The Roads Back Home: On Being a Black Traveler

As I prepare for my fourth trip to Africa (In a country other than Senegal) in February, I reflect on what it is like to travel as a man of African descent. I say this because my travel experience will be different, and my perspective on the world will be drastically different. When traveling, I do not simply travel carefree; I travel for people, and when traveling for people, I must understand their history and worldview, and how their perspective incorporates me. Now, bear in mind I have not travelled to a country where I felt more of a burden of racism than in America. Thus far, I have traveled to six nations. The countries that are in Europe do have racism, and their racism is interesting with the increase of immigrants and refugees, so when I go through certain borders, my skin tone puts me under scrutiny. If the Western world reads my skin before my passport, does Africa remind me of belonging, or does she question what kind of child I’ve become since I’ve left my ancestral grounds?

            Many of African descent have gone to the motherland and had different questions and reflections concerning what it means to be Black. Richard Wright felt a struggle connecting, yet an appreciation for the political independence Africa was achieving and desired to help. Alice Walker went to Uganda and Kenya in her college days, where she was welcomed by her Ugandan family. She felt a sense of kinship, but also within her Magnum opus, The Color Purple, she urges African Americans to have a balanced view, to appreciate our ancestral roots, but also know we’ve made a home and culture here as African Americans. Then there are those like Malcolm X and Kwame Toure (fka Stokely Carmichael) who were reinvigorated with pride and a different perspective of what their identity and Blackness meant. Malcolm, like Alice Walker, was still appreciative of what we had, but was focused on Black nationalism and calling ourselves New Africans or Afro-Americans. Whereas, Kwame Toure was focused more on the global struggle that people of African descent had and wanted us to be tied to a worldwide movement. Africa has a different impact on many people.

            For me, Africa is a mother and father who always welcome me back into their arms, willing to show me all that I’ve missed. It is the land where I find remnants of my ancestral folklore — echoes of stories my late grandmother shared in the deep South in Keur Massar, Senegal. I have stood at the crossroads of time and space and discovered that the diaspora and the continent are one in the streets of Thies. Yes, our experiences differ because of enslavement and colonization, but that does not erase the fact that we are Africans, merely cultivating Africa in the United States.

Many do not understand my position because they fail to see the ancestral similarities, focusing instead on our differences. They do not see how what we have made in America is born of Africanisms — rhythms, values, and languages — that continue to shape our identity. And through globalism, those same Africanisms have traveled back across the Atlantic, influencing the very continent that birthed them.

Our soul, even across oceans, finds its way home. I do not claim Africa is perfect — but are we perfect in the diaspora? Let us throw that question out the window, for no place is ideal. What matters is that we celebrate what makes us who we are — and that essence, that heartbeat, is Africa.

            Many of us in the states say the essence and heartbeat of being African American is the struggle and political history we have gone through, dealing with European Americans. I challenge this because it centers us as an oppressed people with no history or culture beyond those politics. Therefore, my academic journey is leading me to search for connections through the Ga and Yoruboid-related groups along the West African coast, to trace our African roots and their continuities in America.