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Climbing the Ladder

In Americanah, the novel which recounts the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who departs for America in her teenage years for university education and lives in the country for 13 years, writing a blog observing racial problems in America before finally goes back to her homeland, the natural hair of black women is a significant topic. Through the compelling attention paid to the hair of every character when they first appear, this biological difference between races is confirmed and highlighted – words like kinky and hard are related to natural black hair; silky, shiny, swingy, on the other hand, are related to non-black characters. The hair issue tangles with issues of race, repeatedly appears in Ifemelu’s daily life, blog career, and her three romantic relationships.

My friend and I came to Sydney from China as exchange undergraduates one year ago. Living respectively in two units of university dormitory, both of which consisted of one brown girl, one black girl and two Asians, we always had much to talk about. One day she told me, surprisingly, “You know Sonia has cut her hair! Before that she had braids, but now all the hair is standing up on her scalp after washing!” Sonia was her Kenyan housemate. I, too, was astonished. “Really? Why? How can it be?” “I don’t know.” Answered my friend. A series questions were triggered then, “How did she get her hair braided? Seem so tight, those braids! How did she wash her hair with them?” No answers were given, but not knowing why, we both giggled.

Keren, my housemate from Nigeria, her hair had also been a riddle for us. Sometimes she had these long braids, sometimes she wore an Afro; sometime it was straight-straight hair, sometimes they were those loose curls. My Indian housemate finally could not restrain herself. She asked about the hair one day when Keren was headed out. The pretty laughed a little under her Afro, explained that it was a wig. Until now I did not know which hairstyle she was exactly referring to, and I have already forgotten what exactly all these hairstyles looked like, but when I opened Americanah, saw the female protagonist Ifemelu in an African hair braiding salon, I was immediately interested: yes, hair is a thing! It was the hair that attracted us initially and mostly – something that my friend and I had not expected to be different. But there still remained a question in my mind – did it really concern racism?

In the summer vacation, my friend and I traveled to the Red Center dessert, the lands of Aboriginal Australians. The last evening before leaving, when we were having our dinner against the spectacular rock Uluru, aboriginal women came to sell their artworks. They did not wear shoes. Above those bare feet were very thin legs, supporting a seemingly too large belly. Some came to our dining place. Immediately I became tense. Several days ago, we encountered a group of indigenous people on the deserted street of Darwin at dusk. They gathered, doing nothing but shouting. I remember how quickly my heart was beating. I remember the question I asked myself, ‘What if I get killed here?’ Now, dark skin in ragged clothes, these women who were mumbling something in a rough voice brought me back to that fear.

Our Australian tour guide Bailey, however, kept his smile warm and said, “You want some?” he pointed at our dishes, “No problem. But there’s not a lot left. You want more noodles? Or beef?” He kept saying, as if could be understood. The women just stared at the food without expressions. “Here you go.” He passed plates and spoons to them, food piling high like a hill. The smile never disappeared, even though they left without saying anything.

That night in Darwin, when the last sunlight was fading and my heartbeat slowed down to normal, I came to know that how we spontaneously reject things that we don’t understand – incomprehensible language, strange appearance, peculiar life style. And when all these added up, how those extreme differences could lead to extreme disgusting and fear. Again at that moment faced with the magnificent sunset but also faced with the contrast between my own anxiety and Bailey’s hospitality, I was alarmed by a vague self-awareness of discrimination in my mind.

It was my fear and contempt towards the difference that might be the problem. Similarly, in Americanah, it is the prejudice that equaling the natural hair to unprofessional that matters: when Aunty Uju has to remove her braids for an interview, and when later Ifemelu relaxes her hair in order to look professional, racism arises. As Ifemelu writes in one of her blogs, ‘Race is not biology; race is sociology.’ Biological difference become symbols of superiority or inferiority, influencing people’s judgment on one another, leading to positive or negative reactions and treatments.

Close to the end of the second semester, my friend and I came across two guys out of the library who greeted us in Chinese – two Mormon missionaries as we found later, one from Cambodia and another New Zealand, both about the same age as us. We exchanged phone numbers, kept in touch, and have been out for two meals. The last two facts just astonished me – why me, a firm atheist, kept in touch with missionaries? This constant self-questioning led to my confession: somehow I was happy to establish a relationship with the New Zealander – a white man while not as much interested in another missionary, who had typical Cambodian appearance – thin and small, with dark skin. By that time I had finished reading Americanah. Something left over me by the book urged me to ask why. Was it a result of my physical/language-attractiveness stereotype, that I was more likely to be attracted to someone good-looking and speaking good English, or of something concerned racism?

One day our Cambodian friend sent me a message, ‘Promise with me, do not tell someone.’ I could not help myself smiling at the grammar mistakes. All the impression he left then was that Cambodian speak worse English than Chinese. Then I thought about my possible reaction if he was white. It might be ‘yeah, foreigners are so much more confident than us – they are brave enough to use an unfamiliar language to express themselves!’ considering the fact when last time I met a Netherland girl, I just didn’t care she made mistakes in every sentence uttered. She got my attention despite the not-so-good language and appearance. When it came to the Cambodian boy, however, all of a sudden, the criteria became stricter – if a Cambodian was not handsome and smart enough, then bye-bye! I felt bad about myself, but my interest in him did not increase because of guilty. This made me feel even worse.

