“My name is Dziffy Awadzi. I am 9 years old. I am fair in complexion. I come from the Volta Region. My best friend’s name is Cynthia. My favorite food is rice and beans and stew. My hobby is reading…”
During my growing years in Ghana, a great portion of time in my English classes were spent on composition essays. I loved that portion of the curriculum. Earlier topics included “Myself,” “My favorite food,” and “My best friend.” After that, we graduated to more complex topics. It was these composition assignments that first made me realize a love for writing.
Decades later, I can remember by rote, the training that was drilled into our heads about the components to include—name, age, region of origin, skin tone, best friend, favorite food, hobbies. It strikes me that the criteria I was trained to use to identify myself have changed; some because of the passage of time, and others because of changes in the reference points.
Now, if I am writing a composition about myself using the same criteria, I would use my official name Kezia Dzifa Awadzi. I may agonize over whether to include “Dzifa” for an audience with enough trouble handling a biblical name like “Kezia” just because it is attached to a “strange” last name. I will not bother to inform them that I am from the Volta Region in Ghana (most wouldn’t know or care). I would have enough of a chore emphasizing that I am from Ghana, West Africa (instead of merely identifying myself as an African). And I am very certain that describing myself as “fair in complexion” would either make people clutch their sides in laughter or leave them dumbfounded.
Among my fellow Ghanaians, I knew some were “fair”, “brown” or “dark.” I was asked questions about my home town and whether I could speak my “mother tongue.” We could sometimes tell which part of the country people originated based on their features, complexions, their spoken languages, and intonation. I do not even remember using the word “accent” until I left Ghana.
In Ghana, race became important when I started learning about apartheid in South Africa and also when I watch the Roots mini-series, documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement, and the movie Biko. Now, race colors almost everything. It is either used to discriminate against groups of people, or used by others to demonstrate diversity consciousness.
Recently, someone was collecting data on the composition of employees in my department.
“What are you?” the person asked, checklist in hand. “African-American?”
“No, I am Black,” I answered without a pausing to think. The person hesitated. “There is only African-American. It is either that, or the “other” category.”
I hesitated, and then shrugged. “Fine. You can put me down as African-American.”
It was a trivial occurrence, but it has played in my mind since then. For I do not see myself as African-American, and I doubt that African-Americans would see me as one of them, regardless of my legal status. However, to some eager to categorize people into groups, the system has not been designed to go below the surface.
I can see that little girl Dziffy, crouched over the school desk, pen in hand, her mind brimming over with ideas as she tries hard to scribble in legible handwriting. The differences between herself and the people around her were her name, age, skin tone, and the area of the country her father hailed, and to the 9-year old, those were significant differences!
For the past few days, I keep replaying that image over and over. I think the reason why I keep going back to those composition-writing days was the innocence I carried about the world. Later, in a different land, others would write essays about me, and it would be a constant battle to decide whether to let things go, or fight to have the world see me the way I see myself.
All those years ago, I never dreamed I would be categorized based not on my country, but the African Continent; not on my ability to communicate in English, but my accent. That I would be identified by the color of my skin, irrespective of its tone.
Kezia Dzifa Awadzi
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