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African Americans Can’t Go ‘home’ Barrett- Holmes Pitner by Nobody: 12:23am On Oct 22, 2015 |
Earlier this month, I attended a wedding on a
remote Greek island about five hours outside
of Athens. I know, my life sounds pretty awful;
but the trip was more than a vacation under
clear blue seas among sandy beaches. The
wedding was held at the bride’s ancestral
home, where distant relatives greeted them
with open arms. As an African American, I did
not anticipate my friend’s connectedness to a
foreign land and culture to be such an alien
sensation for me—and in many ways I hoped it
would not have been—but during this weeklong
sojourn the scale of my disconnectedness to a
foreign land weighed heavily on me.
The wedding party was an eclectic, global crowd
with representatives from all across the world,
and we all gathered in a tiny villa and then an
even tinier Greek Orthodox church to witness
the marriage of two wonderful people. A new
union was building upon the cultural and
familial foundations that generation upon
generation of forefathers had created. We all
felt the significance of the moment.
As with most weddings the father of the bride
said it best. At one point during his speech, he
thanked his daughter and new son-in-law for
selecting his ancestral home as their wedding
site. He spoke about how his family has had a
recorded history on this island dating back to
the first census, conducted by its former
Venetian occupiers, more than 500 years ago.
(He could tell you the name and location of one
of his ancestors from the 16th century!) The
father’s family had come to America more than
100 years ago, yet the connection to the island
had never ceased. Fighting off tears, he told
the newlyweds how this wedding, this union,
and this joyous return home had meant more
to him than words could ever express.
I remember listening to his speech and fighting
off my own emotions, wondering if America’s
black community—my community—could
experience emotions similar to those of the
father of the bride. At that moment, I knew
that there was not a place in the world that I—
and probably countless other black Americans
—could return to and have an emotional
connection that was similar to the man’s
standing before me.
I knew I could come close to that feeling, while
still missing the mark. My family has a
documented history in Charleston, South
Carolina, since the beginning of the 19th
century, and we’ve been in Prattville, Alabama,
since the 1840s, so I can see how a significant
familial event in either location could elicit a
groundswell of emotion from my parents. Yet
black Americans have always had that natural
American desire that is a yearning for a
connectedness to an ancestral homeland that
can enhance our American narrative of success
and survival. But when we search for that
foreign connection we inevitably will fall short.
As far back as the 1820s, free people of color
had gone to Africa to escape American
oppression and “return” to their “homeland.”
But upon their arrival, most behaved as
colonizers, not returning sons. They had
returned as black Americans in search of
freedom and opportunity, and not as Africans
with a desire to reconnect with long lost family
members. They had been away for too long,
their ancestors kidnapped and terminally
severed from their villages and homelands. In
the intervening centuries, new American
customs had become too rooted in their
psyche.
The severity of black America’s disconnection to
Africa should not be lost to Americans, but by
most accounts it certainly is. Still today, racist
voices will continue to proclaim that black
Americans should go back to Africa. But if black
Americans were in fact to return to Africa as
racist terrorists such as Dylann Roof, who killed
nine African Americans at Emanuel AME
Church, have advocated, where would we go?
The reality is that as a people, few, if any, black
Americans could find their authentic homeland.
No matter how much we may yearn for an
ancestral homeland like other immigrants,
America is the only place where that
connection can be established.
Of course, countless Americans regardless of
race will have difficulty tracing their family
history for hundreds of years, but there is a
vast difference between losing or forgetting
something and the feeling of having something
taken away. And there is a difference between
knowing the country you come from—and
often the precise village—and being able to
identify only the continent of your ancestors.
Even now I have friends and family members
who are visiting Africa in search of a
connection, but we are all tourists who just so
happen to have a greater euphoria and comfort
around an abundance of black bodies than the
average American. We are not returning home
in the same way my friend’s family did for this
wedding.
Regularly, the comfort of being around black
bodies in foreign lands can mask itself as a
connection for black Americans. But for me, I
felt the lack of an authentic connection sharply
as I observed the depth of emotion the
wedding family attached to its homeland. I
wondered if it would ever be possible for me,
my family, or other black Americans to feel the
same way.
The severity of black Americans’ disconnect
with Africa is hard for others, and even myself,
to comprehend because it lacks any similar,
modern analog. America should reacquaint
itself with this experience of its black citizens
so that all of us can have a greater
understanding of the complexity of black lives
and how we fit into the various foundations of
this nation. |
Re: African Americans Can’t Go ‘home’ Barrett- Holmes Pitner by Nobody: 12:24am On Oct 22, 2015 |
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