It was at this moment that the notion of race ladder came up to my mind, a term Ifemelu uses to describe racism in America. It is a ladder of racial hierarchy, of which White is on top, enjoying privileges and Black on the bottom, suffering from discrimination. What is in the middle depends on time and place – depended on language competences and physical attractiveness in my case. I had never taken it seriously before as I did not think my judgment had ever based on race. After all, my Nigerian housemate Keren had always been the envy of us: good-looking, staked, out-going, smart – such a pretty!

But somehow memories crept in my mind. I recalled those times when I wondered why there were so many non-whites living in the dormitory, recalled how proud I felt to see party photos posted by our Pakistani housemate, in which she was as beautiful as other white girls who seemed to be her good friends. I recalled a sense of awkwardness that kept haunting me during the year. It appeared in the sailing tour when all the white tourists were wearing bikini while we and other 2 Chinese girls didn’t, in classroom when an Asian student done her presentation by reading the draft all the time and got no response from other students who were mostly white.

Why I wondered? Why proud? Why awkward? I heard Ifemelu yelling at me, ‘admit it baby, this is race!’ A race ladder in my mind gradually emerged from mist. Unconsciously, I had passed judgment on strangers by how they look, regarded those who had pale skin as higher value than who did not. I myself, was also fixed on a certain rung without knowing it, looking up at the top, suffering from an inferiority feeling, which was faint and subtle, but could not be denied. I signed, ‘Who put this ladder into my mind?’

Corresponding to the race ladder, where all characters are put in certain place in the novel, there is another hidden ladder in the novel – Ifemelu’s anti-racism ladder. Characters are placed on different height in terms of their attitudes towards racial topics. One huge difference between the two ladders is mobility – people are fixed by their race on the former, while encouraged and enabled to climb from the bottom to the top on the latter. Climbing – this is exactly what Ifemelu has done during her 13 years dwelling in America, as well as what the book has done to me.

Standing at the bottom are those who get influenced by racial ideology without self-awareness. One day I shared an article discussing racism in China on social media, receiving 1 like and 2 comments – few. I could imagine how most of my friends just had a quick look on the title then decided to ignore it – like the previous me. After all, in China, a country whose 91% population is composed of the same ethnicity, race had not yet been an existing problem and a popular topic. Sarcastically, when being exposed to a multiracial condition, the individual grown up in such an one-race country – me – showed a sense of racial hierarchy

Indeed, the novel has also indicated an underlying aspiration towards whiteness in African and Caribbean countries. It is revealed by African women’s common pursuit for straight hair despite the pain of possible relaxer burn – natural hair is rejected even in their own country. Besides hair, the biological characteristic that is more subject to change, the preference of light skin in African and Caribbean countries is another evidence, implying that the influence of racial hierarchy has extended to countries where race is not an issue to be discussed and paid attention to.

Several steps above the bottom is me who first entered into a multiracial metropolis from a single race country, the wondering, proud, awkward me. In Americanah, the distinction between American Black and non-American Black has been drawn. The latter are addressed as beginners in racial topics in Ifemelu’s series blogs titled ‘understanding America for the Non-American Black’, who may be confused by the racial discourse in America which they have not gone through back in Caribbean and African countries. Suddenly they become Black in America, just like I was called Asian for the first time – a word that had never occurred to me, used to describe my identity. Standing with me are those who have suffered from or bothered by racism but not knowing what this suffer exactly is derived from.

On the top of the ladder where Ifemelu has climbed all the way towards, she fights with the spectators who continue to say that ‘the only race is the human race’ ‘we’re tired of talking about race’. She clarifies the blurry border of tangling topics, saying “Yes it actually is race, not class, not gender, not the cookie monster”. She lifts people up to the same height of her, makes them realize the absurdity of judging a person by how he looks, the absurdity of racism. Only when the awareness is aroused, can race the ladder finally be destroyed.

One of the comments for my shared article said exactly the same words as the dreadlocked white man Ifemelu met on the train at the beginning of the book says: ‘race is overhyped’. My friend argued that the stereotype we have about black people as a whole makes sense as in general, population in an undeveloped area would be less competitive. I replied, yeah, but not when you encounter someone personally. The problem of the stereotype is that it not only keeps you from knowing cool people, but decreased their coolness in your mind even after you know them – and you just do not realize it and its absurdity. I told him my stories. He was persuaded.

There was one thing I left out. That night in Darwin, we dared not walk back and decided to take a bus, which was also loaded with indigenous people. Suddenly from the loud noises composed of a strange language, a sentence dashed into my ear. It was from an indigenous woman who seemed was quarrelling with her husband – ‘that’s because I love him so much!’ loud and in a rough voice, but suddenly I was relieved. I did not fear anymore. The difference somehow disappeared, we became the same kind of human being again.

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这是这学期Contemporary Literature课的一个作业，Criticism in Public，写一个面向非学术群体的essay介绍一本书，然后发到网上。就放这里了！估计也不会有人看。

书名是Americanah，讲一个尼日利亚姑娘去美国上大学，工作，拿绿卡，最后回国发展的故事，线索是她跟三个男人的感情。她在美国的时候写一个Blog，从非美籍黑人的角度观察美国的种族问题。看完感觉很有共鸣，尤其是她刚到美国的时候的生活，跟我刚到澳洲的生活有好多重合的地方，很有意思。essay主要讲了她对种族问题的思考给我带来的影响吧，感觉真的写完这篇essay对自己有了新的认识。