A WORD ON Assimilation

FEBRUARY 2021

I hail from Zimbabwe. I immigrated to the US at the age of seven by way of the UK.(Zimbabwe was colonized by the British; as such, a large contingent of my family is there.)

Moving to the US with a British accent (R.I.P) and wanting to assimilate to a new culture was something I didn’t reconcile until I got a little older. 

 When I came here, my identity was Black—but because I had an accent, there was a clear distinction that I wasn’t African American. I wanted to not be the child with the accent that stuck out; I wanted to fit in. What followed was a young adulthood punctuated by learning rap lyrics and eschewing the parts of me that were “other” within America, in order to embody the version of Black that was widely accepted.

Then college hit and my own awareness of racial politics began to grow. Suddenly, the girl that went by Niki (Si-Niki-we) because her name was “too difficult” wanted nothing more than to go by Sinikiwe because it rooted her in the land where she was born—even if that meant minutes-long discourse every time I met someone new on how to pronounce my name and what it means. 

What has continued since college is an ongoing negotiation, an enmeshment of my roots in Zimbabwe and the Black American culture I strived so hard to assimilate into.

This journey has illuminated for me that identity is somehow of us and yet also determined for us. I am reminded of the Buddhist philosophy of non-duality; it’s derived from the Sanskrit word Advaita, meaning “not two and non-separation.” In layman's terms, this is oneness—all things are interconnected, my guy. So I can be both rooted in the land that bore me and entrenched in the culture that shaped me. I don’t have to choose between the two.

Here’s to embracing your own non-duality. 

with grace, Sinikiwe