The Color and Identity Issue

by: MG

I can happily say that for longer than most people can claim, I was quite ‘color-blind’. The fact that the different shades we come in can be an imprisonment was a relatively gradual realization over a period of time rather than a rude awakening even though there were the odd questions as a child when as one of the first black people our young Italian sea-side friends saw we were asked why we were that colour and if it would rub off. My dear sister also came up with a truly innocent comeback which was remembered with humour in the family for a long time. When her friend called her chocolate she responded with vanilla. Talk about age of innocence.

True, I would have had to be blind not to notice that outside school and family gatherings my sister and I were a few shades more tanned even than our sun loving Italian neighbours; but in school which really encompasses all of life outside home for many years, we had the opportunity to befriend individuals from all over the world so we lived many years in our bubbles with this or that friend representing a whole nation quite oblivious to colour borders.

There were the endless discussions with my father where we tried to persuade him that we had a valid point in arguing that our labelling as ‘black’ was incorrect since we were brown in colour. We were not defying our ‘race’ as he feared in the back of his mind but merely making what I still think is a very valid point, the label and the true colour do not match. As might be expected our arguments were not quite understood by the many adults who passed through our dinning room and we were just smiled at for our young thoughts and told the famous words ‘you will understand when you get older’.

Admittedly I cannot claim Italy was completely incident free. However the one incident that will always stick in my mind is how the only time I had insults directed at me for what I looked like, it happened because sai cheguregn I stood in to defend a friend who was having sand kicked at her by a random girl on a class field trip to the botanical gardens. Needless to say, it was very upsetting. Partly because it all came as a shock that the whole thing suddenly turned into a race issue, partly because my whole class was witnessing her barrage of insults as she walked behind our class 6 procession and partly because no one stood up for me. Not even the friend to whose rescue I had gone and brought this upon myself. The godsend was that I triumphed in the end by telling her she wore more make-up than Queen Elizabeth who we had just studied in history. So history won the day, I felt proud about ‘outwitting’ a girl who appeared at the time twice my age who also had her sniggering teen cronies at her side. I on the other hand did not even get a word of comfort from my teacher. It was a fellow classmate who patted me on the back and told me I was brave since he would have cried if she had been saying all those things to him. In reality I was so shocked I remember only a few of the insults. But that little boy will never know how much his few words of encouragement meant to me.

I can firmly assert that colour became an issue, the main issue only upon my arrival to the melting pot across the ocean. For the first time in my life I was seen as a colour...or more accurately I felt it. From all sides I seemed to get the same message, that there was a certain behaviour expected of me and unlike the previous 17 years of my life, I amassed a good number of interesting encounters in the best of 2 years. All of a sudden the colour of the people you wanted to spend time with was an issue. I was seen as making statements I was not even aware of through my behaviour. So many hours were spent with fellow Africans trying to analyse our new reality. To the African Americans we were not really black to the majority of caucasian Americans we were black but different. Then to my surprise during a very brief visit to DC I got the impression that Ethiopians had a standing of their own somewhere between the ends of the spectrum.

I thought it was an unfortunate awakening since it is hard to go back after becoming aware that the first thing you are judged on is your colour. It made me start revaluating relationships. I am still indifferent to colour in my attraction to the opposite sex but suddenly it was an issue to be considered, something that would have to be dealt with on a regular basis not due to the individuals involved but more due to external reactions. A sorry state of affairs really. I even started wondering what my best friend identified as since she is the product of a West African and European fusion, something which in the 10 years of our friendship until then had not even crossed my mind. I presume having solid roots helps strengthen one’s identity and as a generation of drifters many of us are groping while stranded between two cultures whether by blood or circumstance.

My last destination in the journey of my colour revelations I wanted to share, is my experience upon my return across the ocean. I was in an academic environment for the first time where the student population had a substantial number of Africans but it was to some of them, that my colour and upbringing were all insufficient. I was not seen as a true Ethiopian but one whose culture had been ‘tainted by the Italian one’ as a Malawian member of my project team pointed out shamelessly. A British friend who did not quite grasp the severity of his accusations corrected him saying ‘you mean enriched’. It might have been the combination that I was outspoken, female and among the youngest members there from an African country since the governments of most of the countries still insist on their gender and age it seems. It was still hard thought to suddenly have to assert the one thing which was certain. My family is Ethiopian, my upbringing was Ethiopian and that is the country I have represented in the multicultural world that has been my reality. All this just reinforced my faith in the individual, especially when so many of us are drifters. So many of my friends from all over seem to be the outcome of at least two cultures regardless of what’s in their genes and it is a pity that even though we are perfectly formed adults relatively comfortable in our skins we still have moments of weakness and identity crisis just because we do not fit into one of the societal moulds.

The obsession with colour has permeated deep into the aesthetic notion of many cultures. Even growing up in a very small Ethiopian community, although nothing was openly stated there seemed to be a distinct association between beauty and being Key. Then there was the other subtle superiority complex over the rest of Africa. I love that Ethiopia is proud and there is no other country I’d rather belong to but it’s a little unsettling to have the label of snobs among other African countries. True we were not ‘colonized’ but what happened to unity? Even the European patchwork is trying to sew itself together and in the African continent the dream of African unity championed by our own late emperor does not seem to be going anywhere. I guess this is getting into a whole other discussion so I will stop here with a poem that my sojourn in North America inspired.

To feel trapped in a body,

Your own.

Held captive.

Encased in a cage,

Inside people`s mind.

I want to be free.

Discover my mind,

Discover me.

I am unique.

Look and tell me,

What do you see?

A race or a woman,