain aspects of blackness. 

I exercised a remarkable level of restraint when he said openly 'fetishy' things like this to me. Why? Because I knew it would hurt him to see more confirmation of his typically non-black behavior, and like we have established in my other article, 'Weaponized Tears and The Art of The Male Manipulator," I mothered and babied him a lot, and didn't like hurting his feelings. I was hopelessly in love, and determined to shepherd him on the path to blackness.

I'm pretty dead set on joining a Black Students' Union or an African/Caribbean Students' Union if I ever go to school in a majority white country, because it is important to stick together as Negroes, only we will ever fully understand the pain and humiliation of racial slurs and the like. It is almost inevitable that you will make some white friends if you end up in the first world. If you're lucky you will even meet real allies, who aren't just not racist, but anti-racist. But still, no matter how great of allies they are, they still benefit from white privilege and will never receive nor understand how it feels to be called the N word with a hard r, so it's good to have a community of black people, or at least other people of color, who will understand this. All this fell on deaf ears.

I was dismayed to see that some black people leave Africa without the ability to string a sentence in their native languages, but throw themselves fully, with a frightening passion and devotion, to learning European languages. I'm not an impractical person, obviously I know and understand that for survival's sake it's imperative for one to speak Russian if they live in Russia. If I moved to Spain today I too would dedicate myself to learning Spanish if I have any intentions on integrating into that country and settling there. It is just strange to me that say, after 20 years (because I'm 20), I have left Zimbabwe without even trying to learn either Shona or Ndebele, or Tonga or Manyika etc. I never gave it a care in the world, but I am quivering with excitement to learn...the language of the colonizer. I got carried away and sounded like Dr. Umar at the end I'm sorry. 

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend about identity, and we both agreed that when one leaves the country, as everyone these days is doing, it is so much more imperative for people who were never secure in their blackness, to hold onto it and latch themselves to their identities even firmer, because they will be the first to fall and bow down to Eurocentric ideas. They will be the first to deliberately change their accents to mimic those of their new environment (I'm not talking about people whose accents naturally slide into mimicking whatever environment they're in.) They will be the first to throw away their identities and embrace whatever new identity they have been given in the first world.

I mentioned in Part I, parents from the older generation who harbor insecurities and anti-black sentiments as a result of being traumatized by the colonialist regime. These parents raise children with these sentiments, then send them to private schools where these sentiments are worsened, effectively creating a breed of individuals who are painfully unsuited to Zimbabwean life and feel like their home is in the first world. They have never and cannot identify with being black, being Zimbabwean, or being African. They are not fully formed individuals, but rather pale shadows of the white man. When they get to the Western world, they almost immediately fit in and make friends with Westerners because that is essentially what they feel most at home with. They grew up being told their accent sounds European, and so when they get to Europe they clap with joy because they are finally home, and can regale their European friends with anecdotes about how they were raised to fit into a Western style of living. 

Before the new year, I travelled around parts of the country on a whim, I wanted to experience Zimbabwe in its fullness before I left it. I grew up spending nearly every school holiday travelling around the country visiting relatives, and know many parts of this country intimately, and so I feel an almost embarrassing level of patriotism. It hit me while on this trip, while driving through the steep mountains of Nyanga and Manicaland and the dry lowlands of Matabeleland that I would never really feel this at home anywhere that isn't Zimbabwe. I made the small move of living in a country that is still in Southern Africa, and still I feel the sharp difference. The game of cat and mouse that 'illegal' Zimbabwean migrants play with the authorities in this country. The feeling of being hunted and lesser, for me, the feeling of being a long term visitor in someone's home. Of having to speak English with everyone because they have their own native languages, as do I. 

It is necessary that for our own survival as Zimbabweans, we have to leave the country. We have to create lives and build homes on foundations that may be more stable than the ones at home, but will always be shaky until we hopefully acquire citizenship. We should be careful not to forget who we are, where we come from, where our home will always be, no matter how dirty, stinky and poverty stricken it might be.