America” participants regularly referred to the skin as the locus of Africanness, Blackness, or a historical memory of an African past, for many “continental Africans,” that is, African immigrants, Africanness was not primarily retained in the skin or heart, although the skin, and other phenotypical features, could be an external indicator of Africanness. Instead, they made more frequent reference to “the blood” as the defining component of who is African. In the words of a professional Somali woman, Haidia, who worked with the CWC and lived for many years as a teenager and adult in several Middle Eastern countries and the United States:
Your culture, your ethnicity is determined by blood—your blood origin. It’s the natural way of things. Your origins have to do with who your ancestors are. It’s not necessarily geographic because your ancestors stay the same no matter where you are living. But your ancestors tend to be from the place you were born. So, I am Somali first, because that’s who my ancestors are, and African second because Somalia is in Africa. Whether I say I’m Somalian or I’m African depends on who’s asking and how much they know about Africa. If I’m traveling in Europe and talking to someone from there who asks me “What’s your culture?” or “Where are you from?” if it doesn’t even seem that they even know where Somalia is, I might just say something general like, “I’m African.” But if they seem to know something about Africa, I would probably tell that I’m Somali. If they are from Somalia, I would tell them my village. Since my children also have Somali ancestors, they too are Somali even though they live here in America.23
For several continental African CWC participants, a person of African blood or ancestry would need to consciously define himself or herself as African, consistently do certain things, and/or think in a certain way to “keep their culture” and identity. Haidia, cited above, continued:
| HAIDIA | To keep Somali culture alive, you need to tell stories from the old country. Do things like take children for visits back home, speak the language, and maintain your social relationships so the children know who they are. But losing some of Somali culture is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on the thing you’re losing from the old and what you take from the new one [American culture]. |
| JCC | What about the people you call African Americans? [I had heard her use this term in other contexts] What do you mean when you say that they are African American? |
| HAIDIA | [Pause] This is a tricky question. African Americans can be Africans because they do have some sort of African ancestry. However, some African Americans don’t want anything to do with Africans or Africa. If they accept their African heritage, then they can be African. If they reject it, then they are not. |
Akin, a Yorùbá immigrant from Nigeria who was a manager at a local nonprofit organization and part of the CWC’s African elders’ council, presented his perspective on African identity in the following discussion:
| JCC | What about people not born in Africa who have African ancestors but also other ancestors, are they African? |
| AKIN | I would consider them African. I consider all African Americans African. |
| JCC | How is that? Why are they African, even though they may have not even visited Africa or have no idea what their original culture was? |
| AKIN | The part that they don’t know does not mean the fact is not there. That is different between the reality and what we know. And the fact, to me, as far as I know, is that their family tree is from Africa. If they cannot trace—if they are somewhere here and therefore they cannot trace this part, it’s a different issue … [referring to a sketch he made of a family tree to represent his notion of African American heritage]. And, therefore, you think you are an American because you were born in America, but I still consider that person African. So, the part that the person cannot locate—where in Africa and when and who—does not mean that he is not African. Another example is if you see Irish, they still claim to be Irish. I talked to somebody at the conference today who said, “I’m Scandinavian,” and even though … his parents are born here in America, he still claimed that. I think it’s only among the African Americans that this is not common. The Germans, they say, “We’re from Germany,” even though they were born here. Even you see people living essentially within proximities. That’s an area is known to be German area, that’s an area that is known in America to be Scandinavian areas, Irish areas. The city of Milwaukee, they said is a German city … So that’s the way I look at things. As a matter of fact, I look at people from the Caribbean as African. Let me expand a little bit. The difference between nations, nationality, and the origin is different to me because it’s just like an English person—it could be in Canada, it could be in Switzerland, it could be anywhere—that’s their nationality. Africans in Cuba, their nationality is Cuban. Those that are in Brazil, their nationality is Brazil. But their origin is Africa. That’s the way that I look at it. |
| JCC | So, the fact, for example, that most African Americans or what some people would call Black people that I know don’t speak an African language, and we mentioned the fact that they may not know their original African culture, that’s not relevant to the origin? |
| AKIN | That’s not relevant to the origin because even within Africa we are beginning to see African people who cannot speak African language … who cannot speak Yorùbá because they went to nursery school, kindergarten, and from there they go to English speaking school. So, my kids don’t speak Yorùbá now … There are some people in Nigeria who can speak French like anything, more than English. But that does not make them to be a French person. Language is something we can acquire or decide not to acquire …24 |
I first met Akin in a meeting with the CWC director about a new project and state contract that he had to provide culturally appropriate family planning counseling to women of African descent. He was exploring how to collaborate with the CWC in providing these services. Akin was also very active in Ẹgbé Ọmọ Odùduwà,25 a Twin Cities-based mutual aid society for Yorùbá immigrants. Akin identified strongly as Yorùbá but also identified as African. In a less formal conversation than the interview session excerpted above, he said that he would describe himself in some contexts as a “Nigerian,” but for him Nigeria was a political artifice created by the British that was no longer tenable. He supported Yorùbá efforts to secede from Nigeria and form an independent country because the “Yorùbá can make it on their own and will never get their due in Nigeria because it’s dominated by the North.”
Interestingly, as implied in the interview citations above, continental Africans, even those who like Akin, above, insisted that “African Americans are African,” in everyday conversation made a classificatory distinction between “African American” and “Africans.” However, the fact that a terminological distinction was made by continental Africans between “African” and “African American” did not mean that CWC African immigrant participants did not consider African Americans “Africans” in some sense. The semantic distinction between “African” and “African American” seemed to be more a statement about the specific place of origin rather than cultural identity. Interestingly, the term “African American” as used by both continental Africans and “Africans born in America” never referred to African immigrants who had American citizenship. Such individuals still referred to themselves as “African” or in reference to their country of origin or African ethnic origin, for example, “Somali,” “Liberian,” “Yorùbá” and so forth. Even if they had American citizenship, no CWC continental African participant described himself or herself as, for example, Somali-American, Yorùbá-American, or Liberian-American. CWC African immigrants seem to reserve the term “African American” to distinguish between people of African heritage—those who Akin also called “African descendants” or “African
