My Dual Heritage: Growing up as an African and Caribbean Girl

By: Jasmine Lee-Zogbessou

As a young black woman, identity and culture are very important to me. All my life, a West African father and a Jamaican mother have raised me and I grew up without feeling odd or like I didn’t fit in, until I started college and became more socially aware.

Most days I would wake up to mom’s Jamaican cooking and my dad’s Togolese music blasting through his stereos, so I was constantly surrounded by both cultures equally. I’m not trying to act like Africans and Caribbean’s are some different race and completely alien to one another but now that I’m older, I have realized that there are those within the black community who constantly distance us as a people.

After someone would ask me where I’m from ethnically and I’d respond with “Togo and Jamaica”, I would often be asked which side I ‘prefer’ or associate myself with more – an African girl or a Caribbean girl. Why can’t I be allowed to equally accept both parts of myself? If I was more in tune with my Jamaican heritage, I was faced with having to be ‘more African’ and these aren’t things that any black person, let alone black women should face.

Whatever surrounds me, in terms of whether I’m at an African hall party or a Jamaican party, leads me to adapt. Therefore, I’m able to engage in a way that my surroundings see fit, as I don’t simply identify with one part of myself.

There were times where I’d feel like I was having a slight identity crisis as a young black woman. Although these times were few and far between, they were still existent. Social media doesn’t help when we’re constantly surrounded by the stupid ‘African Vs. Caribbean’ debate. From my perspective the majority of the issue seems to come from negative interpretations of Jamaicans in particular. So we’re supposed to be rowdy, loud, weed smokers, violent and overly sexual.

Those are the common stereotypes. Oh and we don’t know our dads apparently. That one’s always the butt of the ‘jokes’. I’ve even had a person I know try and bring up statistics in order to justify his argument. So and so amount of Jamaican households don’t have fathers etc. but I’m not one for always relying on the quantitative side of an argument as everyone has different and personal experiences.

I find that people love to make ignorant comments without actually experiencing what they’re commenting on. I recall times when I would mention Jamaica being this beautiful paradise and people who have never even set foot in the country or maybe even met that many Jamaicans, would still have something negative to say.

I have also had people make remarks around me like, ‘Oh I forget that you’re African’, if they say something in their language that that a majority of Africans can usually understand/relate to and I’m able to react to it, or if I show just a tiny hint of anger or annoyance, then I sometimes get ‘that’s your Jamaican side showing.’ Of course I can take a joke, but it gets boring constantly hearing it.

It’s important not to divide us as a race. I feel like there are aspects of division already at times – between black men and black women and between dark-skinned women and light-skinned women. Ignorant people will usually debate what’s ‘better’ when it comes to the latter, often completely forgetting that whether she’s dark-skinned, brown-skinned or light-skinned, she’s still a black woman. The same thing applies to whether she’s African or Caribbean; it doesn’t matter because she’s still a black woman.

Division is the worst thing you can do amongst your own race. The black community really needs to understand this; otherwise we’re no better than the racists of this world who have already tried to divide us.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being judged for acting a certain way but as I mentioned earlier, adaptation is something that I constantly do. Therefore, speaking a little Patois or whining to Soca and dancehall music doesn’t make me any less Togolese, anymore than learning my dad’s language (the official language of Togo is French but my family speak French and Mina over there) or cooking his food makes me less Jamaican.

We are all one people and we are all black – whether it’s black African, black Caribbean or both.