The Diaspora in Me

In this day and age we are consumed by how we identify, are you black or white … where were you from? I sat thinking back and forth about how to put this all into words and realized how much there actually is to write. On a census form, I identify as an African American. But what does that really mean? I know I have descendants going back many, many generations that originated from Africa, but I don't have any customs from that continent that were passed down or any traditions that I celebrate. (Well, Kwanzaa, was the closest. But that is still an African-American based celebration). But does that change who I am - a black woman. As a U.S. citizen, we are forced to identify in one box or another, yet many of us can check multiple boxes. Why do we put ourselves in a box? I don't know if I have the answer to that or ever will but one thing I do know:

The African diaspora is in me!

What does that mean you may ask? So I'll explain the best way that I can. I identify first as a human being. on the outside, you see a black woman who has a heritage that runs long and deep. My maiden name is Fernandez. How can someone that looks like you have the last name, Fernandez? For those who don't know history, it's actually very simple. On my father's side of the family, his great-grandfather was born in Cuba. From what I can tell, his second great grandmother then brought her son to the area that we now know as Texas. As we move further down the line my grandfather was born in New York after a migration from the south to the north. The Spanish language was dropped somewhere along the way. But lo and behold, it doesn't stop there with the Spanish language influence! On my mother's side, my grandfather and his siblings were born in Panama around the time of the building of the great Panama Canal. But the diaspora does not stop there! His parents, my great-grandfather, was from in Grenada and my great-grandmother and her mother were from Jamaica. Historically we know that they were products of slavery that were dropped off sooner in the islands before the ships made their way to the Americas.

The European diaspora is in me!

I have yet another side that I cannot deny from the lineage of my mother is my Grandma Kay. When you see her picture and her light fair skin, you already know where I am going. I have pictures of my great-grandfather whose last name was Jacobs. As a little girl, he was a towering gentle giant that I know looked much different than I. As I grew older and heard the history of my grandmother and her father and siblings moving from South Carolina to New York, I could figure out where the backstory landed. My great-grandfather was a man of few words and my grandmother said even fewer when it came to family history. She being the youngest child, could only surmise that her father's family was a product of a plantation in or near Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her father may have been a product or the next generation product of a slave and slave master. One thing I do recall my grandmother saying is that his family practically disowned him when he married her mother who had extremely dark skin. I guess that is why he encouraged his daughters of fairer skin to marry men of darker skin. I can only guess that he wanted to acknowledge the darker side of his heritage because the lighter side separated from him.

Who am I?

Where does this leave me in identifying who I am, when an official document requests me to check a box? In my younger years, I would only check African American because of the culture that I was raised in. But as I look back over my life there are the influences of the black Caribbean, of the Hispanic Caribbean, and even white European. I have decided at this point forward to check any box that applies. I may not be fluent in Spanish, but it's in me. I may not be able to cook a perfect Caribbean dish, but it's in me. I may not fully know the history of the Jacobs name, but it’s in me.

I encourage you as the reader, to dig deep and see what's in you. Because the further back we look, we'll see that we have even greater connections and similarities than we think. And we've allowed our differences, small as they are, to be magnified and divide us. I pray for the day that we can move past labels and boxes, but I know in reality we have a long way to go. But let's start somewhere.

The Diaspora is in me! (and you, too!)