Tag: African Immigrant Women

Humanizing the Black Woman: An Introduction

Posted on by Loy A.

 

 

Photo by Zach Vessels on Unsplash

As a black woman in America, it has always been hard for me to be seen and heard. Being in that store was reminiscent of a dream I’ve had before, when I am screaming and trying to get someone’s attention, but that person who is in the dream with me cannot hear me.

 

I’m going to start this blog post with a little story, of a situation that happened to me recently. In February I had a rather unpleasant and confusing experience at a bridal boutique, within a major hippie-chic clothing store, in a very “affluent” side of Maryland. I was there to place an order for a bridesmaid dress for the wedding of my good sistah-friend and former dope roomie aka former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend. I knew the exact color, size, and style I was supposed to be ordering because my dear former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend is meticulous. I walked in wearing my Delaware State University (DSU)-HBCU 1842 baseball cap and told the sales associates what I needed. I explained to them that there was a discount that was given to the bride and I mentioned her name, as I was told to do via our WhatsApp group chat. The first sales associate looked at me dumb-founded and said they did not have that color, nor do they keep notes of reservations of the brides that come in to place orders. Mind you, I know for a fact that my former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend was just in there 2-3 weeks prior. I had all the pic receipts and I even showed them the dress that one of the bridesmaids tried on the day they visited the store the first time. Every time I would talk, the sales associate got visibly more irritated and was committed to make me feel stupid or from what I vibed–she thought that I was trying to get over somehow. She continued to say they do not know the name of the bride I am talking about, and that they did not have the color of the dress I was looking for. I told her to ask another sales associate. She asked about 4 girls–they all said I was wrong. One of the girls, I later found out was the Assistant Store Manager. Before you ask, yes they were.

I had texted the group chat and nobody got back to me and I began to think maybe me, my former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend had it wrong. So I ended up ordering and paying more for the dress in that same style, with the new color that the sales associates convinced me was the correct color that I was looking for. I walked to my car feeling confused and uncomfortable. I looked at the receipt one last time and knew something was wrong. I got out of my car and started walking back to the store and then called my former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend and she was livid. She is a spicy and takes-no-ish type woman. I told her what happened and she said, “Loy you’re not wrong. They’re wrong.” Before I could get downstairs to the bridal boutique, she had already called and had it out with them. She called me back and said, “They should be looking for you to fix it”.

 

There could’ve been a slew of different issues that were present that made the sales associates respond to me the way they did. The number three thing being incompetence and poor training, but it’s the number one and number two thing that are the primary issues. Race and Class.

Come to find out, I was correct the entire time, and I was not “crazy”. The boutique manager came out and profusely started apologizing to me and said that she does not understand why none of the sales associates in the store did not listen to me and still placed the order because now the wrong dress was making its way to my house. She literally showed me the iPad with all the notes from my former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend’s initial bridal reservation, including all the details of the color of the dress, the large number of bridesmaids (hence why we were getting a discount in the first place), and other details pertaining to the then future orders that would be made by the other bridesmaids. So now, my social justice-DSU hat was on  and I also proceeded to lay into them as well. I asked for the names of the sales associates and let them know the level of invisibility I felt, let alone the feeling that I was in the wrong, stupid and crazy. The girls scattered when I said I needed names. They were embarrassed, but the main sales associate I dealt with came out of the back and said, “It turns out you were right after all.” I told her, “I was never wrong, to begin with”. She mysteriously got off her shift right after that interaction.

When I got back in my car and on the phone with my former-roomie-bride-sistah-friend, I asked her what she said to them, she said, “Loy, I told them that, Loy was trying to tell you this whole time what she needed, but you did not hear her. I told the manager that my bridal party is made up of all black women, and you need to be more conscious of certain things regarding people of different races and cultures, despite what you are used to in that store”. The store manger told my friend that they would be undergoing extensive training after this.

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash

 

As a black woman in America, it has always been hard for me to be seen and heard. Being in that store was reminiscent of a dream I’ve had before, when I am screaming and trying to get someone’s attention, but that person who is in the dream with me cannot hear me. These types of dreams almost always frighten me and I typically awaken in an anxious sweat. Now let me be clear, the event at the store did not incite any fear or anxiety because I meditate too much for foolishness like that to impact my peace-of-mind, but what it did do, was bring to the surface the feelings of me often having to fight and force people to see me wholly.

At all times I am fully aware of my body and how I present. I’m tall, dark brown with gorgeous curves and a lot of times people have found it intimidating or unbecoming. The difference for me now at 30-something is I just don’t care what anyone thinks, but that does not mean I am not aware of it.

