Monday, January 08, 2007

By popular demand -my beef with african americans

Happy new year to everyone. have not updated in a while. this bloggin thing is hard to do oh!!
due to the pleas i have recieved from everyone. Ok only 2 bloggers . But 2 in my blog is like thousands everywhere else.i will blog about my being a litte prejudiced towards( i dont no us it prejudiced towards or prejudiced against or just prejudiced.... leave me jo english is just a borrowed language. I Love when teachers that shell in naija use to say this to excuse thier lack of grammer) sorry i digressed i am a little scatter brained. African americans (from now on i will refer to as afros because the other word is too long to type and i just learnt that akata is a derogratory word.
Ok so before coming to yankee i thought i would be able to understand and get along with a A Americans rather than whites because we had our skin color in commom but i was wrong.
A Americans to me it seemed were always rude and hostile to me. For instance imagine this exchange. got into a bus with a A american driver
Omo : IS this bus going to so and so place
Driver : what ?
Omo : i repeat my self , is this place going to so and so !??
Kin lo se ode yin. I am thinking
Driver: Oh so and so place . we dont call it that in america . proceeds to pronounce the place how he claims they do in the united states. Its called blah blah
What the fuck? just answer my questiion
Omo : so is it going there
Driver : you see what it says on the bus . what do you think?
In more colorful language . All the while the people in the bus are just watching the drama unfold
I asked him a simple question. i wanted a simple answer. why couldnt he just answer.
Another time in the bus again.i was really well dressed that day.If i might say so myself. i was loooking good!
Two african american dudes starting talking to me and my friend sha
We tried not to engage them to much in convo so they could see we were not interested
The convo goes along and we tell them we are nigerian. then a random african american lady with amebo ears says
Amebo : Nigerians . I dont like them. they think they are better than us. they cant even speak correctly.
Dudes : Really? are they like that.
They proceed to converse on how much nigerians think we are superior to African americans and its wrong because we come from the same place. blah blah
Personally i didnt care what they thought. But my friend called Z or is it Brocca you gave her confused?? I dont no . anywayz Z enters an arguement with them. And words were exchanged.

If things like this keep on happening to you and its people from a certain ethnicity , you cant help but feel prejudiced.
The worst experience was when me and my friends were going clubbing .You know naija girls dressed to the t and everything.
These dudes were supposed to pick us up but we didnt no they were outside the apartment so they were waiting for just 5 mins (seroiusly i wasnt that long) . They brought their african american girl friends with them.
Girlfriend 1 immediately gives us THE LOOK. I mean if looks could kill, we would be saying hello to marylin monroe by now.
Girlfriend 1 complains about how late we are. we shouldnt have done that blah blah blah. generally being a real BIATCH!!!
Dudes were not even that pissed so i wondered what here problem was.
We ignore them and converse amongst ourselves. Of course we are speaking youruba and broken english so they cant hear and making fun of them
Girlfriend 2 comments We sound strange, we have accents. where are we from. We say naija. and then she goes on a rampage about naija and nigerians about how she doesnt mess with them and they do voodoo blah blah blah.
We were pissed. Homie didnt we just tell you we were nigerians. Ok so we didnt want to start fighting with them in the car although the conversation got heated. Then we get to the club, then they really see how good we are dressed and when Friend 1 sees confused. her eyes almost pops out of their eyesockets. you could see the jealousy in her eyes. anywayz we enter the club. we leave them to do their thing and just have a good time on our own sha.
But no these girls wanted a fight.
friend 1 comes to meet us and pours a drink over one of my friends claiming she said something to her.
THATs WHERE THE SHIT HIT THE FAN. they should have targeted me because me i cant fight or confused because she is a softie but they targetted omo alata herself (b rocca) .That girl get craze no be small. Of course B rocca and friend 1 starting fighting physically. they threw us out of the club and I was PISSED because i had lost my $3o to enter the damn place AND we had to pay for a cab home because dude wouldnt take us anymore. I was really angry.
So i have had experiences like this over and over and i it makes me feel prejudiced . i am sorry!
i will try and change but i dont really like some african americans. i will try not to generalize anymore.

10 comments:

Confused Naija Girl said...

i guess we (All four of us) are a little prejudiced. Its something we need to work on .

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the post. Beautyinbaltimore got lit up over the Akata word and something about Green Card Gary last summer, so thank you for being an adult about that word.

I am African-American and I have heard the argument on both sides of the fence. Personally I think both groups of people have some jerks who are ignorant about the culture of others(Africa, its many countries and ethnicities and African-American culture-read not 50 cent).
Just give each person you meet an chance. Please never tell an Afircan -American you are different, or not like the others. This is a comment(complement?)that I have received from many Nigerians who I guess thought they were saying something nice to me, when really they were insulting me. The reverse of the situation wiuld be for me to tell you that you don't look/act like the Africans that I see on TV who are starving or doing "native" dance and drinking blood(yeah, hella ignorant).
Anyway, I enjoy your blog so I will be around often. One more thing, the situation with the girls, well you know some women are, just caty(SP), the fact that they insulted your nationality just compounded the situation.

P.S. Don't beat anybody up.

omo naija said...

@ confused we do dont we

@ stacie you were one of my thousands LOL. THanks for dropping by. I try to understand from both perspectives but its hard sometimes.I do ignorance compounds the situation from both sides AND no i wont beat anyone up because i cant really fight LOL

Naija Vixen said...

This gurl dont beat any1 up oh!Been chilln for you to come back...i'm laffn off my seat!But thatz how certain pple are always going to react with wiv pple they dont understand...get on d offensive.Another post pls!

omo naija said...

@ naija vixen. whatz up. happy new year girl!! because you begged me i wont beat anyone up but they should stop trying me ohh!!!!LOL

Anonymous said...

I've had some of the same issues with some of 'them' especially when it comes to speaking Ebonics. I'm a Nigerian, my accent stays with me, and it'll never go away.

I think you raise some valid points that need to be examined if the majority of African Americans and Africans are ever to understand each other.

omo naija said...

i think so too. i think most of the problem comes with being "lost in tranlation " between both cultures!!

Unknown said...

You fought in a club!! (shaking my head) *Tut, Tut* LOL!!!

BeautyinBaltimore said...

Thank you for making this a post. I'm part Nigerian and part African-American. You have no idea the amount of ignorance I hear on both sides, although I hear far more ignorance from the Nigerian side. It seems as if a lot of Nigerians hate, hate, hate African-Americans.

omo naija said...

@ calabar gal they wantd to mess with me . what was i supposed to do!!?? they shouldnt let the omo alata (ghetto girl) in me come out oh!!

@ beauty yes i no a lot of nigerians dislike african americans I think hate is too strong a word.for me personally, i just dont understand or agree with some aspects of african american culture. i didnt come to USA with a prejudice but with bad experiences i developed a prejudice. I do need to work on tolerance