«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