To Live In Limbo.

African Overcompensation and Performance.

A picture at a Black Panther: Wakanda Forever screening.

Often times, conversation as it pertains to the long term effects of colonialism on the African population focuses on the material effects such as the (lack of) wealth in African nations due to the exploitation of natural resources as well as the warfare that mars the legacy of many nations in Africa which has it roots in colonial practice. And this of course, is by no means an invalid thing to analyse when we talk about colonialism and its lasting impact. But one thing I find is often left out of not only conversation, but even fields of study at the levels of higher academia are the generational psychological effects colonialism has had on African people across the diaspora. More specifically in this case, our conceptions of identity and what it means to be children of our respective nation states as well as the Western states we reside, specifically Britain in my case. 

Identity comes in threes

To get to my main point however, first we must understand what identity is as a concept. When faced with the question of the meaning of identity, most people will instinctually respond with something along the lines of ‘it’s who you are’. Which, strictly speaking, is perfectly valid. However, exactly what it means to be who you are is not illuminated in the phrase we have become so attached to. Erving Goffman’s (1963) theory is that there are three different classifications of identity; personal, social, and ego. Personal identity is defined as the unique characteristics that every individual possesses that makes us different people, stemming from our socialisation, company and personal beliefs. Social identity is in essence the role we play when in public settings, the sum of what we purposefully do/omit when in the midst of people and how those actions are interpreted. And finally, the ego identity is what one believes themselves to be. Robin Williams (2000) writes that the defining trait of the ego identity is “…the capacity of individuals to choose amongst a set of available attributes, and a concern with the coherence and consistency discernible within the variety of chacterisations accepted by individuals to be true of themselves independent of time and location.” Goffman’s theory of identity classifications is not the sole interpretation of identity but it will be the framework which I use to analyse how Africans in the diaspora see themselves and each other because it allows scope for the nuance in existence that often times, academic writing does not hone in on as it pertains to the African and Black experience at large. 

Blackness as identity

If we are to take the aforementioned theory of identity as truth, then it’s to be said that this is not a truth that applies in the same way to those who are Black and by extension African. That isn’t to say that black people don’t have a personal identity or attributes that they deem to be true of themselves. But moreso, when it comes to social identity, specifically the role in which we choose to play in social settings, to be melanated in the West is to have a role defined for you. As I’ve briefly posited in my previous work about blackness and spectacle, Afropessimism is a critical lens founded on the principle that to be black is to be regarded as something other than human wholly. And in the case of black people who find themselves in social settings surrounded by people who are not black, more often than some would like to admit, your blackness is used as the only measure for who you are as a person. 

Take for instance, the white woman walking alone at any time of day who crosses the street clutching their purse when they run into a black man. It goes without saying that the actual appearance of the man in question does not factor into the invocation of fear that the woman naturally feels. Rather, it’s almost a reflex reaction to their sight of blackness because of their preconceived notions about the inherent dangers black men engender because of their blackness. In other words, it’s not a reaction to a dangerous person who happens to be black, but it is a reaction based on the perceived danger that being black represents for them due to centuries of conditioning. 

Black Self Awareness

To be black in the West, is to be cognizant that this interpretation of your blackness is made for you without consent from childhood, and it literally becomes something that threatens your life. Where white mothers-to-be in labour are rightly perceived as women in their most vulnerable state and needing extra care and attention, their black counterparts are four times more likely to die during labour due to the unconscious biases that medical professionals hold (MBRRACE, 2021). The aforementioned biases in question, have their roots in pseudoscience peddled en masse during the Transatlantic slave trade that posited that black people have high thresholds of pain and therefore do not need as much medical care as their white counterparts.

