17 de diciembre de 2013

the ancient and noble tribe of Most People...

«It needs to be recognised that having brownish skin and a gap between the front-teeth does not necessarily mean a person possesses a deep understanding (or any understanding) of any particular African culture, complexity, needs, ways of thinking, ways of thinking about thinking, or notions of home etc.

Fronting a constructed group identity such as the ‘Afropolitan’ backs-up a reductive narrative of Africa and the African, which in turn continues to be an important part of neocolonial power structures. As an individual who happens to have one parent from the African continent I am offended by being put in a group and perceived to have certain interests and affiliations because of the nationality of one of my parents.

I do not have a drum beating inside me. The motherland is not calling me home. “We” are not a one-love tribe, yearning for the distant shores of Africa, or indigo or whatever the hell you imagine Africa as these days.

We” are a random sample in a huge pool of disembedded, modernised, travelling global citizens who each carry with us a unique jumble of cultural inputs and influences from a range of places. In other words, we are like most people. And the most equity-promoting, barrier-breaking, racism-fighting thing we can do is see ourselves as just that – part of the noble and most ancient tribe...of Most People.»

Marta Tveit