Black Enough. Группа авторов
JAY COLES
THE (R)EVOLUTION OF NIGERIA JONES
Any child of colour raised in the West will have been told early on by their parents or guardians that “they need to work twice as hard” in order to achieve success. Those people may not recall exactly when they had their first “conversation”, but they will remember having it.
For non-white children growing up as minorities in Europe or North America, the first uncomfortable “conversation” with their parents isn’t about the birds and the bees – that comes later – it’s about more pressing matters that will impact them from the moment they leave the safety of their parents’ home and enter the world.
Pre-school can often be a baptism of fire for children of colour. While white children may have the luxury of waiting till their tweens before having to learn about the realities of life, children of colour are told much earlier, their “conversation” being more about the inequalities and discrimination that they will invariably face at some point in their lives. Unfortunately, this is regardless of how privileged, talented or brilliant they might be. This is a heartbreaking burden that parents of colour bear, or white parents of non-white children must face. Children of mixed-race heritage are one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in Britain, so now many parents who themselves might not have had a personal experience of discrimination are having to have that “conversation” with their children.
In Black Enough, Ibi Zoboi powerfully weaves together a collection of short stories that examine what it means to be young and black in America. These stories bring us up close and personal with heroes and heroines who are trying their best to win on an unlevel playing field: young people refusing to give up even when the odds are stacked against them; young people who will open your hearts and minds in ways you couldn’t imagine.
Like all great coming-of-age adventures, you, the reader, will leave as much changed as the protagonists. Black Enough will open your eyes to US injustices that are just as relevant here in the UK; Black Enough will provide you with a new-found appreciation for the resilience of the human spirit; and, more importantly, Black Enough will remind you of our shared humanity.
Whether you are a young person dealing with similar challenges faced in the pages of this book, a parent wanting to raise “woke” children, or simply an ally for change and inclusion, Black Enough will arm you with extra tools on your journey to make the world a fairer place.
I was born in a country known for having had the first successful slave revolt in the world. Way back in 1804, Haiti became the very first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. If global Blackness had a rating scale of one to ten, the Haitian Revolution has got to be at level ten, being the most Blackest thing that ever happened in history.
But none of that mattered when I first immigrated to the United States as a child. The Black and Latinx kids in my Brooklyn neighborhood didn’t know and didn’t care that my native country had once been a hub for freed slaves from America. According to them, I wasn’t Black enough. I wore ribbons in my hair and fancy dresses to school, and I had a weird accent and a funny name. Most important, I didn’t know how to jump double Dutch or separate a sunflower seed from its shell with just my front teeth, and I was off-key and off-beat when stomping, clapping, and singing to the latest cheers. These were all definitions of Brooklyn’s summertime Black girlhood.
By the time I started high school, I had mastered all of those things and could easily blend into New York’s particular brand of teen Blackness, even while tucking away the quirky parts of myself—my love of sci-fi, disco music, and John Stamos.
In college, my small Black world expanded when I met my first roommate, who had the thickest Southern accent I had ever heard. My best friend in high school was African American and I’d been to her big family cookouts and even to visit her cousins in a small Black town in South Carolina. I’d been a little jealous that she had such a big family and at a moment’s notice could be surrounded by a plethora of aunts, uncles, and cousins. This was my first glimpse into African American culture—one with deep roots in the South. But that new roommate of mine with the Southern accent was from Rochester, New York, and her family had lived there for as long as she could remember.
Once I met new friends from Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and even England, my idea of Blackness began to expand. It was only then that I started to connect my own Brooklyn Blackness to a global idea of Blackness. After all, while the girls in my neighborhood teased me about not knowing how to spit out sunflower seeds, they didn’t know how to properly eat a mango, or know Creole or Patois or any of the Caribbean ring games. But before long, I knew there was a fine thread that connected all of these cultural traditions to each other.
Blackness is indeed a social construct. Within the context of American racial politics, there can be no Black without white. No racism without race. But the prevalence of culture is undeniable.
What are the cultural threads that connect Black people all over the world to Africa? How have we tried to maintain certain traditions