For many of us, daily news and analysis of what goes at home is engaging and we spend considerable time reading it and discussing it among ourselves. Put together in a room more than 2 Eritreans at any given time and the conversation is bound to be about the despicable state of our nation and “what’s to be done.”
 
This is not mere exercise of theoretical politics but very close to our hearts. We debate with emotion and high energy about details of the history of the movement, individuals in power, including (but not only) Isaias. These talks usually go around in circles and occupy a great deal of our spare time but we put our souls in them because we are in a desperate need for solutions.

As always, we may think this is unique to Eritreans. We suffer from inflated sense of national chauvinism which is not untypical of immigrants in search of identities in a foreign land. But rest assured, we are not the only ones. Such discussions occupy great deal of time in almost all social gatherings of other immigrant communities. They are not just fillers of free space and time but help to affirm our identity as Eritreans (or Nigerians or Kenyans or whatever) in a country where we are the “outsiders” or foreigners.

It is my conviction that we engage in such discussion as a way to deny the reality of our lives in the US and to feel secure in our national identity and pride of being Eritrean. The reality is, many of us have been here for at least two decades. The highest migration of Eritreans to the U.S. started in 1984 and peaked around 1990 as refugees flocked into camps. In addition, US immigration reform in the late 1980s provided opportunities for “family reunification” that brought not just refugees but the highest number of immigrants from Africa between 1990 and 2000.

Hardly ever do I read accounts by Eritreans on what it means to live as “Black in America.” Eritreans, as do other African immigrants seem to be in perpetual conflict over their racial identities. Coming from predominantly black societies where ethnicity is the basis of categorization, is not untypical to hear Eritreans say “I am not Black, I am Eritrean” and see no conflict in such a statement. I make this statement with no judgment because I used to say that.

Americans (Black or White) may read in such a statement denial of a basic racial fact, but it is more complex than that. The US may have diverse communities from all over the world, the reality of race is essentially divided in the Black/White dichotomy.  Whites rule in this country, and institutional racism is alive and well. Blacks/African Americans are relegated to minority status, not just in the numerical sense but in the perpetual projection of negative stereotypes.

Race is a profound factor in the making of the history of the USA and continues to be a force we need to understand to make sense of our lives here. Unfortunately, the reverse is true; Eritreans typically retreat into a comfortable corner of using our national identity not to make a choice of fitting into a racial category. Clearly we cannot claim to be White, but that does not stop us from denying our racial identity as Black. If this is not confusing I don’t know what is.

The current political reality in Eritrea, depressing as it is, has had a deep impact on us as Eritreans in the Diaspora. The sense of betrayal many of us feel closely ties to our loss of hope of “returning home.” Especially for many who are either in retirement age or nearing.  The hope of eventual return had fueled our support for the struggle for independence, affirmed our identity and given us psychological comfort and perseverance in our lives in the Diaspora. By the same measure, it has also prevented us from planting roots in our host country.  Few of us ever intended to permanently remain “outside” our home and the USA, though it serves our purpose is not really that. Twenty, thirty or even forty years later, many in our community are experiencing identity crisis of what it means to be Eritrean, a foreigner in a foreign land, and live out our lives here, perhaps never to return.

Look around you and you’ll notice there are aging Eritrean populations and young Eritreans either born in this country, or came at an early age. These two categories of our population have distinctly separate views and relations with the notion of what it means to be Eritrean and racial identity.

The older generation typically romanticizes the return as soon as things begin to change for the better. The lack of any hopeful signs of when the change may come is depressing and hence the occupation in long hours of discussion on the matter. If we can’t be there physically, we’re determined to spend as much time as possible mentally engaged and talking about it, it’s the next best thing. Even if we’re unable to bring about the desired change, there is at least the psychological benefit to feeling connected to the political/social discourse of “home” which sooths our soul and affirms our sense of rooting in our place of origin and identity.

The second generation of young Eritreans have a different take on what their Eritrean identity means to them. This is a group that for all purposes passes for “Black” in daily lives in this country. They instinctively get the “race” question and know the reality of what it means to be young and Black in America. At the same time, many were raised in households and communities that have strong attachments to their national identities and share these cultural roots. Some are even highly nationalist and involved in community gatherings, political and social. But the fact of the reality is that most don’t speak Tigrinia – or speak it at such rudimentary level as not to be comfortably conversational.

Language is the basic access to fitting into an ethnic community and their limited capabilities blocks cross-generational connections. This group of young Eritreans are comfortable fitting into a clear race category and see no conflicts in dating or even marrying Americans, especially African-Americans. They have difficulty expressing their dual identities to their parents who they know will not understand and would most likely reject their embrace of their dual identities as if they are mutually exclusive.  Eritrean parents’ do so for fear of “loosing” their children into the big confusion of race and ethnicity in the U.S.  I know several families who intentionally keep their children away from “the Blacks” for fear they’ll be indistinct from the masses of African-Americans. Subconsciously, there is a desire to remain separate from a group of people America has historically devalued and stereotyped negatively.

Give the kids some credit, as younger generations, they are fully cognizant of these conflicts and in essence live two lives – one inside their families and communities, the other in the broader social context where they are comfortable in their Black identities.
 
The generational conflict is most realized when the young Eritrean decide to marry outside the community. Ironically, it raises even more conflict with parents when their children wish to marry African-Americans. I say ironic because there’s been a history of dejection and undermining of African Americans by successive immigrants from Europe or even Mexico. That we, as Africans and Eritreans who have similar skin color continue on this debased attitude and treatment is truly sad to say the least.
 
Some may claim that Eritrean parents get equally alarmed when their children marry whites, or Hispanics or any other group. But the troubling fact remains that they are less comfortable with liaisons with African Americans than any other racial category.
 
Many of you know what I am talking about and may or may not agree with many of the sentiments I have expressed here. What is lacking is open dialogue on the reality of our lives in this country. At the cost of being a pessimist, I will state that many of us are not likely to return home anytime soon, and many will return horizontally than vertically. This does not and should not stop us from visualizing and re-inventing our dream of a free Eritrea where the country is truly liberated from negative external and internal forces. Neither should it prevent us from making connections around us, primarily with African American institutions.

The conversation on the nuances of racial identity and the future of the Eritrean Diaspora in the US cannot be covered this short piece. I write this to provoke and initiate discussions on this topic of race and identity for Eritreans in the Diaspora. I’m especially eager to hear from young Eritreans on the overlapping trajectories of their multiple identities and what this means to them personally and as people of a nation in crisis.

This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it