Can Europe be home for an African?

Can Europe be home for an African?

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IN FRANCE, there is a raging debate about the country’s attitude to its large minority of North African immigrants and their French-born children in the wake of the recent country-wide street protests and car burnings by alienated youngsters.

The alienation from mainstream French society of the young people who are the children of immigrants from former French colonies in Northern Africa will not be difficult for most readers to understand. It differs only in detail and perhaps extent from the experience of Zimbabweans and other Africans in Britain and the US. These and other Western countries have become and continue to be magnets for people seeking a better life, plus a very small number (in the case of Zimbabweans anyway) who are genuinely fleeing political persecution from a brutally nasty regime in its last days. Most are grateful for the opportunity for at least a greater chance of a more comfortable material existence, but they also are aware that it is far from an easy or comfortable life for the majority.

But we figure that whatever racism, insecurity, homesickness and so forth we experience in Britain or the US, one has more of a sense of control over one’s destiny than in the crumbling environment at home. While no one enjoys being a “second class” resident or citizen, on some level many reluctantly accept this reality as part of the trade off of seeking a “better” life in the West. Most Zimbabweans are first generation immigrants to Britain or the US. Even those who eventually get citizenship or residency status at some level accept the reality that this sort of legal status may give one some sense of legal security, but that is not at all the same as being fully accepted by that society.

Possession of citizenship or residency papers will not obviate the very real counter-effects of skin colour, cultural difference, a “strange” name and accent and so forth. Many try all sorts of coping mechanisms to minimize these reminders of difference from the white British or America “norm” but of course it is not possible to escape them completely. There are simply too many things about being black (and foreign-born) in Europe and the US that affect one’s life projection differently from that of the white majorities, and even to some extent that of other racial groups.

"Whatever racism, insecurity, homesickness and so forth we experience in Britain or the US, one has more of a sense of control over one’s destiny than in the crumbling environment at home"

CHIDO MAKUNIKE

In France we now have a situation where the angst being expressed is by young people who are French by birth and citizenship, but not necessarily by equal access to opportunities as the “real” (white) French. Skin colour and other features may not be as different between them and many of those “real” French as it is between the Africans and the white British or Americans, but there is the Arab name, the upbringing that being of Islamic/Arab-extraction-mixed-with-French to be different enough from the mainstream,” pure” French culture to set them apart. In the next several years we will begin to see more of this in Britain and the US as more of the “Africans” will in reality be a racial and cultural mix of African and British/American. Their frames of reference will be more British/American than their parents who had birthroots in Africa and yet they will still not be quite British or American enough to be first-class citizens, at least not automatically. Unlike their Africa-born and acculturated immigrant parents, they will not have the option of simply “going back to Africa” if they feel too marginalized because they would be even more outsiders there than in the Britain or US of their birth!

The lessons of recent events in France are instructive for immigrants trying to settle and fit in everywhere. To be generationally successful the immigrant experience must be far more than getting legal documents and/or marrying a man/woman of the adopted country as soon as possible. None of this is enough to overcome the obstacles to a true sense of belonging to/security, certainly not enough to be fully accepted and “integrated” by the society. For instance, I have been a little surprised at how much broader the concept of “white” is in France than it is in the US, Britain or still rigidly racial stratified post-apartheid Southern Africa. Southern Europe in particular has been such a melting pot for millennia that there is so much obvious (i.e. clearly observable, physical) variety in the gene pool than in central or northern Europe. So to my untrained eye a lot of those who bitterly complain about exclusion from mainstream French society on the basis of being of North African or Arab origin don’t look very different from many of the darker French “natives.” But of course the tensions are not simply based on looks-it goes far deeper.

“Europe for the Europeans, Africa for the Africans, Asia for the Asians” is hopelessly outdated. Politicians everywhere use some usually cloaked variety of these rallying cries when it suits their purposes but the fact of the matter, more than at any other time in human history, is that travel and cross-cultural interaction will only increase, perhaps faster than our ability to cope with the effects. France cannot any more get rid of the “Arab problem” than Britain or the US can wish blacks away. This is generally accepted and yet has not particularly helped to help integration and diffuse tensions.