There could’ve been a slew of different issues that were present that made the sales associates respond to me the way they did. The number three thing being incompetence and poor training, but it’s the number one and number two thing that are the primary issues. Race and Class.

The sales associates just knew that I was wrong, despite my best efforts of showing them pictures of the dress taken in their store weeks before, showing them text messages with the reservation information, and repeatedly explaining myself. To them, I was an “uncommon customer” that had an “unusual set of requests”, so therefore my voice was not to be heard.

The dilemma of being African and black is that you are in this constant battle of refuting racial stereotypes, while also trying to affirm your own blackness and that of the collective. It is a very political existence. It is not seen as a human existence, but the experience of the other. Black women struggle to be humanized, to be seen as people who bleed, who cry, who hurt, who laugh, who feel, and who also have and are still greatly influencing and impacting humanity on a daily basis.

At what point do we begin to humanize black women? What does humanizing black women even look like? and Why do we even need to humanize black women, if all we get is the same old thing every single time?

Code-Switching as an African Immigrant Woman

Posted on by Loy A.

 

 

The thing that many people in the diaspora as well as non-immigrant people do not really get is how challenging, terrifying, and traumatizing the cultural assimilation process can be for immigrants

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with a good sister-friend of mine about dating and what qualities I think are important in a partner. My homegirl who is happily married, always gives me great insight on almost everything. She goes on to say that I will most likely end up with an African/Black American or white European partner (I may or may not discuss this “dating theory” in later blogs, depending on how I feel y’all.) This is not the first time I’ve heard this. People have said this several times throughout my 20s. Matter of fact, that was the second time I heard that same comment in that week. I. Kid. You. Not.

As we Facetime, my *screw-face* appears and I ask, “Why do you say that?” Her explanation was that my humor and how I dialogue is of the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) variety, amongst many other things. I’m not going to lie, I was puzzled, but also it really got me thinking about how I and many other African immigrant women, children of African immigrants, and African immigrant people communicate and present in different spaces, that are not African.

The facts are, AAVE and culture as we can see in almost every aspect of American society and globally has influenced pop-culture, fashion, art, music, social and political movements in tremendous ways. A lot of which have been irresponsibly culturally appropriated, but much of it is a reflection of admiration for the contribution to humanity that native Black Americans have made, not to mention inadvertently the impact on immigration policy and rights.

I can go in and out of accents at the drop of a dime and very quickly scan the room to know how I will have to “present” in any given space and audience, completely unapologetically.

When my mother, brother and I came to the US in the 90s, we came with a couple of small bags and our brown bodies. We landed in New York, and all my mother had in her pocket was a half-written address of her older sisters place, who lived in Maryland, with no phone number. We took the Greyhound to Silver Spring, Maryland and eventually located my aunts apartment building. Luckily her and my mom can be mistaken for twins and people at her apartment building recognized the resemblance. This was when my immigrant experience started and code-switching became essential to my survival.

Code-switching refers to the ability for a person or people to alternate between different languages, dialects and vernaculars in conversation. In America the most widely known form of this is definitely AAVE. It took years for my brother and me to get the hang of American English and culture, but we were young enough to master it and become fluent. At school teachers thought we were unusually quiet and had speech impediments, not realizing that there were levels of extreme trauma associated with our emigration to the U.S.

The thing that many people in the diaspora as well as non-immigrant people do not really get is how challenging, terrifying, and traumatizing the cultural assimilation process can be for immigrants. The uniqueness in the American immigrant experience lies within the plethora of peoples, nationalities, cultures, ethnicities and religions from all different areas of the world, that settle in the States. Being able to toggle between cultures becomes an art form of sorts, so to speak because if you are unable to effectively communicate or blend in with the dominate or native culture of a society and community, can possibly cause harm to you and your family. Notwithstanding, impacting your forward mobility. However, because the number one unifying factor of all Diaspora people is our varied and melanated skin-tone, we can not escape the political presence of being black in the world.

As an African kid growing up in America, I was Ugandan at home, African on the playground, and American on and in the streets. At any given time those identities merged with one another and frequently this happens. I can go in and out of accents at the drop of a dime and very quickly scan the room to know how I will have to “present” in any given space and audience, completely unapologetically. Personally, I strive to be as authentically and consistently myself, in both the private and the public areas of my life, but more importantly I am very much all of these identities as well.

Without a doubt, when I am with my African and Caribbean friends, there are similar and at the same time different cultural nuances and cues that are used in how we interact and engage one another. What my good sister-friend witnessed was another form of how I use code-switching in my everyday interactions. Admittedly, in the conversation she recognized that she had not been around me in other African Diasporic spaces enough to see how ya girl moves, but this just shows the differing, complex and the multitudes of the African and Black Diasporic experience.