Reflections From Last Semester....By Lisa Carmack

Being here has challenged parts of me that I didn’t know existed and helped my humanity and understanding of the world flourish. I hope to remain a student in this way as long as I live.

 

I look West across the Atlantic from my perch in Ghana where it all seems so clear. Where I am still a person of privilege. Where as I follow my Nigerian-American friend to do her errands in parts of the Accra that few foreigners go, she puts on a persona of being local, using the accent given to her by her mother to speak to the cab driver. As children run to me, I smile and say hi while she passes into a shop unnoticed. I feel a discomfort that settles in the pit of my stomach.

I heard a radio show years ago about a white woman who joined the Peace Corps, settling into life at an African village. I don’t remember where. She had looked at herself in the mirror after a while and found her face bland and without character. She detailed her acclimation process, as she found more and more that the most valuable gift from the West would be to return agency and power back to the people they robbed it from.

I write this after being in a Women Gender Studies class titled, History of the African American Woman, being surrounded by mostly white girls— where the few Black girls in class remained silent through discussions hoping not to become tokenized by the content of the class. 

I bite my tongue, remembering asking one of the girls what she thought of the film we watched and wondering if she understood it differently than I did; the implicit undertone being “You must understand this because this movie is about you.”

I bite my tongue as I read through Americanah, a book that unpacks the layers of racism in the country I’m from, that details how people of privilege live the lives they see in cereal commercials while American and foreign Blacks live at the edge of privilege; knowing what it looks like but never seeing themselves widely represented.

I bite my tongue at the ignorance of comments like, “Mixed race children are beautiful,” and “the only race that matters is the human race.”

I want to escape even the smallest hint of the White Savior Complex. I’m not here because I think I can help. I’m not here to work with an NGO or volunteer at a school (though I don’t see that as a bad thing). I’m here as a student. I cringe at comments from home that make me out to be special or philanthropic for my presence here. I am not a gift. I am not special for choosing Ghana. 

I’m here to take Ghana as my teacher. I’m here to unpack my own perceptions and misunderstandings. I’m here to learn humility. I’m here to find a part of myself that was lost in the race lottery where I was born both white and American. I’m here to smile and observe, while contemplating the comment of a child I met at a gas station.

"You will never come back here," she said earnestly as the bus my group was on idled and my peers moseyed around speaking to children, dancing and being shown how to carry large loads on top of their heads. She had short hair and wore a sleeveless dress. She looked at me with daring eyes, that were both surprised at her own boldness and self-assured by her convictions

.

I wondered how many tour buses had passed through with foreigners, all stopping to dance and laugh with the local children, only to leave behind a strange dispassionate echo.

I can’t pretend to understand. I hurt with guilt at the beginning only to realize with a unique flavor of obtuseness that none of this is about me. Why feel something that has no utility?

I remember looking out at the Atlantic Ocean the night after touring the Elmina Slave Castle in Cape Coast, a hard cider in my hand and a knot in my chest.

I thought of the stories woven from the walls of the dank dungeons of the castle; women kept by the hundreds in tiny rooms, being fed enough to be kept barely alive and being advertised to and raped by the governor who lived above them.

I felt that my heart was going to fall out of my body. A numbness overtook me. I felt like I’d been washed away. I had walked, unseeing, through the courtyard of the castle, holding onto my peers and friends who discreetly wiped away tears. Slavery was something that happened to all of us, and I was told by a friend that we should pity the oppressor.

I had looked out at the ocean in all of its power and rhythmic comfort, and cried. Wailing shamelessly to the turbulent water and clutching my chest. This pain is not about me, but it hurts all the same. 

I’m not an expert. I don’t claim to have a right to the narrative of racial injustice. I don’t feel pity or piety. I’m a person with eyes and ears, and they are now more open than ever.

I find that bitter-sweetness and perspective melds history with the bustling, functional lives of the people I live with day to day. 

People told me that coming here would be hard. As though studying in Europe or South America wouldn’t have the same transitions or moments of culture shock, but I understand what they mean.

Being here has challenged parts of me that I didn’t know existed and helped my humanity and understanding of the world flourish. I hope to remain a student in this way as long as I live.


This is a repost from Lisa Carmack's blog. To view her full blog, click here