In France as the riots seem to be slowing down, discussion is moving to what French society and the government can do to address the underlying causes of the rage in the young minority communities. These are very difficult questions at a time of general economic uncertainty in which Europe is still dynamic and powerful but no longer rules the world. How do you create more job opportunities at a time when an explosively dynamic Asia is threatening to completely turn upside down world economic relations? Europe is grappling with life in an environment of global competition which may require Europeans to settle for a less plush standard of living to compete. Everywhere there is talk of belt-tightening and the end of life-long job and social security that had become hallmarks of European life for decades. It is in this difficult environment that the frustrated, angry minority youngsters relegated to the ghettoes are demanding more opportunities. It will not be as easy to accommodate their very valid concerns now as would have been the case in a more prosperous time.

But it is politically incorrect in the currently charged environment to ask whether the immigrants and their French children are doing enough to fit into their adopted country. The politically correct but unhelpful and not entirely complete answer is a version of “we are the descendants of France’s imperial era, our parents came here to do the dirty jobs the French wouldn’t do, we were born her and grew up here, what more do you want from us?” When you accept to become a resident or citizen of a country other than yours of birth or origin, how much responsibility does your adopted country have to bend to accommodate you? How entitled are you (not necessarily just legally, but culturally and socially) to cling to the ways of your country/culture/religion of origin, and how much compromising are you obligated to do to fit in? Difficult questions, but if they are not pondered by immigrants and their offspring; on individual, family and group levels, you have immigrants who feel very self-righteously hurt but continue to be marginalized for generations. Particularly for parents who are first generation immigrants, giving their children the correct mix of enculturation into the new society and sentimental connection to the “old country” is particularly crucial to how well those children will thrive in the “new” country, which of course for the children is the only one they really know intimately, regardless of the continuing depth of the parents’ attachment to the old country.

If you leave Harare willingly to settle in London or Houston but then want to continue life exactly as you lived it “at home,” what are you saying? What are the effects of this decision on how you live, work and raise your kids? You may have a sense of “cultural purity,” but at the cost of keeping you and your kids alienated and socio-cultural outcasts from your adopted society. And yet if you try too hard to fit in, you feel lost because it is not fully possible and can create other problems! One of the problems of doing that is losing the respect of the dominant host culture to which you will on some level always remain an exotic curiosity no matter how much you try to emulate their behaviours. On the other hand you also lose the respect of the immigrant community that you are ultimately more a part of than your associates of the dominant host culture. Frequently one can delude oneself about the veracity of this harsh reality until one gets into some kind of trouble and then you find out you don’t “belong” to your adopted society quite as much as you had told yourself and hoped you did!

I suppose part of the answer to these difficult questions is to honestly ask if one intends to return “home” or to settle in one’s adopted country. For instance, are you bringing up your kids as not just resident but as citizens of the host country, or as temporary visitors who still need to be taught the skills to integrate back into the “home country?” All these are questions that many leave up to chance instead of thinking about and living their lives in accord with their answers to these questions. The result of that is to often unfortunately have whole generations be paper citizens of countries they are alienated from in many ways, while also no longer really belonging to their countries of origin or ancestry.

These questions of belonging, assimilation versus alienation may be receiving particular attention in France, but they are really universal. Many Zimbabweans and other Africans are facing them in Europe and the US, some successfully, many others very poorly. For the former, the experience of being an immigrant opens up fantastic new opportunities for oneself and their offspring. For the latter, they remain a sort of permanent marginalized underclass in the new land-sort of drifting along, not getting anywhere or doing anything substantive but still feeling vaguely superior to those back home who may in reality be much better off psychologically, culturally, socially and even materially!

These questions continue to be faced by African-Americans centuries after they have been in the US, although they are a special case in the involuntary nature of their migration, their being cut off from “the ancestral country/culture” more completely than the modern-day African sojourner, as well as in how long they have generally remained an “out-group.” Whites in Southern Africa are for the first time being forced to ask many of these same questions. They find themselves in a situation in which they are cut off from many of their European ancestral roots, but have to make the tough adjustment of no longer being the dominant group and calling the shots over the native Africans. A small but growing number of individual whites are making the psychological adjustments necessary to shift their frames of reference from merely being “whites in Africa” to being “white Africans” but on a group level I would argue that the whites of Southern Africa are making this shift grudgingly and poorly.

