By middle school, pledging allegiance to the flag was out. I’d learned a enough about Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Marcus Garvey to say peace out to the daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance. When my teachers called my mother to complain about my refusal to blithely put my hand across my chest and join in with the rest of the class, she simply told them, “It’s her choice.” “You’re DARN right, mom” is what I thought every time, and I’d go to class the next day with a smirk on my face. Who was I to refuse my loyalty to this country? I was a child who was taught to learn about my ancestors, critically think about my history and how it related to my present, and to question anything I was taught in school — especially if it seemed suspect to me.
Being that the library has always been one my favorite places in the world, I read a lot. I learned a lot. I then acted accordingly. Even Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, knew they never loved us (and made a song about it). After that, I pledged my allegiance to Africa.
Hold up, though. Africa is a whole continent. I knew I was African, but didn’t know what part I was from. This was a vague allegiance, and it didn’t hold water with the Africans I met who were either actual transplants from Africa or knew their lineage clearly. They met me with hostility or pity or both. It was maddening. Some felt better than me just because they were born in Africa and I wasn’t. Others touted having never been captured and dragged from their land as their source of superiority (I didn’t know enough back then to bring up the colonization of Africa by other European nations). I was just like, “Why are we debating who has been enslaved more or less than whom? There were even those who held being bilingual and having a familial history of ownership above my head.
I was glad when I learned the term ‘diaspora.’ I would ask them, “Aren’t we all a part of the African Diaspora, though?” Most of the time, they would sigh a sigh of disdain and walk away. I was still hell bent on pledging my allegiance to Africa — all of it, for now — hoping to eventually find out where exactly I came from.
Then, this article came out about black Americans appropriating African culture. It was cognitive dissonance like a mug, in my opinion. How could I appropriate my own heritage? When I say “my own heritage,” I’m not referring to one tribe or one country, I am referring to the entire diaspora. Instead of using the obvious interest in African clothing, jewelry, markings, religion and culture as a moment to educate, this article felt hostile. It felt like I was an African being kicked out of Africa by Africans. That’s lame.
I’m all about respecting sacred cultural traditions, clothing, language and markings, but I’m also about educating a segment of the greater tribe of Africa who lost everything on a boat ride across the sea and four centuries of torture, oppression and programming. I haven’t known my full lineage, but I’ve always wanted to. Are you telling me not to pledge allegiance to myself? How could something so beautiful to me spark something so ugly toward me?
Finally, my sister took an African ancestry DNA test, and we traced our lineage back to a country and a tribe on our maternal side. I felt relief when I learned this information, yet was still filled with curiosity to find out about my paternal side as well. I was also still filled with conflict. African nature is, at its core, communal. I could pledge allegiance to only myself or only my family, but this would feel at conflict with who I am in relation to my origin.
So who am I supposed to pledge allegiance to when everyone is telling me to bow down or get out? For now, I pledge allegiance to knowledge —to learning as much as I can about who I am (and who we are and were) and sharing that information with anyone who will listen. This is my way forward. This is my way home.
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