As W.E.B. Dubois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the result of being cognizant of the racial discrimination ever present in Western states is black people developing a second self that is adjacent to the self they truly are. That is to say, black people also perceive themselves through the lens of racial prejudice because to be able to navigate this existence, knowledge is key. As you can imagine, this conundrum of existence elicits a wide spectrum of what can only be described as psychological readjustments from Black people across the diaspora, ranging from at (ultimately futile) attempts at rejecting Blackness in a bid to assimilate to outright resistance of white supremacy. Many, many of my predecessors have written about those that reject their Blackness through their performance of social identity, Frantz Fanon coming to mind with his work on the psychological effects of colonialism. But the other extreme of the spectrum, especially in the case of the African, is where the next section of this musing takes us.

To revisit Goffman’s conceptualisation of social identity, it’s the role you choose to play in public settings. I believe it goes without saying that what you believe about other people as well as yourself at your core affects who you choose to be in public. But what happens when you are aware that the ideals and stigmas disseminated under white supremacy are actively working against you embracing your identity, and you fight it? Well, you may get what can only be characterised as, overcompensation. 

Oversabi

Oxford Languages has the definition of overcompensation as ‘taking excessive measures in an attempt to correct or make amends for an error, weakness, or problem.’ In this context, the overcompensation comes in the form of excessively leaning into a performance of what the black person in question thinks constitutes behaviour that exudes a pride for their ethnicity, to remedy the reality that Western states are in plain words antithetical to your very existence. In the case of the African brought up in the West this presents in many, many different ways. If you were old enough to remember the premiere of Black Panther (2018), you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Donning dashikis to the cinema, the fusion of dialects to make one homogeneous ‘African accent’, impromptu mobs of people raising their fist up or doing the Shaku Shaku. In retrospect, it sounds like a fever dream.

But even in recognising the comedic value that this phenomenon presents, this isn’t an article I wrote with the aim of poking fun at or admonishing those that find themselves overcompensating. Because ultimately, it’s closer to a reflex response to the psychological suppression that comes with being African in the West than something done with real calculated intention. So therefore, I sympathise.

As far as living in Black Britain goes specifically, the conceptions of African pride and being in this present moment are Nkrumah-like compared to what they were even 15 years ago. While speaking about this very topic with a friend a few days ago, they argued that the change came with the acute rise in African representation and stories in film, music, television and social media specifically, allowing for people to see something other than the watered down images taught to us in the curriculum during the time we are in mandatory education. 

However, even though I’d like to believe the overcompensation in the performance of being African is done (mostly) without the intention of any harm, the sociologist in me recognises with painstaking clarity that this doesn’t mean it’s a victimless act. As far as the rise in African representation has been, there have been more than a few people who have broken through to the mainstream specifically because of their overcompensation. They present to white audiences a hamfisted representation of their ethnicity, the nuance in their culture and identity sanded down in order to play into age-old tropes of Africans being inherently simple and primitive for comedic value.

Even in seemingly innocuous settings like interviews on a press run, you may very well see an African creative imitate their parents using a bastardisation of their accent to exaggerate the apparent humour in whatever story is being told. The constant sanding down of nuance and history in the commodification of African identity for the consumption of every non-African produces similar effects as when Africans had absolutely no say in the images produced about us. That being the case, it’s hard to not feel like it’s a catch 22. 

But for once, I do write this with hope. Seeing the next generation growing up with images of Africans existing outside of the violent and brutal conditions that permeate throughout the diaspora not being alien to them is incredible and cause for celebration. But in our elation that things are different, we should never mistake that for a running start, but rather, one tentative step forward in the marathon that is the bettering of black condition across the diaspora. Because, even though the last two decades contain leaps and bounds as it pertains to African representation, our material reality should never ever fall to the wayside. Because what does an African in Hollywood mean to the Africans in the mainland living to die?

References

Dubois, W.E.B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, A.C. McClurg and Co.

Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

MBRRACE, 2021. Saving Lives, Improving Mother’s Care (Lay Summary)

Williams, Robin. 2000. Making Identity Matter: Identity, Society and Social Interaction. Durham, UK: Sociologypress.