African

It is hard to believe that I am only 3 generations away from African Slavery. My great uncle Sam died recently and he was one generation removed. He was born in 1914. His parents had been born in the late 1800's. Their parents, his grandparents, were enslaved Africans. African people were held in bondage for 246 years, and that is sixteen generations.
Sixteen generations of family dysfunction, cultural genocide and overall systematic oppression. It is hard to believe that even now, another 139 years after slavery was declared "un American", that we have forgotten how we got here, what we knew that held us together and the dreams of freedom that were thematic of our arts and expression.

I am an African. I was not raised with my language or as much African culture as I would have wished. I have only been to Africa once, but it changed me in a way that really helped me to who I am in relationship to the continent of Africa, the diaspora and the people who look like me.

For whatever reasons they have, many people have a problem with me and others claiming our heritage. Sometimes I am asked if I was born in Africa, if I have ever been to Africa, or if I know anything about Africa. It seems the underlying context is "If you knew anything about Africa you wouldn't be so quick to call yourself African." I have studied African history for a long time and I know that it is not all glorious. Some of it is bloody and unjust, much of what is going on in Africa now, the blame for it rests squarely on the shoulders of it's educated African leadership.

I am an African, in the same way that many of my friends are Mexicans andf Jews. Just because I don't speak the language of my forefathers or praise God the way my ancestors did, those things do not make me any less African.