I am African. I am American.
Nigeria made me, Black America raised me.
My roots dig deep in Nigerian soil, while America has nourished my branches for more than two decades. Yet, the fruit I bear holds the essence of both lands. Like a tree nurtured by two suns, my identity defies simple categorization. It’s a unique blend—a testament to the richness of embracing intertwined belonging.
I belong to the Édo people.
That’s one of the hundreds of vibrant tribes that make up the rich mosaic of Nigeria. Though we share similar features, our identities are deeply infused by our ethnicity, dialects, and unique tribal customs. Our belief systems—Christianity, Islam, and other traditional religions—coexist, shaping our perspectives and enriching our communities. And while colorism permeates, the concept of race, as understood elsewhere, simply doesn’t hold the same weight.
Yet in the United States, my identity has been defined by this uniquely American construct of race. Those physical characteristics of skin color, hair, facial features are prominent. My tribe holds no value. Despite this flawed framework, I’ve since come to wholly embody “Nigerian American.” I favor that designation because it pays homage to the two distinct individualities that make me, me.
For years though, those two identities felt at odds, at once fraught yet covetous of each other. As though pledging allegiance to one meant disregard for the other. Throughout, I never understood nor appreciated my American Blackness the way I could have. A surrogate one, yes, but still, there’s a belonging there I neglected.
For Black immigrants—I’d assume this is true for most immigrants—our identity in America of just being Black, without a sense of a cultural home within that identity, presents myriad confusions.
In Nigeria, I’m not a Black girl.
I’m not a Black anything.
I am my mother’s last-born child and only daughter from Benin City, in the southern region of Nigeria, just 250 miles south of the country’s capital city of Abuja.
I am the granddaughter of an unlettered woman who rose to run a small business as a local Guinness and Coca-Cola distributor.
I am not this color America relegated me to.
This is what I have struggled with all these years: Having one foot in and out of America’s definition of who I am. Having one foot in and out of the many groups I find myself in, constantly toggling between three worlds: Black America, white America, and my Nigerian culture. Contending with this skin so problematic in America—skin that in Nigeria is synonymous with endless striving and a pursuit of excellence. I come from a history full of it.
The stories our ancestors passed down to us were of kings and queens, colonization be damned. Stories of flourishing in gold and oil and gemstones. Academically and professionally, the grind for achievement was instilled in us because everyone strives for the same caliber of accomplishment. To go from a country full of this to one stripped of it for racially Black people doesn’t quench our thirst for success.
Many foreigners to America see what feels innate to the native.
That newness breeds prospect and appreciation. Immigrants gravitate toward the idea that America carries out a true democracy. Though a marred one, it is better than none or fascism.
Like many immigrants, Mom came to this country in 1992 wide-eyed and gazed upon its endless feast of opportunities and upward mobility, concluding that America provides for those who work hard. Fleeing from a corrupt government with lawlessness and instability, she quickly adopted this nation as a means of survival. And for some time, it all seemed so simple.
When my brothers and I joined Mom in the South Bronx in 1995, her vision of America became ours too. She charged us with representing our heritage exceptionally well. There’s a Nigerian saying in our Pidgin English: “Naija no dey carry last,” which means Nigerians should never come in last place. That was Mom’s core message to us: persevere and succeed. Race, racism, and the like were never discussed; they were never factors in our quest of American success. Our goal was to be ambitious and unwavering in our pursuit, even if it meant inadvertently ignoring America’s complex history.
By coming to America, we unknowingly became part of the Black American community. Though racially similar, there were deeply rooted differences between them and us. It’s those generational and lived experiences that have long divided us. Their history of brutal oppression is one we, Black immigrants, don’t have and one I didn’t understand. It remains the wedge and genesis of tensions between Black Americans and Black immigrants. For the Black American, there’s the endless fight to be equal to whites politically and economically, and for the Black immigrant, there’s the romanticized view of America as a place of limitless opportunities. The latter was why Mom instilled in my brothers and me that America only rewards those who keep forging ahead, even when it hurts or doesn’t make sense or when peace is lacking. We were taught to fight for what we knew we were capable of.
These reflections of identity and belonging swirled in my head as I grew up, but I never seriously interrogated them because since arriving in this country, my family has been in survival mode. From the South Bronx to the North Bronx, Mom working multiple jobs to keep us together, to assimilation woes and wails, there wasn’t time to mine this all-important part of my life beyond split-moment introspections.
And I certainly never expected to write a book about race relations as they relate to young Black activists and their significant political and cultural impact on American democracy. But fate led me here.
It began on May 25, 2020.
That’s the day George Floyd, a Black man, took his final breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. That Memorial Day also happened to be five days after I graduated from Columbia University with my master’s in journalism.
It’s a day I can never forget. And no, a Black man being senselessly murdered at the hands of police wasn’t new. I understood that policing is rooted in white supremacy. I know that. We all know that. But the savageness of George Floyd’s murder shook me in ways I could’ve never imagined. Seeing his lifeless body lying there from the glow of my phone in the dark of night, I came undone. Secondhand trauma is what experts call it.
