my Journey as a Black Woman

In honor of black history month, a slight change of plans –

I know exactly the day I was stripped of what made me who I am and became reduced to being BLACK – never mind that I lived in many different places, spoke several different languages, had amazing role models…

One day I discovered that all along I had appeared to everyone entering through the black door, everything else was secondary.  That day was my wedding day – my husband Nino walked in through the white door and I through the black door.  He was not just white, he was also a foreigner and his accent gave it away. He had the good sense of keeping his accent. Upon meeting him you had to ask where he was from as he dropped the letter H from his words and spoke with a familiar tune -Italian?  Right.  I on the other hand didn’t know the value of an accent so I lost it – in fact I don’t think I ever acquired one.  By the time I learned English I had spoken or had some level of proficiency in several different languages.  My tongue and my throat had been tortured into performing many different sounds and tunes- so I was just black.  I could speak English without changing the sound of a “th” into a “z”, like most Ethiopian.   Our lives were joined and yet somehow we continued to be received differently.  This was an interesting one way relationship – I navigated my way around with all the benefits my upbringing had indulged me in and yet I was only received as BLACK!

Race is so tricky! I have 2 children – for all practical purposes my daughter would be considered white and my son black.  They sound alike, were raised  in the same household, have identical relatives, went to a French nursery school,  public school in the suburbs until he was forgotten in the park and the response from the head of the school was “You are very fortunate you live in this community” – so we had to move  from that town and put them in the Italian school and finally boarding school before shipping them off to college.   So really similar experiences and yet the world receives them so differently.  In truth I have watched my daughter being accepted before she proves herself and yet the reverse applies to him – he had to prove himself before being accepted!

This concept is difficult for me to understand as I grew up in different places and so I was either a native when living in Ethiopia or a foreigner when living abroad.  We identified with our culture that we carefully packed and  travelled with wherever we went and wanted to understand those who were foreign.  Coming to American, we met Americans.  They all looked different but they spoke English a little bit faster than what we were accustomed to, didn’t always like the letter “t” depending on where it appeared in a word -it was best to replace it with a “d”.  Slowly we learned  that America was not one, there were many accents and dishes and music etc … But the biggest difference was that some were white and some were black and they had difference sets of keys.  Because black could only go in through the black door and whites through the white door if they chose to.  As if being a black women wasn’t enough, I learned that being an immigrant from some countries came had its own set of challenges.

Next will be my journey as an Entrepreneur – promise!