Bullet
Interview with Bullet (Durban, S.A.) by Logical Ethix, competition winner and coordinator of the Stolen from Africa project (Canada). They talk about identity, the lack of identification by black people in north America with Africa, and xenophobia in South Africa.
Questions of what it is to be an African will always resonate loudest with those who feel like their historical positioning is closest to that of the opressor. If people keep telling me that they are more african then I am because their ancestors were born here and that I DONT BELONG here because my ancestors are from a different place, then it becomes obvious that they are only choosing to take history back to a certain point and no further.
I guess what im saying is if we are choosing to locate a position in history that identifies black north americans as a stolen people, what happens when we go further back and eventually identify original man as coming from Africa? In my mind this would elimate all of the prejudices that make one person more authentic then another if that authenticity is solely based on historical positioning and repositioning, for wahtever reasons.
I have to deal with a constant crisis of identity as a WHITE AFRICAN because of people who choose simply to use a small set of criteria when defining their nationality i.e. Im black so im African, im white so im European. That might be true in a historical sense but in reality how can you claim to be an African when your sense of society, your education, your social status, your sense of politics, your knowledge of the world and all of the many aspects of your personality were initiated and developed within a first world completely non-african framework?
I am an African because I have been educated by Africa, I was born and grew up in Africa, I live in Africa, I exist in an African framework, from my political position to my everyday existence.
In a similar vein it would make sense for North Americans, while being conscious of their historical position, to find it hard to acknowledge themselves as anything other then North American.
