When the charity Rap Off ended last week, audience members were invited to freestyle. The stage was quickly crowded by black students from across America: California. Upstate New York. Ohio. Behind them, partially hidden by his DJing apparatus, stood Carl Nee-Kofi Mould-Millman, looking as black as anyone, but not feeling quite at home. That's because his home is in Accra, Ghana, in Western Africa ? closer to Togo and Burkina Faso than to urban New Jersey or West Philadelphia.
"Hip-hop belongs here. It is a product of American black culture," said "DJ Nee-Kofi," who has been spinning hip-hop and reggae for over four years. "The music isn't talking to me. It's a little more personal to them. I'm listening to the beats and the words are secondary."
In Accra, Ghana's capital, where Mould-Millman lives with his mother and stepfather, American rap and hip-hop are ubiquitous. The youth are enamored with US popular culture, but have little interest in white rock 'n' roll or Top 40 hits. Only the fast-paced hip-hop rhythms and crass gangsta rap lyrics find their way into car stereos and boom boxes. It's the music and culture of fellow blacks and they love it.
"Some people even go so far as to adopt the thug-like mentality. It's a different lifestyle from what we have - kinda exciting. Life in Ghana is pretty boring," Mould-Millman said. "I was affected by it too."
But when he came to Tufts for school, the distinction between enjoying "black music" and being black became clear. He was African, but didn't fit in with the African-American community. Didn't speak like them. Didn't think like them. Didn't want to be one of them.
In Ghana, Mould-Millman formed his perception of American blacks through Hollywood movies, MTV videos, and television. It was an unflattering picture. "The impression you get of the black community is that there is a lot of crime and a lot of negativity," he said. So his visit to America two years before matriculating at Tufts taught him a valuable lesson. "I learned it wasn't all true," he said.
Now a junior, Mould-Millman has learned plenty about African-American culture; where it compliments, and more often clashes, with his own. Although many in America may mistake him for an African American, he believes that skin color is not a sufficient criterion for membership in the African-American community.
"I don't feel like I'm a part of that group. Our mentalities are different. Their history has been plagued by hardship. I've known only peace," he said.
Mould-Millman said he's not alone among Africans at Tufts who feel alienated when surrounded by American blacks. There is tension, he said guardedly, that has complicated historical and psychological roots. He would not speculate as to the origins of black antipathy toward Africans, but recounts a conversation with a friend, now a Tufts alumnus, who said that African Americans sometimes feel inferior to Africans. "We're coming straight from the mother land. They're diluted, mixed," his friend told him.
Irrespective of the theory, which he said he never verified, he has personally observed the distance between the African and African-American communities. Common African ancestry aside, the groups are not natural friends.
"There is a lot of segregation by them. As much as they cry that they're not treated equally, they segregate themselves," he said, criticizing the seating arrangements in the Dewick dining hall, where many African Americans sit together, apart. "That's why I'm heavily involved in ASO [the African Student Organization], so people can tell me apart from everyone else."
In the struggle to assert his African heritage, Mould-Millman's Ghanaian accent helps. Sure, his skin tone and facial features might resemble African Americans, but speak to him for a moment and his identity is revealed. His activities also help him maintain firm ties with Africans at Tufts. He is the ASO president, and a fixture in Tufts' African community. Thanks in part to Mould-Millman ? and with the future cooperation of VISIONS ? the ASO is focusing its efforts on raising campus awareness of the African AIDS pandemic. There is much to teach Americans about Africa, he said, but ASO "can't go out and educate the whole campus about every facet of our culture. So, we take it issue by issue."
The organization Mould-Millman runs is in its third year. Called APSCA (African Political, Social, and Cultural Association) by its founders, the new president said the old name was a "PR nightmare" and introduced the name change as part of an attempt to render African issues more accessible to the Tufts community. At his high school in Ghana, which was 20 percent non-African, the international students were knowledgeable about African affairs. At Tufts, Mould-Millman said, ignorance rules the day.
"I assumed that Americans were generally knowledgeable about Africa. When I came here, I was kind of shocked and disappointed," he said. "People think Africa is one big country with Nelson Mandela as the president."
When he arrived at Tufts, it seemed to him that many Americans thought of the African continent as primitive. The questions he fielded daily insulted him, and they came as soon as his accented English registered in American ears. 'Do you have running water? Electricity? A telephone?' they asked. 'Do you live in a house?'
