Conversations and Single Stories

The past week began with the provocative and, arguably, disrespectful cover image for the March edition of the Numero magazine. The magazine cover was titled ‘African Queen.’ The problem was that the representation of said African queen was a young white American model, Ondria Hardin. Not only was the girl white when in a plethora of African models in the fashion industry but, she had been bronzed so much that her skin looked like that of an African female. Many Americans and critics familiar with American history were outraged because the move was reminiscent of blackface; an offensive theatrical performance by white men painted black that was practiced in the U.S. prior to and during the civil rights movement.

I found myself on a Facebook page for the care of natural Afro hair perusing through the comments regarding the Numero cover. I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of comments questioned why the girl was not African American and pointed out that she didn’t look African American. I found it strange.  For a cover that read ‘African Queen’, why were people expecting to see an African American girl (AA) on the cover instead of an African one? I posed the question in the group and unfortunately was drawn into an unpleasant exchange. I tried to explain that nowadays AAs had come to represent all people of colour and while there was nothing wrong with that, it was, however, a single story that is not the story of the African female or any other black people elsewhere in the world. The tone of the conversation turned hostile and defensive. The women in the forum called me a bitter separatist claiming that I was unwilling to see black as black and that I was trying to trick them (although I am not sure what exactly it is I would gain from tricking them or how I would carry out this trickery through my proposition). One lady claimed that asking for not just representations of black women but African blacks specifically was tantamount to me saying that it was a negative thing for all black people to be represented by AAs and that they were not authentic African women. Let me be clear it is negative for any one group to come to represent all because this erases the unique and individual others. The more I tried to explain that the absence of actual African representation outside of the negative news coverage represented a gap that strips Africans of dignity and power, the more the insults flew. The owner of the Facebook page called me childish for having apologized for offending them because it showed that I was incapable of dealing with opposing opinions. I found this to be ironic considering the insults, I was not the one having trouble listening to another opinion. Everything I said was twisted and used as ammunition to label and try to ridicule me, so I left the group.

I once read a meme that said “Don’t get into an argument with a fool because they will beat you with experience.” I admit that I have little to no experience getting in heated debates with very defensive groups of people (thank God) and so I will leave the point making to someone more eloquent. In the talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ African author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, points out how representations determine how people identify with others and how foreign representations may come to define an entire people and in doing so, inadvertently add to the invisibility of those people. In this case the erased is the African woman. Being a writer, Adichie’s experience is with literature “Because all I had read where books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify” she says. She goes on to explain that later she discovered African books written by African authors which caused a shift in her perception enabling her to see a space for African characters in literature. She began to write about things with which she could relate because she saw them represented in the works of other African authors. She began to write about African things. While everyone agrees that the media attempts to reduce the possibilities of blackness, the danger of the single story I was trying to call attention to was the reduced possibility of beautiful African blackness through synonymy with African Americanism.

Ref: http://blog.ted.com/2007/09/04/andrew_mwenda_i/

Why was it so wrong to want African female representation to be the representation of ‘African Queen’ as opposed to anything else? Everyday people fight for representation of diversity in movements such as gender, recognizing that while we are all human, straight males cannot represent women, gay men or the entire species. In the movements for racial equality people advocate for the fact that one race cannot represent all because of the immutability of racial diversity. In a nation like the U.S. that is home to multiple ethnicities, despite being American people still feel the need to identify as Latin American, Native American, Cuban American, on and on. So why was it so offensive or petty for me to suggest that having a black model was not enough but that she needed to be African as well for an authentic ‘African Queen’ cover?

I can see how easy it is to consider my position as one that seeks to divide rather than provide a space for inclusive representation. What Adichie talks about as the creation of a definitive story through those who have the power is something that was briefly mentioned during the exchange regarding Numero. The media shapes reality through representations and selective information dissemination. For example, as a Zimbabwean I have grown accustomed to people thinking that my presence in Namibia or in France is as a result of escaping suffering in Zimbabwe because it is inconceivable that my being outside of Zimbabwe was a choice made long before hardship, corruption, hunger, death and poverty became the Zimbabwean narrative. Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda further illustrates that Western coverage of Africa is the truth of despair, helplessness and hopelessness but this truth is incomplete. At the time of his TED talk he explained that the reported reality of Africa was the smallest reality “Africa has 53 nations, we have civil war only in 6 countries” Mwenda says. What is my point? Knowledge gaps are created because of the fact that most media and its content are the narration of the African story told by the foreigner. These powerful stories negatively affect the lives of those who are either not represented at all or do not represent themselves. To see calling for more diverse representation as a negation of existing representations is a very narrow way to look at what I was trying say. Diverse representation as opposed to a single Western AA representation adds value to the progress that has already been made with regards to broadening the previous homogenous white female representations.

I left that Facebook conversation and page wondering why those women were so averse to my desire not to overlook the story of the African model but, my desire to see myself as an African woman in a story about an African Queen. I also left having learnt about the sentiments of others who could be quick to perceive the acknowledgement of diversity as either taking away from them or being an actor of division. Everything I feel about the whole online ‘squabble’ is in this meme below: