Black Americans have a conflicted view of Africa. Many of them acknowledge that it is their ancestral home, but few know much about the continent. R&B singer Akon, who is of Senegalese descent, recently said many Black Americans are scared to visit the continent. Unfortunately, Black Americans often buy into the negative image of Africa created by Western media, which shows nothing but disease, starving children and war. However, there is another side of Africa which is not often talked about in the West. There is a fast-growing middle class and several African countries draw tourists from around the world who are attracted by their beaches and wildlife. Some Blacks have opted to see Africa for themselves and have been pleasantly surprised at what they saw.
Los Angeles resident Mimi Miller, a hair stylist and author, decided to visit Lagos, Nigeria, in 2009. While living in Las Vegas, Nev., Miller had several clients who were Nigerian women. She developed close friendships with them and they invited her to visit their families in Nigeria. But before she left, she was warned about visiting Africa by her American friends who were scared she was going to encounter children surrounded by flies and contract malaria or AIDS.
Miller visited Nigeria for six weeks and it was quite a culture shock. Nigeria is a politically turbulent nation and Miller said she was “shocked” when she encountered armed soldiers at the airport in Lagos.
Once she headed into the city, she was impressed by what she saw. Miller was surprised at the many high-rise buildings. “I was mind boggled by the skyscrapers,” she said. While there is a lot of wealth in Nigeria, there is also a staggering amount of poverty. Miller said the gap between rich and poor was stark.
“I saw a lof of wealth and a lot of poverty,” she said.
While in Nigeria, Miller decided to avoid the tourist route and opted to stay with several Nigerian families. All of the people she stayed with were very accommodating, and she was able to get a good cultural experience. Miller said Nigerians taught her about their culture and she taught them about Black American culture in return. According to Miller, the Nigerians were surprised she has struggled as a single mother.
“They didn’t realize that we have hardship,” Miller said. “Most Africans’ image of America is from television and movies and they think all Americans are privileged,” she said.
Miller said one of the things that was difficult to get used to was the smells. Nigeria doesn’t have an organized sanitation system and the cars don’t have emission controls, so they are allowed to spew pollutants. She was also surprised that everyone used pre-paid phones there.
Adjusting to Nigerian culture was a little different because, as a light-skinned woman, Miller stood out. Some Nigerians didn’t realize that she was a Black American; she explained to them that Black America has light-skinned women, like Beyonce. She also noted that Nigerians seem to have a stronger family culture than in America, where the family seems more fractured. But Miller noticed some parts of African culture were surprisingly familiar. She said Nigerians looked like the people she grew up with in Detroit, Mich.
“I saw a lot of similarities,” Miller said. “I was very impressed.”
Being in Africa helped Miller understand why African immigrants do well in America.
“Ninety eight percent of the people I stayed with had degrees,” she said. “I can see why Africans come over here and succeed. They are very serious on studies.”
Nigerian Americans may be the best example of the drive toward social prosperity. According to the 2010 United States Census, this community is the highest achieving immigrant group in the nation with 33 percent of Nigerian immigrants holding at least a bachelor’s degree or higher. Seventeen percent had master’s degrees. In contrast, 14 percent of native-born Black Americans have a bachelor’s degree—a sizable portion of which (about 18 percent) are related to the fields of security and protective services, according to a 2011 study conducted by PostSecondary.org. The Nigerians who have arrived on American shores over the past 20 years have outpaced White Americans (8 percent) and Asian Americans (3 percent) in obtaining graduate degrees.
But it is not just Nigerians who have strived to continue the mantle of African pride within the United States. Persons from the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya and South Africa have learned a great deal from the struggles of African Americans and have patterned their fortunes on the positive strides made by U.S. Blacks during the past 50 years. The early African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, et al. were fascinating characters who decades prior left an indelible mark of courage on African children. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and a plethora of Black American political wizards (i.e. Adam Clayton Powell, Tom Bradley, Charles Rangel, John Lewis, Barbara Jordan) also had a profound impact on the way Africans viewed and admired their cousins some 4,500 miles from West Africa to the Eastern seaboard.
Africans abroad—for generations now—have been very academically oriented. African Americans who have the schoolhouse just a block or so away are strikingly less academically inclined.
Black Africans are reported to have a strong family bond where respect and honor are said to go hand-in-hand with upward mobility. Some social commentators have said that African American youth today do not hold their elders in such high esteem as did the World War II generation or the “Baby Boomers.” Often, because of the dearth of self respect demonstrated today among young African Americans, some Nigerians label this group as “akata,” an ugly, derogatory term meaning “wild animal.”
Malcolm X once commented on a cultural chasm between Black Africans and African Americans which, he opined, might point to the dearth of economic interplay between the two culturally separated Black communities.
“Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree,” he said in 1964. “You show me one of those people over here who has been thoroughly brainwashed, who has a negative attitude toward Africa, and I’ll show you one who has a negative attitude toward himself. You can’t have a positive attitude toward yourself and a negative attitude toward Africa at the same time. To the degree of your understanding of and your attitude toward Africa becomes positive, you’ll find that your understanding of and your attitude toward yourself will also become positive.”
This divide—whether self-imposed or politically designed—is said to have shut many African immigrants out of opportunities for economic advancement in the United States. There are deep misconceptions, says Jacob Conteh, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, that are sometimes fueled by the American media. He said many African Americans believe that Africans are backward and primitive. They make cruel jokes, he said, about Africans and generally do not acknowledge the great contributions Africans have made to the world.
Conversely, many African immigrants buy into the erroneous notions that African Americans are inherently lazy and pathologically violent, believes Conteh.
“[Africans] mistakenly do not appreciate the great sacrifice African Americans have made, through advocating for their civil rights, to lay the foundation for Africans to be able to come to the United States and live in a country where both Blacks and Whites have equal rights, at least in theory if not in practice,” Conteh said.
Miller said that while she enjoyed visiting Nigeria, she has noticed there was a divide between Africans and African Americans here. She thinks many Black people would be interested in learning about African culture, but Africans don’t open up to them. A lot of African immigrants, she said, tend to stay within their own communities and only socialize with people from their countries
“Most Africans have not made it easy (to learn about their culture,)” she said. “Most Africans don’t try to bond with us.”
Miller plans to continue her African travels by visiting Ethiopia and South Africa.
James Lewis, a former SoCal resident now living in Northern California, also plans to visit South Africa next year. Lewis, a graduate student and Navy retiree, said he was motivated to visit South Africa after hearing several positive stories from friends who had visited the country.
Like many Black Americans, Lewis grew up seeing images of starving African children. According to Lewis, even today, there is little positive news from Africa on American television. But armed with his friends’ stories, Lewis decided to do some Internet research and learned there were great tourist spots in South Africa.
“There are good and bad places,” Lewis said. “I talked to people who had been there and wanted to move there.”
Lewis agrees with Miller and thinks that many Americans have an incorrect view of Africa.
“The first image I had of Africa was sponsoring a child to feed,” Lewis said. “I saw those images all through high school and as an adult.”
Lewis and his wife plan to vacation in Costa Rica this year, but he is excited about next year’s trip to South Africa. He thinks it’s important that African Americans broaden their horizons and learn about where they came from.
“It’s a way for us to see a place that a lot of us know nothing about,” Lewis said.