"When people ask where I'm from now, I say New York. It's just easier," said sophomore Gina Jibrin, who grew up in Jos, in the Plateau state in Nigeria. Although Jibrin has lived in the US since she was 15, she, like Mould-Millman, feels little connection to African Americans. A garrulous student, Jibrin said she doesn't often think about race, but has no problem discussing her circuitous journey to Tufts
She was born to an Indian mother and Nigerian father. Although she said that Nigeria doesn't have racial problems on a daily basis, she was confronted with issues of race from her earliest memories. "When I was a child, my mother's Indian friends would come over to look at me and my sister to see what mixed babies were like," she said. Her mother's family in India did not approve of her father as a husband. This year, her maternal grandmother met her son-in-law for the first time.
But, Jibrin's mixed genes proved advantageous overall. Considered bature (white in her native language), she received special treatment in Nigeria, a nation of 123 million people and over 250 ethnic groups.
When her family moved to the US, Jibrin entered an inner-city school in the Bronx. The student body was mostly black and Hispanic, and although Jibrin's skin was dark enough not to stand out, she had trouble fitting in with the local culture, especially that of American blacks. The feeling was mutual. The African teachers were thought of as white because they spoke with a British accent. She was entirely ostracized.
"It wasn't until I told them that my dad was black that they said, 'Oh, she's okay,'" she said.
An academic standout, and later a Balfour Scholar, Mrs. Rosenberg, Jibrin's social studies teacher, thought she would flourish in a Rockland County high school with greater academic resources. So she bid farewell to her family and urban environment.
"When I came to the Bronx, it was more of a culture shock than moving to Rockland," she said. Her new high school housed many international students, but was short on blacks. "I've been living in a suburban, white, middle-class world," she said.
At Tufts - where the student body is polarized by many characteristics, with race as the most observable - Jibrin could once again choose to insulate herself within an African-American community. She did not.
"At Tufts, I realized that people come to school and they want to attach themselves to a specific group. It's very hard for me to relate to African-American culture," she said, echoing Mould-Millman's sentiments. "It's a distinct culture in itself ? more American than African."
Her ethnicity is strictly defined by her life in Nigeria. Her parents are traditional African Muslims, with whom she speaks Hausa and practices conditioned etiquette. But she didn't have to keep her African traditions. Nina, Gina's older sister, looks more African than Gina, and has adopted African-American culture with an alacrity that outruns the natural tendency to assimilate. She listens to rap. Speaks with "black slang." And will only date African-American men.
"I think my parents would rather my sister date a white guy," Gina said. "People see it that if you marry someone white you sort of elevate your status.
"My parents accept it. But they don't like the fact that Nina acts African American. They see African Americans as being treated in a lower position and they don't want their children to go through that."
Ask Nina to identify herself and she'll tell you she's African American. Her younger sister? According to Nina, Gina is white.
When Nina would visit her sister in Rockland, she would be greeted with stares, and felt unwelcome in local stores. "She was seen as black and I was seen as Indian," Jibrin said. "People didn't think we were related and they were more comfortable with me than they were with her."
Jibrin was never surprised by the treatment. Her town was predominately white, with few inter-racial relationships. When she dated a Jewish student in her high school, she said she was accepted because his parents focused on her Indian heritage. If she had looked more black, Gina said, it might have been problematic. "I've never dated an African-American man. Every time I tell Nina about a guy I'm dating, she just assumes that he's white and accepts it."
If she looked more black, Gina asked herself, would she act more black, or African American, as the oft-confusing nomenclature goes? It's a question she must confront, especially in light of her sister's cultural adjustment.
Nina is not the only African to come to America and adopt African-American cultural norms. "I think it's a matter of choice. You're not forced into it," Gina said. "You can either set yourself apart because you don't want to be treated that way. Or, people relate to American blacks because you don't have anyone else to relate to.
"An African would feel more comfortable with other blacks. It's easier here being an African American than an African because people see you by the color of your skin. I'd just be seen as black."
To Gina, however, the distance she feels between herself and American blacks extends beyond her Indian complexion or her use of "white" English. The African-American community is alien to her. At Tufts, African Americans "revel in their blackness," according to Jibrin. Like Mould-Millman, she notes their proclivity to sit separately in the dining hall, calling that behavior unproductive in the fight against discrimination.
"You're essentially isolating yourself when you should be working toward diversity," she said. "There is no need to put up a banner saying 'I'm black.' I have very few American black friends. I just don't feel that comfortable. If you have a whole pack of African Americans sitting together, I won't go sit there. I just don't speak the same way. They bond together through the way they speak. I don't relate to that culture.
"I'd rather have a whole diverse group of friends," she said.
