I’ve been told by my mother and father—that their ancestors in the South [southern United States] were from Africa. But you know how we are. My father is a mixture of African and Indian, but he was always claiming that he was Irish or something else. But for black folks—somebody—somewhere down the line—came from Africa, even though people don’t accept it …
Some people are really into the African stuff and because their ancestors are African, they say that “Africa is my home”—even though they might be from the south side of Chicago. For me, my ancestors are African, but Africa is not my home. I would be lost if I went there because I can’t speak the languages. Some people are into the African stuff, but I’m realistic. Being African American means that you have this special understanding and identify with what your African ancestors had to deal with, but personally I’m from Milwaukee—I’m American and want my due here.16
This participant, while conscious of an African ancestry, would not describe herself as “African” because, for her, place of birth or political citizenship was the most significant component of identity. Therefore, even though she acknowledged that she had African ancestors, she defined herself as African (for ancestry) American (for place of origin) to underscore her rights as an American citizen. She did not see the “African” part of her identity as relevant in terms of her current lifestyle or cultural practices—only as a referent for ancestry and the North American racial classification of a “black” person.
For many CWC participants who described themselves as “Africans born in America,” the term “African American” was explicitly rejected as an accurate descriptor of cultural identity. Nefertiti, the CWC’s African dance instructor, represented this perspective well. “If you ask Black people about their identity, they will claim that they are anything else but African—Irish, Indian. They’re so quick to be in line with everything else … But when you begin to understand what “American” really stands for—this whole false history about the land of the free and brave stuff—how can you say you are both African and American [as in the term African American]? … I prefer to say “people of African descent.” This is a more holistic name. You can choose to take on a nationality but your culture stays with you.”17
In the very early phases of this study, I asked the CWC’s medical director, who is a licensed pediatrician and a Haitian woman of African heritage, to review an initial version of my research plan. Throughout the document, I used the term “African diaspora” as it is commonly used in scholarship to include individuals with historical origins, however defined, based in the African continent. The medical director, who self-identified as “African,” explained to me, “We just prefer the term ‘African.’ There are so many ways to divide us: ‘African American,’ ‘Afro-American,’ etc. that we just say that people are ‘African’—basically all these people are Africans.”
I went on to explain how the term is used in anthropology and that my goal was to accurately represent CWC participants’ understanding of their own identity, not impose my own. However, I would need to use terms like “Africa diaspora” to translate the CWC’s worldview into terms nonparticipants could understand. She accepted my explanation, but throughout this research I was careful to use and document participants’ self-descriptors. This approach, while occasionally the focus of gentle ridicule, helped me to establish and retain credibility as a native ethnographer while exercising the discipline’s expectation that I present the emic perspective.
Elaine described herself as both “African” and “African American” depending upon the context:
… I would say that I’m African in terms of how I personally see myself. Being African refers to how I got here—my connection to the Middle Passage. It’s also my skin color. I don’t care how White people act and how considerate they are, skin color still matters.
So, yeah, skin color is a part of it, but not all of it. Because being African also has to do with how you live. So, my upbringing was different. When I was coming up, everybody in my neighborhood had something to say about what I was doing. It could have been the town drunk, but if he stopped my mother while he was sober and said, “Mrs. Smith, I saw Jane pulling up her dress and dancing on the curb,” my mother would believe him and I would get in trouble for it. Being African means—but this is not true so much today—being raised in a village. And I think this is something we kept going from Africa, even though we may not be aware of where it comes from.
But there is also an internal piece to being African. It’s got to do with spirituality—what you think and what you believe. It’s the whole way I think about myself. I am extremely cognizant of who and what I am and where I come from—who my ancestors are and the whole Middle Passage.
Now although I think of myself as African, I don’t always call myself “African.” I sometimes use “African American.” When we have to fill out government forms or applications and they give you some options for heritage or identity, you would usually not see “African.” That’s because some people take exception to not seeing “African American” because they want to make a distinction between those that came here involuntarily—“African people born in America” and “African people born in Africa.” You know, also society often defines identity in terms of where you were born—your citizenship … but your ancestry can make you African even if you weren’t born there.18
The CWC’s “African born in America” leadership would explain the above participant’s experience of being raised in a village as an extension of “African intuition.” In the leadership’s construct, Africanness was “intuitive,” felt and experienced in the body, not only through the skin or the blood but also through the heart. As explained by an elder, a very active CWC participant who describes himself as an “African,” born in the Caribbean, the shared components of African culture cannot be explained or reduced through “European” or (by extension) anthropological categories like race, history, or socialization, because they are “spiritual” and understood intuitively. In many contexts, several participants, particularly “Africans born in America,” spoke of the “intelligence of the heart” to refer to a subconscious sense of what are considered core and constant African cultural principles. For example, one ongoing discussion in the African parenting support group focused on helping participants be assertive in various family, work, and community relationships without being offensive. The group facilitator, a CWC “African born in America,” leader advised them to follow the “intelligence of the heart”: “Africans have a kind of sensing to know and predict what is happening. You can strengthen it. It’s an intelligence of the heart, and the CWC can help you develop it. We, as Africans, function almost exclusively at this level of knowing.”19 In another session, when discussing the same topic, the group facilitator explained that the intelligence of the heart was “being in touch with one’s spirit as indicated by good intuition—know it when you feel it and how to interpret and apply it. Intelligence of the heart is speaking the truth—knowing when to say it; how to say it. Don’t give up being African, whatever religion or philosophy you practice, don’t give up being African. Do what you say you are going to do.”20 “Blackness” was a sort of bodily vessel for holding this intelligence of the heart and the African cultural memory that accompanied it.
At a workshop on understanding African culture presented to students—who were primarily European—through a partnership between the CWC and a well-known area medical school, a key CWC “African” elder encouraged them to “remember to focus on relationship building, using your intuition and reading nonverbal behavior when working with African Americans.21 Africans work from this basis. Your instincts will be critical in the healing process because it’s part of our cultural health practices.”22 From the perspective of CWC leaders, particularly participants who defined themselves as “Africans born in America,” this intuition—this ancestrally informed and skin-embodied intelligence of the heart—was a distinctive way of knowing what made an individual of some African
