I was sitting in bed this morning and the impact of it all hit me. I mean, I don't know about the realizations of my fellow travelers, but my reality is that I'm going to back to my "homeland", to be inappropriately sentimental about it. I really am.
I'm going to land of my people.
(laughs) More than once, I've been asked by my Hispanic co-workers here in Wyoming where in Africa my family is from. You don't know what country? they ask. Has any of your family ever been? they inquire. What can I do but stutter around it and look regretfully down at the floor. There weren't any countries back then. We were bargained off, mixed together, and sold. Few records remain about labor cargo. European societies didn't even think we had souls, let alone gave courtesy to future desires to return to our origins. "I don't know" and "no" I have to respond to all questions regarding Africa. Over the years, family genealogies my teachers have asked me to do, I've simply skipped. It was distressing to think that after my people got here, our tribal ties were disregarded and we simply took on the name of a landowner. Cummings. This fact reminded me of slavery and I just didn't want to think about slavery anymore.
There's no information? my professors would ask.
I would sit their resentful as my classmates traced their lineage practically back to the Bible.
In my youth (no, wait...I'm still young, aren't I?), I just became incredibly cynical. The back-to-Africa movement was completely ridiculous to me. Look here, Tyrone! Take off your darshiki and go back to Cleveland where you were born. You're African-American. Deal with it like the rest of us. But things are changing. The land is drawing me to itself. There is something that's stirring up in me for my home-home. The knowledge that I'm returning overwhelms me with pride. Just think about what it would be like to go to Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Holland, Germany for the first time? That excited, anxious, pressury feeling? I have that. My family could be from anywhere on the large mass of land but going back even to the nearest vicinity has a power I have never seen coming. They say that Kenya and Ethiopia are the cradle of civilization anyway...maybe I'm going back to everyone's beginning.
The required books I'm reading (about the invasion of Western Christianity) is making me defensive for story-book African tribes that may or may not have really existed--but more on that later.
And, something else that hadn't occurred to me,
In 3 weeks time and for once in my life...I won't be a minority anymore! Everyone will kinda sorta look like me. Shorter but very very brown. I tell you, the thought is too much to take.
In my youth (no, wait...I'm still young, aren't I?), I just became incredibly cynical. The back-to-Africa movement was completely ridiculous to me. Look here, Tyrone! Take off your darshiki and go back to Cleveland where you were born. You're African-American. Deal with it like the rest of us. But things are changing. The land is drawing me to itself. There is something that's stirring up in me for my home-home. The knowledge that I'm returning overwhelms me with pride. Just think about what it would be like to go to Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Holland, Germany for the first time? That excited, anxious, pressury feeling? I have that. My family could be from anywhere on the large mass of land but going back even to the nearest vicinity has a power I have never seen coming. They say that Kenya and Ethiopia are the cradle of civilization anyway...maybe I'm going back to everyone's beginning.
The required books I'm reading (about the invasion of Western Christianity) is making me defensive for story-book African tribes that may or may not have really existed--but more on that later.
And, something else that hadn't occurred to me,
In 3 weeks time and for once in my life...I won't be a minority anymore! Everyone will kinda sorta look like me. Shorter but very very brown. I tell you, the thought is too much to take.
...the natural state of mankind is instead - and I know this is a controversial idea - is freedom. Is freedom. And the proof is the length to which a man, woman or child will go to regain it once taken. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try, against all odds, against all prejudices, to get home.
-John Quincy Adams
Amistad (1997)
Amistad (1997)
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