I have just scratched the subject of a big issue that affects an increasing number of people in a highly mobile world. I don’t know whether it is yet possible for an African immigrant or their children to become a “European” or a “Briton”in terms of really feeling “of Europe” and being accepted as “British” over and above merely having citizenship or birth papers. Not just to be acculturated by schooling or upbringing but in terms of full acceptance by the wider society as being one of them as well. I think the present reality is that it is possible to work hard and do materially better than would be easily possible “back home.” But it is very difficult to have a psychological security equal to that of the white “real” European in general or equal to that in the home country, unless it is not just in economic turmoil but in a civil war or other great social upset. A big trade-off for the relative material security and political/intellectual freedom of black existence in Europe and the West in general is still unfortunately to accept that in many respects you will always be The Outsider almost regardless of the level of material and professional achievement you attain. Depending on many things to do with the particular society one is in, as well as one’s own individual outlook and the decisions emanating from it, this need not necessarily lead to a miserable, meaningless existence, although this is also the reality for many.

I think fitting in and being successful in a foreign land depends very much on one’s attitude to adjustment and flexibility. A useful guiding philosophy is “ask not how your host city/country/culture can bend to suit and accommodate you, but how much work and effort you put into learning its ropes and adjusting accordingly.” Whether as an immigrant or as a short-term visitor, I think one has more potential to succeed in a new environment by deliberate, careful choosing of what mix of one’s host culture one adopts, and those of one’s culture of origin one retains. Not only does that give one more potential to benefit from that host culture, but perhaps to contribute to it as well.

So I respect the various ways of reminding oneself about one’s home and “staying in touch” with roots, but if you insist on recreating your previous life in-toto, what was the point of leaving it in the first place? This attitude leads to the situation where some immigrants cannot fluently speak the language of their adopted country decades after emigrating! This “cultural/linguistic” purity is obviously very expensive in terms of the opportunities one is cut off from, one’s closeness to one’s children and so forth.

All these are issues forming the subtext of the problems in France, but they affect all immigrants and all cultural/racial minorities everywhere.

In conclusion for now, let me remind all Africans seeking opportunities anywhere in the world as is their right and as people everywhere have always done: Africa is the continent of the future. The messy politics of much of the motherland may sometimes cloud this, but it is temporary. The time of disastrous rulers like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe is winding up and Africans are slowly demanding a higher standard from their politicians than we have got so far. Now and for the foreseeable future Asia will very much be where most of the economic action and growth is, but after we get rid of the Mugabes and others like them, let us use this time to get our act together. We have a huge landmass, minerals and other natural attributes galore for a world that will increasingly need them. It would be a shame if you got so comfortable being on the margins of Europe that you the son or daughter of Africa will be too alienated and out of touch with it to participate in the boom to come in the only place on the planet where you and I have the possibility to be first class citizens. In the meantime, setting the stage for Africa to eventually take its rightful place includes contributing in whatever way to better politics by opposing the many of its rulers who are despotic and more concerned with power for its own sake than to use it to make it possible for more Africans to live on their continent with pride, dignity and prosperity. Let us fight the reality that forces many of us to feel resigned to helplessly, illegally roaming the far-flung wilderness as a sort of permanent unwanted and marginalized underclass.

Even for those of you who tell yourself that you are settled and comfortable wherever you are in the Diaspora, your sense of confidence and pride will not be the same as long as Africa your ancestral home wallows in stagnation under the yoke of a new type of homegrown oppression. The performance of Africa will psychologically affect the prospects and lives of blacks everywhere, even those who think they are “new people” on other continents, at least until they are rudely reminded that wherever they are, they have a status below that of the “real” French/British/Americans/whatever. In a very real way, you have no choice but to participate in the struggle for a new, better Africa, whether you admit it or not! How well or how poorly your ancestral country or continent is doing will follow you wherever you are, whether you like it or not!

Let us press on in the struggle for a better, more enlightened political leadership in Zimbabwe from wherever we are. That is a pre-requisite for it and Africa as a whole to eventually have a chance to realize their potential in ways they are not doing now, negatively affecting all of us in one way or another wherever we are.
Chido Makunike is a social commentator and a New Zimbabwe.com columnist
CONTACT CHIDO: chidomakunike@yahoo.com
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