Panashe Chigumadzi author of Sweet Medicine and These Bones Shall Rise Again has written an important essay on writers, empathy and (black) solidarity politics. In this essay, she discusses the privileges that we Nigerians have. You may ask “what is this privilege?” It’s the privilege of not having to struggle with “racism” in your own country.

I mean, we have lots of problems as a nation but racism isn’t one of them. And so you hear Nigerian immigrants in some western states say things like “I first realized I was black when I moved to the States…”

For people like Panashe, they have always known they were black. They have always had to struggle with skin and colour complexities because of the white settlers who came into these countries and never left.

Reading Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime got me scribbling;

…of all the problems we have in Nigeria, I’m grateful racism isn’t one of them…

I really enjoyed reading this essay.

Excerpts :

Months earlier, my first visit to Uganda for the 2016 Writivism Literary Festival had given me my first real encounter with the “experience gap” between black people on the continent. During the day Uganda National Museum, Writivism’s venue, is a hive of schoolchildren. I was struck by the appearance of a particular group of girls from Gayaza High School. They had the most beautiful school uniform I have ever seen: an assortment of red, yellow, green, orange, pink, purple and blue short sleeve dresses that sung against the girls’ dark skin. More than that, their heads crowned in a variety of beautiful natural shapes and styles—short, medium sized, buns, round, square. A product of the South African “Rainbow Nation’s” schools that insisted on unflattering uniforms (including my high school’s kilt-inspired skirt) and hair very intimate with sodium hydroxide, I found myself staring, and, overcome with emotion. When it came time to introduce myself during the Festival’s schools outreach, I tried to express how happy I was to see the girls: You look so beautiful. Can I take a picture to take home? The other African writers and the girls themselves didn’t get it. That every girl had natural hair was nothing to talk or write home about, let alone take pictures. What else would I have them do with their hair?

They couldn’t understand why I was making such a fuss, because that to them, was the default. With some help from Nigerian-Barbadian-South African writer Yewande Omotoso, I tried to explain why it would be noteworthy that they had hair the way they did. I was unsuccessful. Not for a lack of words, but a lack of context.

Photo : SA Booksellers

I will never repeat these words anywhere else, but let it be said here: sometimes it is only Nigerian arrogance that can successfully stare down white racial arrogance. With a little more sobriety, I use this example to argue that there is indeed much to be gained for black people all over the world in having the most populous black nation be one in which black people walk tall and do not cower in the face of white supremacy. The trouble is when that confidence veers into the kind of loud and dismissive arrogance that it so often does.

If Nigerians want to be the true Giants of Africa and, indeed, the world, they must walk it with the empathy and humility befitting of a true politics of black and pan-Africanist solidarity. If instead, you walk as giants blind to the pain and the struggles of your sisters, your presence only serves to destroy the work done by others instead of elevating us all to new heights.

CLICK HERE to read the full essay!

Panashe Chigumadziis the author of Sweet Medicine (Blackbird Books, 2015; winner of the 2016 K. Sello Duiker Literary Award) and These Bones Will Rise Again (Indigo Press, 2018). She is a PhD candidate in African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Related Posts

Infertility: Through Her Eyes

In the peculiar hierarchy of African households the only rung lower than a motherless...

SERENDIPITY – Creative...

My daughter, Yasmin died of an epileptic seizure in her flat in London in November 2011....

My Book Affair –...

I fell in love at a very young age. It was a love that consumed me so much, a love that...

My Fashion Nationalism...

Suit: Mae Otti, Lagos (Dior event, Los Angeles) My mother always dressed us well. Me in...

My Book Affair – Romeo...

How I Discovered Books; If I am to be honest with myself, all my life I’ve suffered...

Letter To A Friend –...

Dear Okechukwu, The first time we met, you were holding a copy of Yejide Kilanko’s...

Leave A Comment