AlainLocke
Banned
A real life Coming to America tale with an unusual twist on being black in the US
Uganda Be Kidding Me.
Zora Bikangaga was born in Fresno, California and grew up in a white suburb in the state’s north called Healdsburg. As one of the only two black boys in the neighborhood, Bikangaga was the subject of racial slurs and threats of physical bullying. He was called terms like porch monkey and a c00n; a shopkeeper once asked him to empty his pockets to see if he was stealing; and a childhood friend once told him to sit in the back of the class “where you belong.”
Growing up in the 1990s, Bikangaga didn’t quickly grasp where the hatred and racism were coming from. The son of Ugandan immigrants, he took pride in the history of his family. His father was a cardiovascular surgeon, his mother studied public health and was a lactation consultant, and his grandfather was a regional monarch back in Uganda. The notion within the family was that they “were just as good as everybody else” in the city. Yet the attacks against him became more pronounced as he grew into adolescence, and Bikangaga, who eventually stretched out to a gangly 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), understood that “I wasn’t the cute black kid anymore.”
But it wasn’t until he undertook a social experiment in college that Bikangaga clearly grasped the narrative about being black in America. The summer before he transferred to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Bikangaga pretended to his future roommate that he was a Ugandan student and put on a thick accent. When he reported to school, he wore a colorful traditional shirt and sandals that he had bought in Uganda, and falsely impressed not only his roommate but his new friend’s family too.
“Immediately, they were so warm to me and so friendly,” Bikangaga recently toldthe weekly radio show, This American Life. “I had never had someone react to me in that way.”
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So when he was being himself, an American black male that was born here. .
White people treated him like shyt.
But soon as he throws on some African clothes and an accent...
White people are being nice all of the sudden...
What makes some White people treat African immigrants better than regular American Blacks...?
Even in the 1960s...I found this....from an African immigrant professor that was here during Jim Crow
African vs. African-American
Much bad blood stems from interactions between Africans and whites, Oigbokie says. For example, he ate at some segregated restaurants in the 1960s.
"A lot of African-Americans were upset that white people would serve me but not them," he says. "They felt the system gave us better treatment than it gave them."
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Speak on it...
Uganda Be Kidding Me.
Zora Bikangaga was born in Fresno, California and grew up in a white suburb in the state’s north called Healdsburg. As one of the only two black boys in the neighborhood, Bikangaga was the subject of racial slurs and threats of physical bullying. He was called terms like porch monkey and a c00n; a shopkeeper once asked him to empty his pockets to see if he was stealing; and a childhood friend once told him to sit in the back of the class “where you belong.”
Growing up in the 1990s, Bikangaga didn’t quickly grasp where the hatred and racism were coming from. The son of Ugandan immigrants, he took pride in the history of his family. His father was a cardiovascular surgeon, his mother studied public health and was a lactation consultant, and his grandfather was a regional monarch back in Uganda. The notion within the family was that they “were just as good as everybody else” in the city. Yet the attacks against him became more pronounced as he grew into adolescence, and Bikangaga, who eventually stretched out to a gangly 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), understood that “I wasn’t the cute black kid anymore.”
But it wasn’t until he undertook a social experiment in college that Bikangaga clearly grasped the narrative about being black in America. The summer before he transferred to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Bikangaga pretended to his future roommate that he was a Ugandan student and put on a thick accent. When he reported to school, he wore a colorful traditional shirt and sandals that he had bought in Uganda, and falsely impressed not only his roommate but his new friend’s family too.
“Immediately, they were so warm to me and so friendly,” Bikangaga recently toldthe weekly radio show, This American Life. “I had never had someone react to me in that way.”
----------------
So when he was being himself, an American black male that was born here. .
White people treated him like shyt.
But soon as he throws on some African clothes and an accent...
White people are being nice all of the sudden...
What makes some White people treat African immigrants better than regular American Blacks...?
Even in the 1960s...I found this....from an African immigrant professor that was here during Jim Crow
African vs. African-American
Much bad blood stems from interactions between Africans and whites, Oigbokie says. For example, he ate at some segregated restaurants in the 1960s.
"A lot of African-Americans were upset that white people would serve me but not them," he says. "They felt the system gave us better treatment than it gave them."
-----------
Speak on it...
He said the shyt like it was no big deal.
