As a student and scholar of literature and cultural studies, we have the privilege of projecting almost the obvious things in everyday life to the rigour of critical thinking. This is what our discipline demands of us and relies on for its survival. We are essentialists. We observe first and then probe the familiar with an increased degree of doubt; in this way, we can see things differently, while refreshing existing cultural and literary debates. This is why I love my chosen disciplines. They allow us to stretch, or even overstretch, in the thought process. They encourage us to expound on and express our subjective realities confidently.

Probably, you think that I am here to drum up support for my discipline, aiming to recruit new followers. That is not my objective. If I describe the workings and nature of literature and cultural studies and the traits of those within, it is mainly to help you understand the way we think and to justify why I tend to take controversial stances, including this one that I will henceforth share. I watched a controversial clip on Twitter. Short as it is, this clip erupted like a volcano with different comments on the essentialism of ‘African American’ as an imagined ethnic community in the United States. The question that emanates from this clip, if you care to watch it, is: ‘Who is an African-American?’ Is it an ethnic description? Who belongs to this group? Are they bound by race, geography, common ancestry, or shared history?

Perhaps I should offer a synopsis of the clip in order to put into context what I am about to say. The video, whose origin I am not sure of (some comments say it is a scene from a documentary, Survivor Australia), features a conversation between two women. One of them is a white South African woman, while the other is an African American woman from North Carolina (I have italicized ‘African’ and made them in bold for emphasis of my thesis). The white South African woman, despite being white, makes a bold and courageous claim.

The African American explains to the white South African woman where North Carolina is, and this seems to irk the latter. The white South African woman tells the African American woman, ‘Because I live there half the time, I don’t need you to explain it like I’m an idiot... I work in the US all the time.’ Her statement, and definitely her assertive attitude, surprises others. The white South African woman proceeds to launch the atomic bomb. ‘I’m more African American than you are; you need to understand that.’ The African American snugs in doubt, 'mmm.'' To assert that she means what she says, the white South African woman launches her reinforcement, ‘Because I am from Africa.’

As you ponder over the perplexity of the conversation above, I need you to also consider that the white South African woman, in her assertion and claim to be 'more African American’ than African Americans, has successfully challenged the definition and understanding of this population. In a revisionist approach, she has tasked us to interrogate what it really means to be ‘African American,’ and essentially what it implies to be ‘African.’ This conversation reminds me of a similar one I had with a white South African male in Marburg, Essen, Germany, where I was enrolled in a German language course.

I was passionately explaining the scope of my then proposed doctoral dissertation to him when he asked me a question that I had never considered before: ‘What is your definition of “African,” and does it include people like me, white Caucasians, because I am from South Africa?’ Like most scholars and nearly everyone, I had narrow-mindedly conceptualized ‘African’ to mean ‘blackness,’ and this is despite the fact that my dissertation relied on primary texts (novels) from Sub-Saharan Africa, of which South Africa is a part. It is also important to know that one of the texts, The Maestro, the Magistrate & The Mathematician by Tendai Huchu, narrates the diasporic experiences of three Zimbabweans in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the Maestro is a white Zimbabwean, asserting the racial and ethnic diversity of this southern African country.

The African American was perplexed and shocked because her definition of ‘African American’ rests on a shared history of servitude and plantation economy, or the Middle Passage. She takes no consideration of the fact that the millions of Africans that crossed the Black Atlantic were from different nations, ethnic communities, and regions of the continent. Indeed, anthropological research and quests have traced the roots of some of the ‘African Americans’ to specific but...

In light of these historical facts, ‘African American’ as an ethnic community is as elusive as it sounds. To further stretch it to include black people in the United States would further loosen its meaning, since a significant number of ‘African Americans’ (descendants of slaves) have found it problematic to be defined as ‘African’ without the hyphenation of difference and privilege, -American. The white South African’s claim of being ‘African’ is laid on the geography of her birthplace and the time spent in Azania during her formative years. In her view, to be ‘African’ is to be born there and to have lived there as well for a significant amount of time. The question that emanates is this: would she proudly refer to herself as ‘African’ without the prefix ‘South’ on it? Your guess could even be better than mine.

Still, she raises an important point. If she is ‘South African’ and has lived in America, bearing her ‘African’ identification within it, she is right to lay claim on herself as ‘African.’