"So, where are you from?" If there's one question I answer differently depending on who's asking, it's that. At work—despite it being the most diverse office I've ever set foot in—it's easy: "London." Around my black peers? I've mastered the art of deciphering whether they mean geographically (hardly ever) or culturally. And when I say my mum's Jamaican and dad's Nigerian, that they met in Hackney, I always crack the same joke that, no, of course they didn't "work out."
For as long as I can remember, "where are you from?" has been a loaded question, and in my case it feels particularly so within the black British community. In my teenage years, the "wrong answer" could lead to violence if you were found a few miles beyond your own postcode. And as second- or third-generation immigrants, it's one of the questions you can't help but ask other people who look like you, allowing you to make the silent mental calculations to decipher what you may have in common—and sometimes make clumsy assumptions based on the responses.
As Mr Eazi recently discovered, on the Ghanaian vs. Nigerian end of spectrum, it can be just a jovial question of whose jollof rice is best. But it can be a different story on the Nigerian vs. Jamaican end, it wasn't too long ago that the rivalry paralleled a Lord Of The Mics soundclash, with Jamaicans swiping at African "booboo-scratching" poverty while Nigerians claimed superiority over uncouth "Jamos." All the while, as a product of both cultures, I'd look on in bemusement, thinking how terribly similar (side-note: loud and ostentatiously proud) they can be.
Read more on Noisey
Advertisement