[bright music]
- Announcer: The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
- Angela Fitzgerald: In America, identity can be complex.
Take the terms "Black" and "African American,"
two labels often used interchangeably,
but with distinct meanings and stories.
For some, it's about heritage.
For others, culture.
And for all, it's personal.
In this episode, we'll unpack the layers of identity, history,
and belonging within the Black community
and find out why race matters
regarding Black versus African American identity.
In Wisconsin, like many parts of the country,
Black communities are diverse, with individuals
tracing their roots to forced migration through slavery,
and others arriving as immigrants
from various African and Caribbean nations.
These two groups often face similar challenges:
discrimination, racism, and struggles for equality,
yet how they identify themselves
and how others identify them can differ significantly.
African American identity is rooted in the history
of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism in the U.S.
It's a distinct cultural identity formed
by generations of Black people born in the U.S.,
whose ancestors were forcibly brought here.
African Americans often identify as Black
because it's a collective identity
born out of a shared history, struggle,
and cultural experiences in America.
But what about African immigrants?
For many, the experience of migration to the U.S.
is very different.
They may carry with them a sense of connection
to their specific countries,
like Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, or Ghana,
or ethnic groups, Hausa, Igbo, and Oromo.
But in America, they are simply categorized as Black
or African American, and can experience the othering
that comes with that in America.
In this episode of Why Race Matters,
we'll speak to Harry Kiiru and Naman Siad.
We'll discuss what it means to be
both African and Black in America
and why race matters when it comes to community,
belonging, and Black identity.
Thank you both for joining me today
for our episode of Why Race Matters.
[chuckles]
Why don't we start off by doing some introductions
and telling us your story and where you are originally from?
So who'd like to go first?
- Naman Siad: I could go first. - Okay, okay.
- My name is Naman Siad.
I was born and raised here in Madison,
but my family is originally from Somalia,
and so I guess I'm a Madisonian
because I can't claim anything else. [laughs]
I went to school here, all public school,
and went to UW-Madison and majored in sociology,
and decided to do my legal studies here,
so I went to law school here in Madison as well,
and now I work at a really small law firm
that kind of does community-based work,
whether it's immigration, trusts and estates.
Yeah, that's a little bit about me.
I've lived in Madison my entire life,
but I took some time off to live in London
for my master's, and so that was my grand escape
outside of Madison, and now I'm back.
- What about you, Harry?
- Harry Kiiru: So, interestingly enough,
Harry is my government name.
That's, yes, so Moreh is the name that I was given.
- Angela: Mm-hmm. - It means helper,
or, I mean, it's a, it's an age group sort of name.
And did not use Harry until I came to the U.S. [laughs]
This was, so I arrived on September 1, 1997,
so to Los Angeles, California, from Kenya.
I was 19 years old, and...
Oh, wow, that was a long time ago.
And about maybe 10 years after that,
I relocated to Wisconsin.
I'm finishing up a PhD
in the Department of African Cultural Studies.
I came to grad school just to be a better parent,
so raising two sons
who are racialized as Black was fascinating to me,
and so trying to figure out, you know,
as they say when you get on a plane,
you need to put on your own mask before you put on the mask
to the person, your little person,
so I needed to figure out how to talk to my children
about what was happening in, through, around them.
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- So, yes, unfortunately, my sons are my subject.
[Harry and Angela laugh]
And, yes, they know way too much about race
than they really should.
- I mean, as long as they've given you informed consent,
it should be fine, right? - [laughs] Ah, yes.
- Angela: Okay. [Harry and Angela laugh]
And how would you like us to identify you, like, Harry?
- Oh, no, no, Harry's fine.
- Okay. - It's my American name, so yes.
- Angela: Okay, are you sure?
- It is on my birth certificate, so I just, yes, yeah.
- Okay. - Yes.
- Thank you for that, Harry.
Thank you both for sharing your stories with us.
And in terms of connecting to your research
that you mentioned, how do we become racialized,
especially the African immigrant experience.
How do you both identify when thinking about the categories
that are available to you
in this country and just broadly?
- I think growing up, I struggled,
and it's interesting because I feel like kind of the things
that you're speaking about, about your sons' experiences,
I see in my own experience
as a second-generation Somali American
that was born and raised in Madison.
I think my parents and I
would have very different answers
because they have a lived experience in Somalia.
They were immigrants.
They came here, whereas I was born here,
and I had never lived in Somalia before.
And so growing up, I had kind of a hard time figuring out
how to identify, especially when the boxes are so narrow.
There's so little choice that you have, and...
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- Especially in elementary school
and before middle school, I didn't wear a headscarf,
and so I was trying to figure out what I was.
