Becoming Afro Chicagoan

A Little Black Inkling 

I thought I’d leave Ghana feeling more Ghanaian, like perhaps the identity I’d ‘lost’ would be revealed, but I left Ghana realizing exactly what it meant to be a Black american. More specifically, what it meant to hold an Afro Chicagoan identity. Understanding who you are means that you also have to investigate who you aren’t. Ghana was the first time I’d been in a racially Black environment and not been a part of the dominant culture. As an Afro Chicagoan, I’d always had exposure to other cultures in a happenstance way (food shop owners, classmates, bus rides) but in Chicago, Black american culture is the dominant Black culture. Growing up in a Black neighborhood that had some ethnic diversity, I never had to honor those differences because we were all racially Black. The Caribbeans and continental Africans I knew could navigate my culture and speak my language, so there was never a demand for me to learn about their life, language, or stories. 

While Ghana was a time of great belonging, it was also a time of deep ‘othering’ in an incredibly different way than I had experienced before. The first time I felt different and was introduced to the vastness of human experiences was on Lakota land in South Dakota. I was participating in a photography course offered by After School Matters. I went to live on a Lakota reservation for about 2 weeks in the middle of summer to document their culture through photojournalism. I learned about Pow Wows, history on Native american erasure, and how Native children were taken from their homes and forced into white american catholic culture. The Lakota people invited us to their Pow Wows, and ceremonial Inipis, and into their homes for interviews. My time with the Lakota people taught me the joy of collecting stories, even when my own strict religious practices discouraged me from fully participating. 

I had always known differences existed between white americans and Black americans, but in my teenage mind it was about racism; not because Black people managed to maintain an African culture of our own. I was so removed from defining myself for myself within the context of my culture, that I identified as African American or Black. I will later explain why identity markers like Black american and Afro Chicagoan are incredibly important in defining myself in the global context of Blackness. But on this trip, there were glimpses of how much Black american Culture influenced my way of life in ways I hadn’t considered because I had never been removed from my culture to see it as a ‘thing’; it was just ‘how wi wus’ or ‘how we dew stuff ova heh’. One big moment that I remember to this day, was a simple chip run. All the american and Navajo people visiting the Lakota nation were from various parts of the USA– Vermont, Arizona, NYC, and I was the only Chicago representative, and often the only Black person. I explained that I wanted either salt and vinegar chips or tangy cheese. Immediately, people from the South Side of Chicago know what I’m talking about, but the people accompanying me on the trip swore I’d made those chips up. It was one of the most confusing moments for me as a teenager. I had no idea that chips were regional, and even now, that some chips only exist in Chicago. And even though Google was a thing, we hadn't made it to the part of modern life where you Google a bag of chips and find results and a lengthy explanation of their history. One of the first things I did when I got back to Chicago was take a picture of the chip section at the corna sto. 

Transition from body confidence to body shame

Throughout every part of life, from my first birthday to summer 2024, there are photos of me dancing and smiling big at family parties, partying with inanimate objects, just being a vibe creator, even when others are standing on the wall. So, it is not to say that Ghana gifted me the love of dance or a connection to my body, but it is to say that Ghana made me feel proud of dancing and gyrating; and confirmed the practice was (and is) ancestral as I’d felt. (visual example)

Black people’s feelings and movements have been criminalized since being brought to the Americas, so it is no surprise that Black children’s skilled dancing is also shamed. Somewhere along the way, I internalized the shame associated with sensuality and being in tune with my body. Maybe it was the day I was kicked out of the rink for juking toooooooo hard or maybe it was all the grown men stopping their cars as I walked home from school in uniform––who’s to truly say? But at one point in time, I remember feeling empowered by the praise dancing brought me, and in the next era of life, I wanted my body to disappear entirely. 

I took a vow of abstinence around 12 and became really revolutionary (to be fair, I am still a bit prudish and more of a socialist anarchist than I’ve ever been), but at that time, I thought being conservative with my body would make me less vulnerable to bodily harm and uncomfortable catcalling. As a raging teenage feminist, I decided to cultivate an identity that focused on my intelligence, my respectability, decentering boys from my life, and being incredibly oppositional with them. Admittedly, boys were definitely going to Jupiter to get more stupider–– they were quite insufferable; and misogynoir and r*pe culture was poorly masked behind daily ‘jokes’. They made it easy for me to ‘hate men’. I am incredibly grateful for this period of time because I do believe this extreme stance helped me to investigate oppression. 

