Every month, I write about three things that caught my eye in the culture universe. Social stuff, music stuff, books stuff. Previous editions here and here. Here is Mambo no. 5. If you get that reference, I like you already.
Race in Nigeria
I’ve really gotten into Panashe Chigumadzi’s work recently. She wrote “These Bones Will Rise Again” which I think does wonderful work to make room for oft-unheard — women, rural — perspectives on a nation’s history. It’s a slim book (It took me a few days only because I’m a painfully slow reader nowadays) that challenges us to seek out perspectives outside the mainstream in our understanding of our local histories. It is on the strength of this that, when I saw the provocative title of her essay “Why I Am No Longer Talking to Nigerians About Race”, I put aside my reservations and read it.
One of the best things about having a monthly blog is that by the time you get to writing about something, you likely would have had some time to think things through. It makes you really question your own contributions to a conversation and gives you plenty of time to consider whether to make it or not. Still, since the main preoccupation of this blog is with culture and society, I wanted to give the thoughts I had about this essay after a few conversations with friends offline about it a home.
A lot of what Chigumadzi said about Nigerians’ attitude to race reminds me of the snippet of the NYT obituary of the great Nigerian art curator Okwui Enwezor where he is quoted as saying “Coming from Nigeria, I felt I owed no one an explanation for existence, nor did I harbour any sign of paralyzing inferiority complex.” I understand that, and have seen what people mean when they say this, but I don’t think this is a universal truth. I wish people who say things like this would qualify that statement in the context of class, access and education.
Race-based inferiority complex does indeed exist in Nigeria. Nigerians often do behave differently to white people than they would to black people, granting them more access or respect than they otherwise would. This, in my experience, cuts across class lines, although it is true that Nigerians of a certain level of income and access do not exhibit this trait. I think Nigerians are actually very sensitive to difference, as so much of the way we negotiate our public spaces is dependent on who we are and how much we have, and being white is often a shortcut to privilege here regardless of the white person’s wealth. Chigumadzi in her essay recounts seeing a Nigerian dismiss a white South African and grudgingly accepts Nigerian arrogance as the antidote to white supremacy. The gag, though, is that the arrogance may well be very much in response to the racial difference, an assertion of their own importance in the face of someone who may or may not think s/he is better than they.
Among the privileges of being Nigerian and elite is that you may not be as intimately familiar with how dangerous being an “other” can be. This is actually what informs that arrogance — as always, the magic trick that privilege does is convincing you that it does not exist, and that is why it requires a self-awareness and curiosity to explore. Nigeria is a very diverse country and in some places, identity has become a weaponized thing. Race and ethnic differences are obviously not the same, but people deploy much the same means — albeit in different degrees — to navigate these minefields. A Christian woman I know wears a scarf when she has to work outside southern part of Kaduna where she calls home, but the second she’s home the scarf comes off. I know an Efik Christian from the south of the country who lives in Kano answers to Mohammed with men he does not know well, keeps a long beard, wears a jellabiya. Neither of these people know to call what they are doing code-switching, but that is precisely what it is. These are not people with the wealth and access to be insulated by any danger being a minority could bring. These are not people that would struggle to understand the challenges that could come with any sort of power-based social order.
Chigumadzi is absolutely right that it is important for immigrants especially to understand the history of the countries they live in. She says they must have “the humility to understand that if it weren’t for the very struggle you might feel inclined to dismiss (because you have yet to understand it), you would not be able to make a successful life in your adoptive country in the first place.” I agree with that. It is also true, though, in countries where the local history means that odds are stacked against you. She mentions in her essay the investment that Nigeria made in South Africa’s apartheid struggle. Yet, Nigerians are not exactly welcomed in the country with open arms and are often on the receiving end of xenophobic attacks. These are unpleasant realities that cannot easily be reduced into a sort of treachery based on lack of racial or other solidarity.
Indeed, solidarities are only ever really forged when we see them as integral to the survival of the communities we are a part of. This solidarity does not — and cannot — exist outside the realities of people’s lived experiences.
Nolly Nostalgia
Thanks to the amazing Yung Nollywood, we have seen a proliferation of memes from old Nollywood driven by nostalgia of that wave of early films. I find it pretty heart-warming seeing Nollywood memes being used by non-Nigerians, but that’s just me being sentimental. I don’t think it is an accident that young Nigerians are drawn to old Nollywood images at the same time that shows like Stranger Things and Sex Education have taken hold, and Odunsi’s retro sound in Rare have found huge audiences. There seems a growing need to make connections between then and now. I’m here for it.
It was clear even back then, but in this new social mood something that strikes one anew about seeing these old Nollywood films is how incredibly toxic some of these messages were concerning women, and the extent to which these reinforced the Madonna-Whore complex that Nigerian women still negotiate today. There is a really great essay by Merlin Uwaka’s called From Glamour Girls to Nolly Babes: Nollywood Nostalgia and the Modern Nigerian Woman in the latest edition of The Republic. In it, Merlin Uwalaka writes:
“Nollywood became an archive of the complex process by which women were constructed in the Nigerian social imagination. While the visual presentation of Nigerian women wasn’t new, there was a uniqueness about the way Nollywood integrated feminine identity with popular imagery.”
Read the whole essay. Then read the rest of the (really great!) edition on race and identity in the modern world here.
Complicating Mr. Nice Guy
In this Death, Sex and Money podcast conversation, memoirist Kiese Laymon and Very Smart Brothas’ Damon Young chopped it up about body image, money and masculinity. Listen from 9:58 , where Kiese Laymon examines the question of what being a “good guy” means and how complicity in really shitty behaviour plays into that. Young then talks about what drives the behaviour of “goodness” and the importance of interrogating intent.
This reminded me of Bolu Babalola’s essay on “You” and the Nice Guy trope, where she writes:
“Nice guys are the worst because ultimately, ‘nice’ is meaningless. Have you ever gone on a date with someone and said, “They’re nice…” without the ellipses? No. If you answered yes, stop lying. There is always a but; a suggestion that ‘nice’ is not enough. It’s a blank canvas, upon which can people can draw a fake personality. It can be projected onto, moulded, carefully cultivated into whatever a person wants to be to you, so that they can get whatever they want from you. ‘Nice’ can be used as a transactional tool, and when blended with toxic masculinity or entitlement, it can be weaponised.”
Death Sex and Money also has a really cool project called Manhood, Now where they did a really interesting research in conjunction with FiveThirtyEight and Survey Monkey on how American men see being a man. It made me wonder two things: 1) how have these worries changed over time, as women have gained more of a socioeconomic foothold in American society? 2) how do American men’s preoccupations differ with their Western counterparts? What can we learn from these differences?
Check out the episode and insight from the research here. There’s even a reading list with books and articles you should check out.
Until next time.