As I listened to George Floyd beg the officers to let him breathe, my head churned with so many sentiments. Mostly that he could be any one of my four brothers. The most haunting thought was: This is happening in the same America I had loved unconditionally, blindly even, since arriving as a little girl.
The same America that had pulled Mom from obscurity. America had hand-selected her because of her brilliance and excellence. She was a beneficiary of the Immigration Act of 1990. Prior iterations excluded people like her. That particular round of admission allowed her onto American shores because she was a highly skilled registered nurse.
The same America that Mom boasted with pride about when she got green cards for my family in 1995, and naturalized citizenships for most of us a few years later.
I struggled to understand how this was the same country that provided Mom with everything she needed to jump-start her version of the American dream: stable income, food, shelter, and ongoing job training. She even had good insurance, the kind for government employees. Those basic things that people who looked like her, who were born in the same country she now lived in, struggled to attain regularly so they too could enjoy the same experiences Mom came to revel in.
But it was.
That Monday in May, it became glaring that Mom’s mandate to us wasn’t enough for people who looked like us in real America. It dawned on me that her idealized version of America didn’t exist.
I remember the viral video so vividly: George Floyd’s limp body, hands shackled behind him, the black tank, the white foam oozing from his mouth, being wheeled into that ambulance. Watching it, I couldn’t place the emotions I felt. So, I did what I could do within my reach and jolted into action. I felt I had a license to do so with my newly minted journalism degree. I thought, Why not use my voice to process and dredge this moment?
I wrote a reported essay titled “George Floyd Could’ve Been My Brother” for ELLE.
In 2005, my eldest brother was unjustly stopped, frisked, and arrested while attending a predominantly white New York college in Plattsburgh—a town with a 90 percent white population. Mom didn’t sleep for months, thinking about her baby boy locked in a cell. We were broke, broke. No fancy lawyers were going to come to our rescue. And soon enough, my brother, a green card holder, was deported. In the chaos of the moment, and not knowing what we didn’t know, Mom was simply happy that he was free in Nigeria. She never pursued the case any further. She couldn’t even if she wanted to—she had exhausted all her financial options working on his bail and attempting to find a private lawyer. In defeat, Mom kept her head down and persevered as she had always done—we all did.
Fast forward to that day in 2020, watching George Floyd gasp, struggle, and cry. I saw my brother.
My brother could have easily become another statistic. The kind that doesn’t make it home. The kind that too many mothers have had to prematurely bury. That America felt new—unrecognizable—to me. The wool was finally being pulled from my eyes.
That notion pressed on me more and more as I contended with George Floyd’s death. What if my brother hadn’t survived his police encounter? What then? Would Mom have been forced to stand in front of flashing cameras and elongated microphones, seeking justice and accountability? How would she have carried on?
Armed with a new sense of purpose, and that new license, I was emboldened to excavate the truths of our world. I felt compelled, more than ever, to explore race relations in America.
So, insecure and in my feelings—conflicted, ashamed, anxious—with one backpack and an oversized MZ Wallace handbag, I took to the road on Sept. 12, 2020.
Using one of the awards I received at graduation, the Pulitzer Prize Traveling Fellowship, I funded my travel to 30 states in 32 days.
I traveled by plane and car. I used four rental cars.
Traveled 13,559 miles.
Twenty-three gas station stops.
Sixteen hotels and one bed-and-breakfast in Stuart, Nebraska. I drove a black Buick Encore, a red Mini Cooper Countryman, a blue Hyundai Venue, and a black Kia Forte.
I met and spoke with 127 people.
My pilgrimage for understanding my Blackness began to come into complete focus. One stop, in particular, completely seized me. In Portland, I attended my first-ever protest, completely led by Black teens. It was mesmerizing, watching them stomp, scream, and cry for the America they hoped for. George Floyd’s murder had revived these youth-led galvanizations across the globe. The likes of which we hadn’t seen before. The likes of yesteryear, when the longing for elemental human rights was palpable.
The young ones I met that day had a different American experience than those of prior decades. They’d grown up in the 21st century, when roughly 10,000 people of color have had fatal encounters with police officers. The majority of them, Black men. And George Floyd’s murder was the latest seismic one of this era.
It is no question that 2020 saw the Lazarus of social justice movements led by Black young people across America. We can’t forget that the viral video that catapulted the world into a monumental movement, leading to unprecedented accountability for the officer who killed George Floyd, was brazenly filmed by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier.
But, for me, 2020 also illuminated the underappreciated role of Black youth in sociopolitical organizing throughout history.
The mere fact that I can have my voice heard, dream beyond my zip code and circumstances, and walk down the streets of America free is because of them. Those who fearlessly stepped out and dared to scream for righteousness, dared to be seen, dared to covet an America that lived up to the expectations of forming a more “perfect union, establish[ing] justice, insur[ing] domestic tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defense, promot[ing] the general welfare, and secur[ing] the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”—all the promises for “We the People.”
It is because of them that I am who I am in America. It is because of them that I can be who I want to be in this land of plenty.
Adapted from RESIST: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America by Rita Omokha, St. Martin’s Press, On sale: November 19, 2024.
