I’ll start at the beginning.
Here is who I am…I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years old. I was born
in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My parents’
parents are from the United States and so on.
Many of my ancestors were already here…Some of my ancestors were brought
here in chains, and sold on auction blocks. I consider myself African by
nature, American by nurture.
Once upon a time when I was
21 years old, I was a student at United States International University in
Nairobi, Kenya. It was my first time in Africa. I had been there about for about
two months, when I was out at a bar with my friends, very close to the campus. My
friends and I were all college students, and dressed accordingly so. I walked
myself to the bar and took 200ksh out of my pocket to buy myself a beer.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was a Caucasian male in
his late 40s with scraggly hair. This man was slightly out of place in a
college bar, but not an unfamiliar sight in the Nairobi nightlife. The music
was blaring. I couldn’t hear him well, but he seemed to be pointing to another
corner of the bar and making motions towards the beer I had already ordered. I
side-eyed him and shook my head. Whatever it was I wasn’t interested. I had
what I came for. He tapped me on the shoulder again and motioned for me to
bring my ear closer to his lips so he could tell me something without yelling.
I sighed and conceded, bending down slightly. “My friend would like to buy you
a drink,” he said. I, beer already in hand, raised my beer and pointed to it.
“I’m okay! I just bought myself a drink, but thanks!” I sashayed away back to
my friends and started dancing.
Scene 2. I was thirsty again.
I walked back to the bar. The same 40-something white man with the scraggly
hair was there. This time he stood up directly in front of the space I thought
I would be able to squeeze into the bar. “My friend wants to buy you a drink!
He wants to meet you!” he yelled, again pointing over to some dark corner. At
this point somewhat curious, and one Tusker in, I replied “why can’t your
friend talk to me himself?”. “He’s shy,” he responded. Amused that we had
reverted to middle school interactions, and half expecting him to deliver a
paper which said “will you go out with me” with “yes”, “no” and “maybe” as
boxes to check, I became curious. I thought, maybe his friend is a cute 20-something
Kenyan banker, a gorgeous 30-year old Ugandan lawyer… I thought, who knows.
“He’s right over here” he insisted. I said “ok” and followed him just a few
steps away from the bar, to a high top in the corner. The friend was an
unattractive 50-something Caucasian- American. He greeted me, shook my hand,
asked my name, and where I was from. I answered, recoiled my hand, said “nice to
meet you, but I’m going to go back to my friends”. He motioned for me to join
them. I shook my head and hustled back to the table where my friends were.
Scene 3. Last drink. Same
man. Same spot. Same question. Same refusal. Followed by the question, the
first of many of the same design, with different accents, languages and configurations,
that I would hear often while living in Kenya, “my friend wants to know how much.”
I said, “how much what?” totally confused. “My friend wants to know how much it
would cost for him to sleep with you?”. What happened next, is somewhat of a
blur. I know that a fury engulfed me. I remember walking outside. I felt like I
was suffocating. I remember coming back. I remember using a lot of expletives.
But what I will never forget is how the situation was resolved. I was asked to leave the club… I was told I was making too much noise.
I was disturbing business. This was not the last time something like this would
transpire. It would go on to happen in Djibouti, and in Ethiopia, and in Ivory
Coast. I, Black woman, minding my own business, sexually propositioned by he, White
man with a few dollars in his pocket, was at fault for disrupting a totally
unacceptable and disrespectful attempted “transaction”.
Since this first occurrence
back in my 20s, I have learned to contain myself somewhat better, to learn to
listen for the response to the question I now pose genuinely curious, “what makes
you think you can buy me?” I have heard everything from “oh I’m sorry…I thought
you were from (insert country here)” to “everything can be bought”; everything
equally as insulting. All that these
answers have amounted to is this, “as a Black woman, your body is a commodity,
that I as a White man, have the right to purchase it/you”. While this is a
personal narrative, I do not share this burden alone. It becomes important as
it makes the case of what I will call “sexual neo-colonialism,” a legacy of the
exploitation of the bodies of women of color. If we understand neo-colonialism,
as the last stage of imperialism, as did Kwame Nkrumah, as its most dangerous
stage; as a stage in which sovereignty is only a façade and that power is used
for “exploitation rather than development,” than we must too understand
neo-colonialism as the most dangerous stage not just for the “developing state”
but for its people, particularly its women. The African female whether in
diaspora or continental stands to lose her sovereignty, and too be exploited,
rather than space intentionally made for her to develop herself the way she
sees fit.
Colonialism left in its wake
the destruction of pre-colonial political, social and economic systems in which
women ranked highly, and
replaced them first with “native authorities” exclusive of women followed by
clientele-patronage systems, which too excluded women. Women often lost tremendous power during the
colonial period as well as economic autonomy. This resulted from women’s
exclusion from the global marketplace and new reliance of women’s unpaid labor.
Customary laws developed under colonialism and inherited from Europe,
disadvantaged women favoring men. They
accorded particular rights to men, such as the right to testify in trials that
were closed to women. Women were removed from power as heads of associations
often with the final say over market or agricultural disputes, and replaced
with men[1].
Simply
colonial rule restructured family, sex, gender and
sexuality by creating legal mechanisms to control women’s positions in society,
positions in their families, and expressions of their sexuality, for the sake
of White Western capital.
The trickle-down effect of the
disempowerment of the African woman has also emboldened the White hetero
male to assume his place in the hierarchy of African affairs is one of
superiority, and one in which any Black woman continues to be for sale. This is
further reinforced often by the colonial mentality, the internalized
colonialism of many members of African society, which favors and in fact
protects unfettered white male hetero sexuality and promotes its unbridled
exploits. It is this internalized colonialism, in actuality, the reaction of
those around her, that asks the Black woman either to suppress her reaction to
verbal sexual violence totally, or to react within the confines of what white
hetero-males have sanctioned as polite gender normativity; to smile and say “no
thank you”, to gently brush away prodding hands, to repeat “no” quietly, avert
our eyes, and meekly insist that we decline such advances. This internalized
colonialism of its witnesses says she is “overreacting”, when she yells, pushes
away, tells, or even says no firmly. It says that “well, most other women would
have said yes.”
Someone will say that this will stop when African women stop
having relationships with such men. Someone will say that when these women, who
may find poverty less miserable than sex with the occasional dream peddling
foreigner, simply say no, then all African women will stop being objectified. To
which I would respond that until the system that has systematically
underdeveloped not only Africa but the entire Global South, a system which has
destroyed indigenous spirituality and replaced it with a White savior both hanging
in the homes of its believers and walking the streets as sex tourists is
dismantled, then Black women, Brown Women, all women of color, will continue to
be harmed by it.
This returns me to my story. The man in question was an
American. There was no question of impoverished conditions. I clearly stated
that I too was American, but this did not prevent the proposition, nor has it
on multiple occasions. I, due to the intersectionality of my race and gender,
was considered a commodity, buyable, and expendable. I am not the only woman of
color who has had such an experience. I often exchange stories with my expat
women of color friends, who have often witnessed and experienced the same. The globally
internalized white hetero male superiority complex and systemic inherited
exploitative North-South relations that support the continued effort to colonize,
conquer and commodify the woman of color’s body, as an economic enterprise,
must necessarily change, and sexual neo-colonialism, must be destroyed and at
last put to rest….
So I will finish at the beginning. I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years
old. I was born in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My
parents’ parents are from the United States and so on. Many of my ancestors were already here. Some
of my ancestors were brought here in chains, and sold on auction blocks. But, “How
much do I cost?”…I am priceless. We are priceless. Not even on the auction block
were my ancestors’ souls for sale.
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