Regional
(2009-10-12)
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AURORA, CO
(KUNC) -
A growing number of high-profile black Americans seem to be interested in knowing more about their African American heritage these days. KUNC commentator Pius Kamau says they're turning to science for this information instead of getting the answers from those living right in their own neighborhoods.
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Compared to the past century, immigration from Africa to the US has picked up considerably - especially over the last few decades.
On television we have seen stories of black celebrities, such as Oprah, searching for their African origins with the use of DNA analysis. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard and others have been at the forefront of this process, popularizing DNA testing to explore black Americans' ancestry.
Across the nation, and in Colorado cities, we find pockets of African immigrants. Greeley has its Somalis, Aurora too has its Somali, Ethiopian, Ghanaian new comers; new arrivals with the one immigrant characteristic: they huddle together, for comfort, companionship and support.
With the expressed desire some African-Americans seem to have to know more about the mysterious place where some of their enslaved ancestors came from, I have always thought that if I was a black American, I would have been curious about the Africans around me. About their countries, customs, the languages they speak. I might even have tried to learn Swahili, Yoruba or Zulu.
That it is not so has puzzled me greatly for the three decades I have been here. I've found African-American incuriosity astounding. Their frequent lack of caring for the welfare of new black arrivals from Africa has been a mystery to me. Their charity would soften the blow of arrival, the fear and shock of new culture. Their lives lack the curiosity dimension needed to care for the new arrivals.
Instead one finds groups of dedicated white Christians who help with resettlement of African students and refugees from various African countries. In the last decade, more Jewish groups have joined the Christians to help settle many sad souls who have languished in refugee camps in North Kenya and elsewhere. A Jewish group in Boulder that has been helping the Lost Girls of Sudan epitomizes the best of the Jewish Good Samaritan tradition.
But life always offers exceptions. I know of several black women who have gone out of their way to help new African arrivals. One, a retired Denverite social worker has "adopted" an Eritrean family explaining that for many black Americans, Africa is an idea of an ideal. It's an intangible and an imagined place. Reality is the place depicted in pictures painted in their minds by the white media. A tarnished, ugly place; its people diseased, unattractive and primitive.
For her, her impression changed radically as she visited various African countries and got to know Africans. The result was she felt a deep kinship and empathy, which she didn't have before. This was translated in her personal involvement with Africa. And Africans around her.
The shame is that the two communities could learn and draw so much comfort and good will from each other. For my part I continue to strive to build tenuous bridges between them hoping the new black Americans' interest in their African origins might lead to a new mutual black awareness and knowledge and hopefully a better understanding for all Americans.
© Copyright 2012, KUNC