Nobody really knew where Somalia was.
I knew that my skin was dark,
and so I was identified as Black because of that,
but I remember when I first put on my hijab in sixth grade,
any sort of semblance of Black identity
was taken away from me because people racialized me
within the Muslim context because Muslims
have a very racialized identity in the United States,
and so not a lot of people understand
that there's actually a very rich Islamic history
in the United States dating all the way back to the slave trade,
and so people have a very specific idea
of what a Muslim is, and so whenever they saw me
with my headscarf, they would ask me
if I was Indian or Lebanese, and I just...
Every time, it was a shock because I just saw my dark skin,
and I just thought that people would understand
that I was Black from there, so I think for a long time,
I couldn't really identify with Black culture or Black identity
because I just didn't have that lived experience,
and I think I tied myself to my Muslim identity,
and so I would just explain that I was Muslim
and didn't really have any sort of vocabulary
or knowledge on how to introduce myself racially.
And I think it went all the way up to,
I think, law school or even in undergrad.
I was a part of the PEOPLE program here in Madison,
and I think that was the first time that I was around
a much more diverse group of students that came
from all different areas, that were Black, that were African,
and so I had so many other people
that I could identify with, and so that started
kind of building my own racial identity,
and so I think that really formed the ability
to identify as Black on my own terms.
And I think throughout time, just even gaining
more knowledge individually about the Black experience
in the United States and how it isn't just one experience,
but also kind of paying homage to the Black experience
that I don't have direct ties to
just in terms of my immigrant experience with my family.
- And I appreciate what you're saying because part of,
I think, you know, Black identity is that,
is the ability to add on to it, so, you know,
with the Caribbeans coming into the U.S.
and, you know, what even reggae does
to what we think of as Black popular culture.
And even now, say, with Afrobeats,
like, you know, my sons
are listening to Afrobeats in certain ways.
They may not necessarily think, "Oh, yes.
This is now part of contemporary Black culture,"
but it is, and so there's a way
in which we are participating in its formation.
It's not a closed box. - Mm-hmm.
- However, you know, I think one of the things
that you're saying which makes it complicated
for, you know, the immigrant is that we also
don't have the cultural memory and history.
And so there are ways in which, then,
inasmuch as I would like to identify as Black,
my own son was quick to remind me not that long ago.
He's like, "No, Dad, you're African.
You're not Black," and I'm like, so what does that mean, exactly?
When people are looking at me,
it's not like they see me as African.
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- They see me as, you know, racialized as Black,
and so I think over time, for me,
that category has become more political than anything,
that I am politically Black because of my alignment
with what it means to be Black,
not just of the U.S., but of the world.
I have what I would consider home, Kenya, [chuckles]
and where I am not racialized as Black in Kenya,
and that, yes, if I am choosing to remain in the United States,
if I am choosing to be here at this moment, that, yes,
that I am Black.
At the same time, I am also considered African,
so I was never African until I came to the U.S.
because telling people, "Oh, I'm from Kenya,"
they're like, "What?" you know, "Yes,"
so I'm also African,
but at the core, I guess, of maybe my,
and I know we have intersectional thinking
and all of that,
at the core, I think, for me is that I am a Kikuyu man.
That's my ethnic group.
- Angela: Mm.
- So because ethnicity and gender, you know,
are primary to how we identify in Kenya.
And so part of the, my upbringing,
the lessons that I have,
the ways in which I see the world,
the ways in which I parent,
the ways in which I just function
are rooted in being this Kikuyu man,
and so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- No, I appreciate how both of you described
how you navigate both racial identity and ethnic identity
within your presence in America
and you, Naman, being Madisonian,
you acknowledge you were raised here,
so you're like, "This is, Madison is home."
And you, Harry, like, "I've been here for a while,
"so, you know, I have come to maybe in some ways
"become a part of the community and the culture here,
but still, this is who I am."
And for those who are curious and understanding,
like I said, what are you, which, let me just pause there.
Is that a rude question?
Like, do you appreciate when people are inquisitive
because they feel like, "There's something different,
"and I don't quite know how to ask,
but I want to know."
Like, what is the best way that you appreciate
people inquiring about your identity?
Or "Just don't ask me and just leave me alone."
Is that also an okay answer? [laughs]
- I think the way it's asked, like, "What are you?"
I think, would send me off.
I think it just would, it wouldn't be received well.
- Mm-hmm.
- I think, especially just wearing a hijab,
you get questions all the time.
I remember my first semester here at UW-Madison,
my lab partner just assumed that I didn't speak English,
and so he would just kind of gesture during lab
and, like, speak really slowly and stuff
and then eventually asked me, like,
in a way, like, "What are you?"
