BYE-BYE

BABAR
By: Taiye Selasi
 TAIYE
SELASI
• Taiye Selasi was born on
November, 2 1979 in London,
England
• Her mother is a pediatrician from
Nigeria and her father is a surgeon
and poet from Ghana.
• She describes herself as a "local"
of Accra, Berlin, New York and
Rome.
It’s moments to midnight on Thursday night at Medicine Bar in
London. Zak, boy-genius DJ, is spinning a Fela Kuti remix. The little
downstairs dancefloor swells with smiling, sweating men and women
fusing hip-hop dance moves with a funky sort of djembe. The women
show off enormous afros, tiny t-shirts, gaps in teeth; the men those
incredible torsos unique to and common on African coastlines. The
whole scene speaks of the Cultural Hybrid: kente cloth worn over low-
waisted jeans; ‘African Lady’ over Ludacris bass lines; London meets
Lagos meets Durban meets Dakar. Even the DJ is an ethnic fusion:
Nigerian and Romanian; fair, fearless leader; bobbing his head as the
crowd reacts to a sample of ‘Sweet Mother’.
Were you to ask any of these beautiful, brown-skinned people that
basic question – ‘where are you from?’ – you’d get no single answer
from a single smiling dancer. This one lives in London but was raised
in Toronto and born in Accra; that one works in Lagos but grew up
in Houston, Texas. ‘Home’ for this lot is many things: where their
parents are from; where they go for vacation; where they went to
school; where they see old friends; where they live (or live this year).
Like so many African young people working and living in cities
around the globe, they belong to no single geography, but feel at
home in many.
They (read: we) are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants,
coming soon or collected already at a law firm/chem lab/jazz lounge near you.
You’ll know us by our funny blend of London fashion, New York jargon, African
ethics, and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic mixes, e.g. Ghanaian and
Canadian, Nigerian and Swiss; others merely cultural mutts: American accent,
European affect, African ethos. Most of us are multilingual: in addition to
English and a Romantic or two, we understand some indigenous tongue and
speak a few urban vernaculars. There is at least one place on The African
Continent to which we tie our sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city
(Ibadan), or an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s the G8 city or two (or three) that we
know like the backs of our hands, and the various institutions that know us for
our famed focus. We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.
It isn’t hard to trace our genealogy. Starting in the 60’s, the young, gifted
and broke left Africa in pursuit of higher education and happiness
abroad. A study conducted in 1999 estimated that between 1960 and
1975 around 27,000 highly skilled Africans left the Continent for the
West. Between 1975 and 1984, the number shot to 40,000 and then
doubled again by 1987, representing about 30% of Africa’s highly
skilled manpower. Unsurprisingly, the most popular destinations for
these emigrants included Canada, Britain, and the United States; but
Cold War politics produced unlikely scholarship opportunities in
Eastern Bloc countries like Poland, as well.
Some three decades later this scattered tribe of pharmacists, physicists,
physicians (and the odd polygamist) has set up camp around the globe. The
caricatures are familiar. The Nigerian physics professor with faux-Coogi sweater;
the Kenyan marathonist with long legs and rolled r’s; the heavyset Gambian
braiding hair in a house that smells of burnt Kanekalon. Even those
unacquainted with synthetic extensions can conjure an image of the African
immigrant with only the slightest of pop culture promptings: Eddie Murphy’s
‘Hello, Babar.’ But somewhere between the 1988 release of Coming to America
and the 2001 crowning of a Nigerian Miss World, the general image of young
Africans in the West transmorphed from goofy to gorgeous. Leaving off the
painful question of cultural condescenscion in that beloved film, one wonders
what happened in the years between Prince Akeem and Queen Agbani?
One answer is: adolescence. The Africans that left Africa between 1960 and 1975 had
children, and most overseas. Some of us were bred on African shores then shipped to the
West for higher education; others born in much colder climates and sent home for cultural
re-indoctrination. Either way, we spent the 80’s chasing after accolades, eating fufu at
family parties, and listening to adults argue politics. By the turn of the century (the recent
one), we were matching our parents in number of degrees, and/or achieving things our
‘people’ in the grand sense only dreamed of. This new demographic – dispersed across
Brixton, Bethesda, Boston, Berlin – has come of age in the 21st century, redefining what
it means to be African. Where our parents sought safety in traditional professions like
doctoring, lawyering, banking, engineering, we are branching into fields like media,
politics, music, venture capital, design. Nor are we shy about expressing our African
influences (such as they are) in our work. Artists such as Keziah Jones, Trace founder and
editor Claude Gruzintsky, architect David Adjaye, novelist Chimamanda Achidie – all
exemplify what Gruzintsky calls the ‘21st century African.’
