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The following text is excerpted from No Easy Victories for web presentation on allAfrica.com and noeasyvictories.org. This text may be freely
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From Kenya to North America: One Woman's Journey
Njoki Kamau
Njoki Kamau is originally from Kenya.
A women's rights activist, she is associate
director of the Women's Center at
Northwestern University near Chicago
and has taught courses in women's
studies at the university. From 1985 to
1990 she directed the YWCA Northshore (Chicago) Shelter for Battered
Women, and she has been a leader in
action against domestic violence.
Excerpted from "From Kenya to North
America: One Woman's Journey," in
"African [Diaspora] Studies," edited
by Lisa Brock, special issue, Issue: A
Journal of Opinion 24, no. 2 (1996).
Reprinted by permission of the African
Studies Association.
It was during my early years in high school in Kenya that I was first
exposed to the idea that far away in the Americas lived people who
were black. I was greatly fascinated by this idea. Until then, history
was just another mundane class that focused on Europeans colonizing
Africa and large parts of the rest of the world. The materials covered
in class included David Livingstone's three missionary journeys. No effort
was made to bring to the student's awareness the fact that the caravans of
the so-called "slaves" that Livingstone stumbled on in the interior of Africa
were Africans like ourselves. Obviously this was part of the colonizer's
overall strategy to keep us disconnected from not only other Africans in
the continent, but also black people in the diaspora.
In September 1976, after finishing college, I came to the United States
as a Fulbright student to pursue graduate studies in management. When
I arrived at Southern Methodist University, I was excited to note that
my roommate was a black woman. I felt a great sense of relief, especially
because I had noticed that the campus was predominantly white. When I
woke up the following day, I further noticed that everyone in the apartment
and building was black. I soon learned that this was where SMU housed its
few black undergraduate students. SMU was not willing to place me in its
graduate housing because this was reserved for their white students only.
When I complained to the housing office and threatened to call the
Kenyan embassy, I was moved to the "theology complex," where there were
a few international students. After a while, I decided to move off campus,
only to find that an apartment that had been promised to me was given to
somebody else by the time I arrived to sign a lease. When I told an Asian
graduate student from Kenya, he told me that these things happened often
to people of color and were classic examples of racial discrimination in the
United States.
I was too new to this society to fully understand and detect racism
in all situations. I began to notice in class, however, that some professors
would never call on me even when I had my hand raised. It was a rude
awakening, that the color of my skin had become a most significant factor
in defining who I was and, to some extent, in determining my ability to
fulfill my potential as a human being. Needless to say, I felt both anger
and fear simultaneously. From then on, I began to live with the unsettling
feeling that I lived in a society where, because of my skin color, I would be
required to prove myself at every turn—in the classroom, in the workplace,
indeed everywhere.
[During the time I lived in the all-black housing], black Americans in
the complex, while somewhat intrigued to have me there, were not ready
to embrace me yet. In a few instances, my roommate and other students in
the complex would hold parties right on the doorstep of our building, and
I would not be invited. In the Kikuyu culture that I come from this would
have been considered unthinkable. In fact, when I tried to make friends
with some of the black students on campus, I was not very successful. It
slowly began to dawn on me that even though we shared the same skin
color, our cultures were vastly different, and we had little information about
each other's way of life. I came to the conclusion that I was not invited to
the party because I was different; I was African and not black American.
Unfortunately for myself and my two fellow African students, our feelings
of rejection and exclusion left us vulnerable to an internalization of
the dominant culture's stereotypes of black Americans. We began to believe
some of the things that we heard from whites who did strike up friendships
with us. But as I grappled with the idea of giving up any hope of
ever developing a meaningful connection with black Americans, it hit me
that African Americans were probably also vulnerable to stereotypes about
us. They had grown up on racist tales of the dark continent, and thought
themselves better than Africans or at least too different from Africans to
know them. I therefore decided to keep an open mind and to embark on
a long journey of educating myself about black Americans as my way to
bridge the impasse. I hoped that this process could open a gateway through
which one day I would build strong connections with this people, whose
capacity to survive continues to fill me with awe.
As if my life as a graduate student was not already complicated enough
and my needs and desires to find my feet difficult enough, I could hardly
believe that I had become a victim of domestic violence while at Northwestern
University [where I went for a PhD in 1978]. The perpetuator was
a Kenyan man whom I viewed as my "brother," Kikuyu like myself. When
the police came, time and time again, they tried to encourage me to file
a complaint. I could not find it in my heart to throw not only a foreign
African but now a "black" brother into the throes of a colonial-like white
criminal justice system. What if I was accused by the few Africans and
African Americans on campus of betraying our already oppressed race?
Was I not supposed to put my being African/black (race) before my being
a woman (gender)? What if both communities ostracized me?
This experience became the turning point in my life. It completely shattered
my former beliefs: one, that higher education could cushion me from
being victimized by racism, and two, that self-identifying as an African or
black could protect me from gender-based violence. I set out on a second
mission to become a women's rights advocate. The question that continues
to perplex me is, "When a black woman is victimized by violence, in a
racist society, where should she go for help without seeming to betray the
race?"
Thus my effort to become informed about African Americans has been
joined with my discovery of what it means to be a woman. By connecting
with a black community I have discovered a resilience, creativity, and brilliance,
and a spirit that will not give up, no matter how overwhelming the
odds. This has left me with a sense of deep respect and admiration for all
African Americans as a people, but especially black women.
What I have learned is that there is overwhelming evidence that if one
is born nonwhite in this society, and especially if one is born black, one
receives the message from birth that one is somehow inferior. The misinformation
campaign by the larger society is directed at all black people
who live in the United States throughout their entire lives and is part of
the overall strategy to keep racism in place both in the diaspora and in
Africa. It is especially disturbing to note that our direct interactions with
each other occur through the prism of this erroneous information. Our
deep internalization of this misinformation about ourselves renders our
efforts to come together very difficult. The good news is that we have begun
to understand what has happened to us, and to make concrete efforts to
dismantle our internalized oppression.
I have also sought to learn from all women, rich and poor, white,
black, Latino, Asian, and Native American who simply want to be treated
humanely. Working with women, and on women's issues, has shown me the
uneasy ways in which gender, class, and race intersect and the contradictions
they produce in all communities. For instance, while most black men
can deeply understand racism, only a few are able to confront their own
sexism. Similarly, while most white feminists experience great outrage at
sexual harassment in the workplace, few show real empathy toward victims
of racism.
Over the last decade, therefore, I have devoted my time to advocating
for women and blacks and learning about race, class, and gender. In fact,
my journey to learn brought me into an active involvement in the community
on racial, gender, and cultural issues and to teaching a course on race
and gender at Northwestern University. Through this involvement, I have
developed deep and meaningful relationships with black Americans, which
has shown me that skin color is one thing but situating oneself within the
socio-political context and culture of a people is most important. I also
once served as the director of the very domestic violence center that I had
called for help.
When I left my home village in Kenya 19 years ago to pursue a higher
education, there was nothing in my background as a young woman that
could have adequately prepared me for what awaited me on this side of the
Atlantic. I am fully aware that without the support of my community of
black and women friends that I would never have successfully overcome
the obstacles that lay in my path. I have learned the importance of belonging
to a community. For us Africans who are far from home, I cannot overemphasize
how important it is to belong to and identify with a community
of your choice. The community that I have chosen is the descendants of
those Africans who were brought here 400 years ago. Even with its paradoxes,
it has seemed to me the most right and intelligent thing to do.
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