Through the eyes of a Rasta Jock

2020 was going to be the year I pursued the exploration of part of my cultural heritage and existence. I remember saying to my Dad that I was ‘going home to hang out with my people’. Africa the mother land that I had never experienced, considering my father was Ghanaian, we had never visited Ghana as a family, so it meant a lot to me to be spending my summer vacation working at a female Empowerment program in Kokrobite just outside Accra, the city in which my father was born. Most importantly about my trip to Ghana was the region in which I was staying was home to the Ga people, now a not so popular lingual and one I am not versed in. The meaning behind spending time with quite literally my father’s tribal people was the completion of a part of me that was seeking to be filled.

Yet if it were not for the global pandemic I would not be writing this blog and new doors would not be opening up for me by starting a blog through the eyes of a Black Scottish Afro Caribbean female. Not to mention the brutal, painful and uncomfortable awareness of the discussion of systemic and institutionalised racism makes this, I supposed a more poignant time to be creating this blog entry. As before all the development of global social unrest and fear,  my feeling as a Scottish black female was that, I just wanted to be a female with no colour attached. I wanted to be Karen not ‘Black Karen’ or ‘Karen with dreads’, just Karen, and I was hoping to feel the normalisation of being around people that looked and had similar traits as me. Some might think as they read this, why have you not already been back to Ghana, well it just did not happen. I had a greater connection with the Caribbean side of my heritage from my mum but unfortunately not from my dad’s side.

My mother being Trinidadian had integrated my brother and myself into the Caribbean way of life at a very early age, but there was always something amiss, as we were not fully Caribbean. For those of you who do not know there has always been strange rivalry and discourse between Africans and the Caribbean’s. Why I do not know because many Caribbean’s were slaves from West Africa, so therefore of African heritage and decent. So I have felt like a ship lost a sea not fully feeling a proper member but more an orphan taken in to the fold. My heart was crying out for Africa, more so than ever before as my soul strives for me to feel black as opposed to be black

Living in Scotland

Scotland is the place of my birth and that is all it really is. Do I feel Scottish? Is a question I ask myself regularly? Now that I am older I feel less Scottish than I did when I was younger. What does it mean for a black person born in Scotland to be and feel Scottish? I was out with an acquaintance of mine and she asked me  “What does it feel like in this day and age to be the only black person in a night club?” What first came to my mind was I could not be arsed answering that question. As what it really brought up was that in a city such as Glasgow, my home, I was still an obvious minority, although indigenous, I could not be bothered being reminded of my minority status. It is important to understand the meaning of indigenous, which is originating or occurring naturally in a particular place. Thus meaning I am equally as Scottish as my Caucashian counter parts, but just a different colour.

It is has to be remembered that we all belong to the one race and very few of us are true natives of the land in which we reside. So why does colour play such a large part in my existence as a Black Scottish Afro Caribbean female?