What distinguishes this lot and its like (in the West and at
home) is a willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to
engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that
mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the
Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the
effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the
desire to honor what is wonderful, unique. Rather than
essentialising the geographical entity, we seek to comprehend
the cultural complexity; to honor the intellectual and spiritual
legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures.
For us, being African must mean something. The media’s portrayals (war, hunger)
won’t do. Neither will the New World trope of bumbling, blue-black doctor. Most
of us grew up aware of ‘being from’ a blighted place, of having last names from
to countries which are linked to lack, corruption. Few of us escaped those nasty
‘booty-scratcher’ epithets, and fewer still that sense of shame when visting
paternal villages. Whether we were ashamed of ourselves for not knowing more
about our parents’ culture, or ashamed of that culture for not being more
‘advanced’ can be unclear. What is manifest is the extent to which the modern
adolescent African is tasked to forge a sense of self from wildly disparate sources.
You’d never know it looking at those dapper lawyers in global firms, but most
were once supremely self-conscious of being so ‘in between’. Brown-skinned
without a bedrock sense of ‘blackness,’ on the one hand; and often teased by
African family members for ‘acting white’ on the other – the baby-Afropolitan can
get what I call ‘lost in transnation’.
Ultimately, the Afropolitan must form an identity along at least three dimensions:
national, racial, cultural – with subtle tensions in between. While our parents can
claim one country as home, we must define our relationship to the places we live;
how British or American we are (or act) is in part a matter of affect. Often
unconsciously, and over time, we choose which bits of a national identity (from
passport to pronunciation) we internalize as central to our personalities. So, too, the
way we see our race – whether black or biracial or none of the above – is a question
of politics, rather than pigment; not all of us claim to be black. Often this relates to
the way we were raised, whether proximate to other brown people (e.g. black
Americans) or removed. Finally, how we conceive of race will accord with where we
locate ourselves in the history that produced ‘blackness’ and the political processes
that continue to shape it.
Then there is that deep abyss of Culture, ill-defined at best. One must
decide what comprises ‘African culture’ beyond pepper soup and filial
piety. The project can be utterly baffling – whether one lives in an African
country or not. But the process is enriching, in that it expands one’s basic
perspective on nation and selfhood. If nothing else, the Afropolitan
knows that nothing is neatly black or white; that to ‘be’ anything is a
matter of being sure of who you are uniquely. To ‘be’ Nigerian is to
belong to a passionate nation; to be Yoruba, to be heir to a spiritual
depth; to be American, to ascribe to a cultural breadth; to be British, to
pass customs quickly. That is, this is what it means for me – and that is
the Afropolitan privilege. The acceptance of complexity common to most
African cultures is not lost on her prodigals. Without that intrinsically
multi-dimensional thinking, we could not make sense of ourselves.
And if it all sounds a little self-congratulatory, a little ‘aren’t-we-the-coolest-damn-
people-on-earth?’ – I say: yes it is, necessarily. It is high time the African stood up.
There is nothing perfect in this formulation; for all our Adjayes and Achidies, there is a
brain drain back home. Most Afropolitans could serve Africa better in Africa than at
Medicine Bar on Thursdays. To be fair, a fair number of African professionals are
returning; and there is consciousness among the ones who remain, an acute awareness
among this brood of too-cool-for-schools that there’s work to be done. There are
those among us who wonder to the point of weeping: where next, Africa? When will
the scattered tribes return? When will the talent repatriate? What lifestyles await young
professionals at home? How to invest in Africa’s future? The prospects can seem grim
at times. The answers aren’t forthcoming. But if there was ever a group who could
figure it out, it is this one, unafraid of the questions.
 ELEMENTS
OF THE STORY
 THEME :
“Afropolitan” describes a new generation of African;
the creative, politically aware, multicultural African
emigrant with roots firmly on the African continent
and bodies and minds in the world.
CHARACTER :
Afropolitans – the newest
generation of African emigrants
 SETTING :
Midnight on Thursday night at
Medicine Bar in London.
Africa
 CONFLICT :
Man Vs. Man