There are a lot of ways to describe people like us. Sometimes, they describe us as “too African for the Westerners, but too Western for the Africans.” As an Ethiopian-Canadian-American attending university in the nation’s capital, one might think navigating my identity would be easy, considering that the DC area contains the highest Ethiopian population outside of East Africa. For me, it is anything but easy.
Despite never being given the opportunity to visit Ethiopia, Amharic (Ethiopia’s official language) was my first language. By age two, I spoke Amharic almost fluently with an early 1900’s dialect because that’s how my grandmother taught me to speak it. Despite my parents’ best efforts to provide a traditional Ethiopian upbringing at home, I was alienated and made to feel unaccepted. “Where are you really from?”
“Don’t worry, only real Ethiopians understand.” ”You’re not REALLY black though.” These were actual words uttered to me by members of the three communities I felt I identified with the most: the American community, the Ethiopian community, and the Black community.
What made it sting was that it wasn’t completely untrue. Yes, my ethnicity is Ethiopian and my parents still speak with beautiful, thick accents. No, I wasn’t born in …show more content…
Some might even say that their words come from a place of fear that their own culture may be threatened or overshadowed by our hybrid identities. While that never felt like proper justification, it helped me understand why I felt so ostracized by a community that I have done nothing but try to represent as accurately and proudly as possible. It also helped me realize that my identity would never be able to be simply pinned to one community. My value to a community is not defined by an arbitrary standard that I cannot
Despite never being given the opportunity to visit Ethiopia, Amharic (Ethiopia’s official language) was my first language. By age two, I spoke Amharic almost fluently with an early 1900’s dialect because that’s how my grandmother taught me to speak it. Despite my parents’ best efforts to provide a traditional Ethiopian upbringing at home, I was alienated and made to feel unaccepted. “Where are you really from?”
“Don’t worry, only real Ethiopians understand.” ”You’re not REALLY black though.” These were actual words uttered to me by members of the three communities I felt I identified with the most: the American community, the Ethiopian community, and the Black community.
What made it sting was that it wasn’t completely untrue. Yes, my ethnicity is Ethiopian and my parents still speak with beautiful, thick accents. No, I wasn’t born in …show more content…
Some might even say that their words come from a place of fear that their own culture may be threatened or overshadowed by our hybrid identities. While that never felt like proper justification, it helped me understand why I felt so ostracized by a community that I have done nothing but try to represent as accurately and proudly as possible. It also helped me realize that my identity would never be able to be simply pinned to one community. My value to a community is not defined by an arbitrary standard that I cannot