At an internship last summer, Jibrin was exposed to African Americans in a way she hasn't been since she left the Bronx. Volunteering in inner-city Boston, she viewed the children with the eyes of an anthropologist, becoming more familiar with their language and attitudes. "I asked them 'What does ghetto mean,'" she said, referring to slang she hears from her sister but would never use. Through it all (and she does plan to return to work this year), she always felt like an outsider.
At Tufts, Jibrin maintains no affiliation with the Pan-African Alliance (PAA), a campus organization whose mission statement includes all black students. Nor does Mould-Millman. For Jibrin, the International Club (I-Club) is a more welcoming setting. Mould-Millman most closely associates himself with the ASO. Ranking other clubs that might apply, he mentioned the I-Club. Next comes the PAA? "What else is there?" he joked.
"PAA is basically an organization that deals with the political issues of blacks in general on campus," he said. "ASO is more of a culture association. Our prime goal is to educate people about traditions and issues facing Africa - to bring a face to African issues on campus."
Jibrin drew a sharper distinction. "Blacks should bring themselves up instead of continuously focusing on how they're discriminated against," Jibrin said, explaining her detachment from African Americans. "Coming from an African country that has achieved a lot ? it's doable." Hers is an outsider's perspective, spoken with an aloofness that borders on offensive. And coming from an African, it seems to lay waste to the perception that African Americans and Africans share a common bond.
To the sophomore class dean, however, that bond is very real indeed. Christopher Nwabeke (pronounced MEH-BEH-KEE), a Nigerian by birth, has lived in the US for over 25 years, since he first left the city of Bortharcour to attend the University of Wisconsin. "When I was ignorant as an undergraduate, I made those distinctions," he said.
"When you are new, you see those distinctions. You have a very strange, myopic notion of who you are," Nwabeke said of Africans that move to the US. "They don't know what role African Americans play in assisting Africans. If an African visits the United States, he is very likely to be received by the African-American community." When students of color were not accepted into US universities, Nwabeke said, historically black colleges such as Howard University accepted Africans studying in America.
Nwabeke sees Africa as a thread that binds blacks throughout the globe, whether their ancestors were sold as slaves generations ago, or they voluntarily emigrated in their lifetime. In America, he said, the connection between Africans and African Americans is unavoidable. "It's difficult to pinpoint who is African. We all look alike," he said. "Africans better realize that when they walk down the street, people see them as black."
"Skin color, that's the prime reason an African will become friends with African Americans," said Mould-Millman, observing that some Africans do join the African-American community at Tufts. "Our attitude isn't the same, but sometimes [skin color] is enough to form an initial bond." He encourages fellow Africans to avoid assimilating. "It's kinda sad to see an African becoming an African American. It's sad that he is losing part of his own culture," he said.
When he came to America, his mother was concerned that he would lose his Ghanaian culture. The initial plan was for Mould-Millman to remain in America for his four years of schooling. But last Christmas, his mother had had enough of her son's absence. "She wanted me to come home to get a sense of the state I was in," he said. "She sent for me and I came.
"She was scared that I was going to lose a part my culture. She said, 'I hope coming home made you appreciate Ghana better,'" he said. Then, using a traditional Ghanaian expression to encourage her son to return after graduation, she advised: "Don't be a stick in the mud."
Mould-Millman's mother gave him a good report, and was especially happy to see that he hadn't lost his accent. But, there are undeniable hints of African-American culture seeping into his lifestyle ? whether he acknowledges it or not. "Still keepin' it real... Ghana Style!" reads his e-mail signature, punctuating every letter he sends.
Nwabeke ? who speaks slowly to compensate for his thick accent, but after time allows the words to come freely ? was not surprised to hear of the feelings of division that some Africans feel at Tufts. There are people who feel superior to African Americans, he said, but that doesn't last very long.
And then there are the cultural differences that have kept Mould-Millman and Jibrin from integrating into the African American community. "There is no African that will arrive in the States and not notice that there are differences with American blacks," he said. "And whites," he added, equating the African experience with that of any international student. "You look alike but are different, very different."
For Nwabeke, the term "African American" applies to any African living in the United States. Does that mean that Africans who move to America can be classified as American blacks, the descendants of slaves that have lived in this country since colonial times? His answer is an unequivocal yes.
"There is no column that says 'African.' To me, that has no relevance," he said, adding that he doesn't "see any other group splitting hairs over this issue.
"If an African is a citizen then he is an American. And he is black, so he has nowhere to go."
And with that, he rushed out of his office in Dowling Hall to attend a campus rally. It was Black Solidarity Day.