Instead of just, "Oh, like, where are you from?"
- Angela: Right. - Harry: Yeah.
- And I think, even for me, I struggled
because, obviously,
I'm, like, tied to my Somali heritage
through my parents, but if I went back to Somalia,
or went to Somalia for the first time,
I'd be labeled as American.
There's really nothing about-- My Somali is very broken.
I don't have the lived experience of living there,
and so I think I would get upset if people assumed
that I wasn't fluent in English
because I think it's the only identity
that I really had because English
was the language that I was most fluent in.
I was born and raised here.
Madison is where I grew up, and so that question,
that othering used to bother me a lot more when I was younger,
but then now I feel like if someone asks me
in a respectful tone, I'm fine with it,
but it is interesting because it does put you
in a position where you're othered,
and if you haven't become comfortable with being othered,
it really does kind of take you out of feeling
like you belong, especially if you're
a young child growing up in Madison
and you're the only person of color in your entire class
and you're trying to hold on to being just like everybody else.
I think that the older you get, you realize how identity
is so much more complicated and intersectional
than just what some, like, 10th grader
thinks of you in your class.
- For me, one of the issues, as you brought up
around it is about the question, the questioning.
- Angela: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- One of my favorite places to visit
is a monastery in Middleton,
and I love this place 'cause it's quiet
and I could just...
Having a day of solitude and silence,
it just fills me up,
and I remember being there not that long ago,
and this person, of course, decided to rudely interrupt
my quiet and peace by greeting me, and I said hi,
and I talked a little bit, and he's like,
"Oh, yes, I noticed you have an accent."
Which is fairly typical,
and the next question is, "So where are you from?"
And for a while, you know,
I would say things like, "Oh, I'm from Detroit,"
or, "I'm from L.A., I'm from--"
Like, "No, no, no, no, no, but where are you really from?"
And that question of where you're from
followed by, you know, this person ended up saying,
"Your English is so good," was fascinating to me
because it's not something that I've encountered once, twice.
It's a very regular occurrence, and I think part of how,
I'm gonna use a very big word that, you know,
might throw off some people.
Part of, you know, being part of empire,
so U.S. is empire, is not having to think of others
in relation to you, you know, like, as empire.
You know, you don't have to learn about anyone else.
- Angela: Right.
- Everyone else gets to learn about empire.
And so the assumption, then, that my English
has to be good does not take into account that,
you know, Kenya was a former colony where
we had to learn English so that we could be part of empire.
For the immigrant coming here, what is fascinating
is to encounter people who claim to speak English,
but their English is fascinating
because it's not textbook English,
which is what we grew up with. - Angela: Right.
- So, yes, so someone would say, "Oh, your English is so good."
Yes, because I say the word "yes" and not "yeah." [laughs]
- So your English is technically more accurate
than native English speakers.
I hear you, I'm not disagreeing.
- Much like going to the UK, where you discover
oh, these former colonizers
do not speak the English that they made us learn.
So language then becomes, you know, again,
another way of othering where it is,
you're always reminded that you're from somewhere else.
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- That when you encounter empire in its fullness,
that its job is to remind you that at some point,
you have to go back to where you came from.
And so that this can never be home, no matter how long,
and so it fascinates me.
I'll meet people who have lived in the U.S.,
you know, for 30, 40, 50 years, and they're always like,
"Yeah, someday I'll go back home to Ghana."
"I'll go back home to Nigeria."
I'm like, "Wait, when are you going?" [laughs]
Yeah, so, yeah,
so it is an interesting question in terms of what...
And I don't think there's a good way to ask that question
because what it's trying to get after is difference.
- Angela: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- That you're different, and, yeah,
so, no matter how, you know, we want to sugarcoat it
with our liberal logics and ideas.
It still gets at difference.
- Angela: Mm. - Yeah, yeah.
- Which, I think there's a way
people can ask or what's driving the inquiry around difference.
I think you can pick up on if it's coming from a place of,
"I perceive you as not belonging here,"
versus, like, a true curiosity,
or "There might be a connection here,
and I want to explore that further."
And I say that because being physically within Madison,
within the state of Wisconsin, the data suggests, right,
shows that just lumping us all under the Black category,
we are a small minority, relatively, within the state.
- Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm.
- Going to other states, other cities,
that's not the case, and so those questions
wouldn't necessarily emerge in the same way.
To me, it comes from a different place
that feels like, "Oh, where, are we,
is there a similarity, a connection here?"
Versus, "Wait a minute.
"You don't look like how the rest of us look.
Where are you from?"
