American Black

I worked at Starbucks and I often went to the drugstore across the atrium in the large office building where the coffee shop was. The Indian couple who owned the shop was always friendly. One day, the husband asked me where I was from. I said from here, which was Cleveland. He insisted that there was something different. He asked if both my parents were American and then I told him that my father was from Sierra Leone. He seemed pleased and said he knew I was different. I was somehow validated because I wasn’t just an “American Black”. I was though, because I born and raised in the States and my father was deported when I was two. The gentleman asked me if I wanted a part-time job, but I had to turn him down because I was already working about 35 hours a week at Starbucks.

I had forgotten about this incident until almost ten years later. An Italian gentleman who came in the coffee shop where I had recently started working, referred to people by nationality. It was “Hi, Filipina!” to one of my coworkers and “Hey, Français” to another coworker. They referred to him as “Italiano”.

When I first started working there, I got the nationality questions. My mother is American, my father is from Sierra Leone. He only heard Sierra Leone and he started to refer to me as “Africa”.

One afternoon, we chatted for a few minutes as I waited in line for the hot dog vendor. Italiano proceeded to tell me how I was different and how American Blacks were stupid. I corrected him and said that I was American and it was only my father was from Sierra Leone and he had been there since I was a toddler. He then changed things and said that he didn’t like most Americans, but again I was different, I looked different, sounded different. (I didn’t fit his stereotype of a Black person.) From then on, he referred to me by my name or just as “Beautiful”, but not Africa.