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by Joyce Witherspoon '18
English Literature
I was not prepared to be anything other than African-American while living in America. It’s a classification that was at the core of my identity and ideals, until I found myself in a situation where I would be called upon to give a perspective on political, social and economic issues; a perspective from someone who was a minority and whose culture was at the center of race-related issues in all three categories. Before encountering this, I was constantly searching for others who looked like me to feel as if I belonged. I was in search of acceptance. I found it in the most unexpected place: Europe.
There my race did not define me. There I was American, not African-American. The privilege that eluded me at home was what I felt while abroad. I knew how it felt to be black in America, but while in Bulgaria I was learning how to be an American. I was starting to grow and change as I soaked up different cultures. Like most students who go abroad, I was looking to experience new cultures and become a more aware individual. But as I sat on a bus in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, Serbia, watching a mountain village as I rode by, there was nothing to feel but peace. I was engulfed with silence, something I didn’t hear in urban areas even at 3 a.m.
W.E.B. DuBois explains the concept of “double consciousness” that plagues African Americans; there are two lineages in one being, not only African heritage but also the newer American heritage. While he claims that we deal with both simultaneously, I disagree. I have focused on my African side the most, because that is the most visible. With the darker skin tone comes stereotypes and discrimination. I have embraced that side since I was able to talk, but what about the other? It took being abroad to see a world from my American viewpoint. When I was disliked, it was not because of my skin color, it was because of my nationality. I had entered a world vastly different from the one I’d always known, and I loved it there. I was left wondering, “What if I don’t return?”
That thought followed a complete feeling of contentment that I’ve only had twice in my life—once in rural Macedonia, where no one could pronounce my name, the other, sitting on a bridge in Budapest, my bare feet feeling the mist from the Danube River as I finally conquered my fear of bridges. There I felt understood. There I felt light. There I felt no racial expectations. There is anywhere but America. There is where I feel American.