And granted, I don't want to assume, right,
the intent behind people's questioning
because maybe there is a genuine curiosity
'cause that's just our human nature.
But I think there is something about the question
that can come across as negative,
and I appreciate you all sharing your experiences
'cause that can challenge those of us who ask those questions
to think about where is that question coming from
and how could it be framed differently
so as not to be off-putting to the person
that you're asking said question to,
so I appreciate that.
If we go back for a minute, what has that experience
been like for you in terms of engaging with the community
that the limited racial categories
suggest that you are a part of,
like navigating Black culture within L.A.,
within Madison, within Madison?
What has that been like?
And I do want to just add the disclaimer
that I am defaulting to the term "Black"
because I personally prefer that term over "African American."
I mean, everyone has their preferences.
I know some people feel differently
about "African American" versus "Black."
Black, to me, just denotes
a broader connection to the diaspora,
doesn't feel as limiting, so I like that.
And "African American" feels a little bit sanitized to me,
so I kind of push up against that,
but, again, to each his own, right?
But that's just the term I choose to use,
and however you all would like to use that terminology,
feel free, but how have you navigated
that space of connecting with the culture that others
believe you are a part of just because of your skin tone?
- I think it's a good question.
You know, as I said early on, I think part of the challenge
is recognizing that my cultural memory and history
is much shorter in terms of being in the U.S.
So part of the reason for that, again, as I said, you know,
in coming to grad school was to be able
to understand myself better and my sons better
and so, or to help them, again, you know, have the tools
to navigate what it means for them to be Black
because they're born and raised in the U.S.
And so Africa for them is only in relation to their dad,
and whether they choose to pick it up or not,
you know, that's up to them.
But I remember, I was sharing early on, being in L.A.,
and I came across these two Black young men.
I had only been in L.A. for about a month,
and I remember these two guys speaking.
They're clearly talking to me,
but I had no clue what they were saying.
And, you know, it went back and forth where I'm like, "Huh?"
I have no idea what is happening,
and at some point, they're like,
"I guess you're not understanding
what is happening," and so they walked away.
And there are ways I like to think of that moment
as an invitation into Blackness,
and at the same time, Blackness becomes taken away from me
because I am not, I don't understand what is happening.
And I think that moment
comes to play out in different ways in my life
living in the U.S. in that my immigration
usually is always at the forefront
of how I navigate my Blackness.
What I am both thought of
or someone is suggesting that I am
or that I am part of a history and a genealogy,
and at the same time, for me, I know where home is.
It is Kenya, and so my primary being in the U.S.
is much more of an immigrant
and a global Blackness in that sense.
And so solidarity, for me, then becomes very important
in saying, I may not understand necessarily
what your journey is like as a Black American
because I am an immigrant.
At the same time, because I am racialized
in the same ways that you are racialized,
that I can stand in solidarity against, you know,
white supremacy that seems to, you know, come down on us
wherever it is that we're coming from.
- Mm-hmm.
- In the same way that, you know,
my Black American brother, sister cannot understand
what it means to be an African immigrant
because Africa within a Western consciousness
will always be one of negation.
Africa will always be, you know, the place with,
you know, the continent with, or even the country,
as one American president said, [Angela laughs]
the continent with, you know, wars, with famine,
with disease, or exotic, you know.
It's this place of, you know, animals,
and so there's absolutely no way for someone to understand
this position of Africa much in the same way.
And one of the reasons why I do notice
that a lot of African immigrants will end up being friends
with other immigrants from other countries is because we do,
there's a way this, you know, migration
allows us to be able to empathize
and sympathize with each other.
We know what it means to be asked, you know,
about how we speak, how we dress, the foods we make,
those kinds of, or even the suggestion
that, you know, we can go back to wherever we come from.
- Right.
- So there's a sort of a tension that then exists,
and it's a tension because it's hard to unravel it.
There's something that is happening
on the African continent now.
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- That is unique, that is beautiful, that's whole,
that is, yeah.
- Stay tuned. - Harry: Stay tuned. [laughs]
- Thank you both so much.
I appreciate your time tonight.
- Yeah, yeah, thank you. - Thank you.
- "Black," "African American,"
these words carry more than definitions.
They hold stories, history, and the power of identity.
Tonight, we've explored what they mean and why they matter,
but the conversation doesn't end here.
It's a journey of understanding, growth, and connection
because identity is more than labels.
It can be a bridge to who we truly are.
Watch additional episodes and content
at WhyRaceMatters.org.
[bright music]
- Announcer: Funding for Why Race Matters
is provided by Park Bank,
UnityPoint Health Meriter,
UW Health,
donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.