I was doomscrolling on Instagram when I saw the post. At first glance, there was nothing particularly significant about it: picture after picture of someone smiling in their car, in front of a house, at a park, posing with friends. Then, underneath the pictures, a caption which talked about how beautiful Canada was and how much they were enjoying themselves here. It was the kind of post people make every single day, and ordinarily, I would have scrolled past, but this particular post ended with a sentence that led to a question that made me go to the comments section.
“I love the Canadian culture.”
What is THE culture of Canada?
I scrolled through, hoping someone would give me a clue or at least point me in the right direction for research, but the comments were not unforgettable.
“Glad you’re loving it here.”
“Yes, Canada is a beautiful place.”
“Happy you’re having a good time.”
It was about to pop out of that post and swipe to the next one, when I saw the one comment, which, now years later, provokes this piece:
“Yes, we love having people like you here who embrace our culture. We don’t want immigrants who don’t blend in.“
Blend in.
Blending
I thought of a blender sitting open on a kitchen counter. The blades were turning, but the blender was empty. Strawberries were thrown in. Milk was poured in. The blades became quieter. Everything was spinning, solid pieces becoming one thing. Then the bananas were added. The blades hardly protested. In a few seconds, everything was broken down. There were no more strawberries. The bananas were gone. Everything was now the same. A thick pink liquid had been produced.
Suddenly, roasted peanuts were added. The blades roared in protest, whirled in anger. The peanuts began to break, but they resisted complete destruction. There were tiny brown pieces everywhere, interrupting the smoothness. The smoothie smelled nuttily and unignorably divine. The maker tasted the smoothie and noticed it had a unique crunch. He stopped the blender and flushed the whole thing down the drain.
Diversity is celebrated until it refuses to become invisible
There are people who genuinely believe that everyone who migrates from their so-called “third world countries” should suddenly abandon everything they have ever known and practiced. They believe that good immigrants blend in, that is, become culturally invisible. They want you here technically, but you are not to be distinctly seen. You are expected to metamorphose into something more comfortable, something more acceptable. As if African culture is seen as too threatening to exist boldly in ordinary life, they want you to make it only a performance at special festivals and events.
African immigrants are expected to amputate pieces of themselves until they become digestible to Whiteness. We are expected to lose our flavour, to unbuckle the belt of our identity, to forget where we came from and the things that made us who we are. Things like our food rich with memory and inheritance, food so deeply seasoned that the aroma settles into the fibres of your clothes and follows you everywhere. You are expected to be embarrassed by the smells that center you and remind you of home. You are expected to apologize for them.
And what about our accents? We are expected to smooth them out too, because in the workplace, professionalism and intelligence sound White. Oh, we are allowed to speak, but only softly. We are expected to dress more plainly. To laugh without showing our teeth. To take pride in that virtue of disappearance that makes our humanity so negotiable. To sand ourselves down. Take up less space. Blend. Blend in.
The problem, though, is that when you are Black, you do not naturally blend in. Before you can hide, you have already been seen.
Why is my Africanness so threatening?
Perhaps the White man is afraid that if I remain fully myself, he will somehow lose himself? Perhaps my refusal to dissolve feels to him like rebellion? Or perhaps African culture is too alive to ignore.
Maybe there is something unsettling about a people who did not just survive attempted erasure but still emerged dancing to their drums, speaking their thousands of languages, eating their Abacha, wearing their textiles, flaunting their braids, celebrating at their ceremonies, making their music and telling their stories.
Yes, somehow, African culture survived the ships, the churches and the schools. It survived colonialism.
The loneliness of being visibly different
Perhaps White people fear becoming strangers within their acquired country. Oh, how frightening it must be for them to look around and no longer see only themselves reflected back at them.
White people need not be afraid, though, because Black people in Canada – who are already so familiar with this loneliness – could teach them how to survive it. We already enter rooms where nobody looks like us. Our hyper-visibility and our invisibility sit strangely side by side. We trudge on here with hope.
Hope that one day we will look around and see more people who resemble us. Hope that our children will not feel pressured to shave off layers of themselves just to be accepted. Hope that our diversity will be treated with dignity and that inclusion will no longer demand self-erasure. Hope that we will stop being required to disappear into the smoothie. Hope that we will stop being punished for being identifiable, whole, visible and unblended.
By Joy Ebere