Identify Crisis

Tell me, are you ashamed of who you truly are?
Why do most people go at all lengths to hide their true selves from people and live a fake or a false life instead. Why??

One of my students, while we were in class talking about The Black Culture and Identify Crisis told me something very disturbing and worrying.
K (as she affectionately calls me all the time), my footballer boyfriend has a team mate who is black, with a skin complexion darker than charcoal. Yet this guy refuses to call himself a black person. He has been seeing himself mentally as a white person for a long time.

What's more interesting is that he has been dating white women, with his current girlfriend being white too. He holds the view that black women are beneath his standard.
In the eyes of the white man, the blackman will always be beneath him.
A slave most likely.

These assumptions among others makes this black Brazilian footballer very ashamed to everyone and himself, that he is black.

Sadly, many of us are like that football player. We are often afraid to reveal our true identify (who we are)to the outside world and the social media world we have built.

A few years ago, while having a conversation with one of my classmates from school who now lives in the US, he said Kwame, I will not be comfortable sending my children to the same school we came out from as boys because I'm ashamed of that. I sometimes disassociate myself mentally from the fact that I went to that school. So I work my ass off everyday so my kids can go to a prestigious school, than the one you and I came out of.
I agreed with him then in those years, but in 2019, when I was invited by the organisers of the National Science and Maths Quiz to have a mentorship talk session with the high school kids it got live coverage on Joy TV and GTV nationwide.
I got a call from Kumasi, from my two favorite aunties in the world, one sells onions at the Kumasi Market and the other sells Waakye (she recently passed away this May). Eeeiii Kwame, we've just seen you on TV... we didn't understand what we were talking about on that TV screen because you know very well we don't speak a word of English. But we just want to say we are very proud of you baby boy. Aww praise God, our little boy is on TV. May God be with you always.
They both fed me and my brothers, sewed our torn school uniforms at 2 am , prepared breakfast and lunch, put food in our lunch boxes for us at 4 am sometimes before heading to the market to start their market sales as all market women did.
Perhaps to myself I only thought I was speaking English and giving a fancy presentation to high school kids, but to these my two adorable aunties, seeing me live on National TV on that day meant they had done something right with us kids at least. This really was a proud moment for them.
I can never betray where I came from (the hoods of Dichemso in Kumasi) just because I speak fancy English and have runs in high Ghanaian society. I came from these beautiful people, women who didn't have the opportunity to go to school or have an education because their fathers and uncles in those times thought a woman's place is in the kitchen and making babies and not in the classroom.
For the men, work on cocoa farms to support family. Education is a fancy option for you when you have cocoa farms to work on.
These people, my parents, my aunties and uncles worked their socks off so we can get the best education we have today.
I've been on the back of my mother as an 8 year old boy in Hamburg Germany as she worked day and night scrubbing floors and taking care of babies and sick people without rest sometimes honestly.
I have accompanied my dad on trains to work two to 3 different jobs in Germany..
They gave us the best of everything. We had heaven on earth from their tireless hustle and sweat.
Why should I now refuse to acknowledge anything they all did because they can't wear tuxedo or can't walk majestically in a public.
They are still mine and I'm stupidly proud of all of them. I'm a proud "agyaba" until my last breath.
What about you? Why are you running from who you really are to embrace something you are really not? Tell me why?
Social media has become an enabler which has made us millennials live a fake life to please and impress people who don't give a rats ass about our lives really.
Who is really hurting us millennials huh??
No wonder we have become selfish, self centered and discontented with everything in life.
We have ourselves to blame because we cannot fake ourselves from the real people who know us. Let's own up to who we really are to stop the constant pressure and depression running around our lives daily.

I'll say this finally;
Don't be fooled by the rocks and diamonds I have on
I'm still Kwame from the streets and the hood polished into high class society.
Why?? Because I still know and appreciate where I came from.
(Carved out from the lyrics of a Jennifer Lopez song in 2003: "Jenny from the Block")

Kwame Sarpong
Freelance Writer
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