During high school, I started to celebrate Kwanzaa with a dear friend and comrade. We were so serious as kids, “There are no Children Here” s/o Alex Kotlowitz. But we learned about patriarchy, the hypersexualization of Black children, domestic violence, this concept of Global Blackness, and we would use the things we learned to analyze our families and our upbringings. Our conversations changed. Everything was anti-Black (in truth, it was, but we took it so far), everything was ‘The Man’, and a ploy to keep Black people oppressed. Again, we weren’t wrong, but we were very clearly incomplete in our new understanding. We romanticized Africa as many hoteps do (and we were on our path to full hotepress, lbvsssss). Christianity became a source of contention, and Indigenous African religions were superior (please remember we were Black american children from Chicago, we ain’t know nothing about indigenous African religions in Africa. Black american Hoodoo and Voodoo? Yes, but truly, what were we talking about? I say all of this to paint the picture of how serious I’d become, I thought I’d reignite the Black Panther Party, truly. My diet changed, I checked labels, the food was meant to kill us (again, we weren’t wrong, but we were too strict). 

Sankofa, looking back on my distant ancestors’ past to respect my more recent ancestors’ creation 

Getting back to Ghana, specifically, how I got there. One of the main reasons I went to college was to study abroad. I didn’t really care about my future, my dream job was Target–or a rich drug dealer’s wife, or a happy hippie– and my only real goal was to not be pregnant as a teen. But I participated in a photography program (please give it up for After School Matters), which took me to Lakota land in South Dakota for a cultural exchange trip. I knew then that I wanted to see more of the world, and without money, I figured college would pave the way.

There are a few classes that I carry with me from my time in Ghana: The History of Islam in West Africa, History of Ghana, and African Dance. I also learned a lot about what it means to be a Black american by understanding how Ghanaian I wasn’t. It’s like how ostriches and crocodiles share ancestry with dinosaurs, but look totally different. Many things about Ghanaian culture made me feel at home: how people would invite you over for food as a sign of closeness, the sea of Black people in any direction, the super fly fits, the music, and so much more. It was (and is) easy to think of Ghana as home. But there were also moments where I was reminded of how Afro Chicago I am: my tendency to slip into Black american English while my friends would slip into Twii, Fante or a blend of indigenous Ghanaian languages, my directness (and even aggressiveness) during conflict, my flinching at the direct mention at someone’s weight loss or gain, and many other nuances. 

Some of the most impactful moments that made me hyper aware of the fact that I am certainly a child of the diaspora were the way Ghanaians spoke of the enslavement that happened to African people of the diaspora. It was one of the first times that I’d seen racially Black people speak about a human trafficking phenomenon objectively, as if it were a blip in history. My jaw hung on the floor when some of them said they would switch places with a Black american present day for the opportunity to be in America over Ghana. History of Ghana was the only time in my academic career that I’d walked out of a class because the people pissed me off so mf bad, and mind you I went to a PWI during Tr*mp’s first candidacy. 

It took me a while to understand how they’d come to the understanding that Black americans were living a lavish life, and I had to investigate the images they had of Black american life. Some of the Black american shows that were popular in Ghana––Everybody Hates Chris, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, How to Get Away with Murder, Black-ish–– depicted a well-to-do life if you didn’t understand the nuance and context. Where I saw Chris as a Black child dealing with extreme racism and being a victim of his neighborhood, but told in a gentle way so that it’s not jarring, they saw a two parent household with funny banter and a child who dealt with some level of bullying, but never incredibly severe. I understood that Will’s character had to flee gang related violence and was adjusting to having a stable familial environment, but he was constantly navigating the trauma he’d carried from Philly, the parental grief of leaving his mother because she couldn’t provide for him and being abandoned by his father, and how uncommon it was to have a family member who’s so successful that they can assume all costs associated with raising you without making you feel like a burden. The lighter skinned and/or well-to-do Black americans were the ones celebrated and known in Ghana; they had no concept of the Black american poor and how Black americans are still experiencing legal covert enslavement and dealing with the ramifications of the former overt enslavement (even though the orchestrated fear of Black neighborhoods in America has broken through, funny how that works). 

A class where I found/felt great belonging was The History of Islam in West Africa, and it is worth mentioning that the History of Ghana was more of a gen ed class, while the History of Islam in West Africa was only offered to students in the African Studies program. I believe it is fair to say that we were all a bit more globally minded and understood the connectedness of African liberation and how liberation movements in the Americas impacted the liberation movements on the continent, and it was a symbiotic relationship. We learned and talked a lot about the African Conferences and would gush over how leaders from all Black African Nations would attend. I felt so much Black american pride when I learned that the revered Kwame Nkrumah had attended and pledged at an HBCU in Pennsylvania. I felt the same pride in reading All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou where she talks about her experience living in Ghana as a Black american and raising her child there. There were many moments that affirmed my travel to Ghana was ancestral and required work to actually promote Pan-Africanism. My time in Ghana empowered me to travel to other African countries like Morocco, where I discovered how many people are African but not racially Black, and started exploring the questions, ‘What is Black?’ ‘Who is Black?’ ‘Can you become Black?’.