During my first week of living in Paris, while strolling the Avenue de Choisy in the 13th arrondisement, I encountered two black men standing in front of the entrance to a Chinese buffet.
We eyed each other curiously; in this predominantly Asian area, it was rare to see a white face, let alone a black one. Finally, I broke the ice. “Do you think that I can look before I have to pay?” I asked in halting French. I was apprehensive about Chinese food in Paris and on a student budget, that made me loath to experiment.
A game of bilingual charades ensued, and eventually I was convinced to give the restaurant a chance. Once inside, we quickly grabbed plates and went our separate ways around the buffet spread. Reunited at the table, we surveyed each other’s selections. The sole commonality between the three of us was a serving of fried chicken wings. The more outgoing of the two men shook his head and laughed. “Black people around the world,” he said, pointing a drumstick toward his friend and then toward me. “We all love chicken.”
I soon returned to the United States, having failed to secure a work visa (or a mastery of French, for that matter), but the memory of this experience—and subsequent experiences of the casual camaraderie of global blackness—stayed with me.
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Years later, I moved to London twice; first for school, and then again for work. With Paris in the back of my mind, I quickly sought out the eyes of other black people on the street, only to find their eyes averted. My “nods” went unreturned. Attempts to strike up a conversation with a fellow black student in the library solicited blank stares or confused expressions. Perhaps I had mistaken them for someone else, their faces seemed to imply.
It wasn’t until I met other African-American expats living in London that I learned that I was not alone in this experience. Theories abound as to why. London is a city that prides itself on its racial diversity and progressive ideals. And although people of African descent have lived in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years, the first wave of modern mass migration occurred in the mid 20th century. For some black Londoners, they are British primarily in passport, but culturally attuned to their family’s ancestral origin. For others, they are simply British, without the perceived baggage of racial tribalism for which America is internationally known. Both of these theories explain why I, random black woman on the street, do not engender an automatic acknowledgement. They do not, however, negate my sense of loss.
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Americans are notorious for expecting the rest of the world to bend to our will. When we travel, we expect our communication language to be English, our hotel rooms to be air-conditioned, and our cultural exchanges to be foreign enough to be memorable, but familiar enough to be bearable. Even among expatriates, the worldly subset of travelers who departed on a one-way ticket, there is often an urge to cling to the customs of our homeland, even as we actively embrace the rituals of another.
African-Americans are not exempt from this impulse.
In expecting the Ghanaian businessman, and the Jamaican grandmother, and the Black British teenager to immediately see themselves in my face, I overlooked the cultural context of my adopted country. And while I have, as time passed, encountered Londoners from every corner of the diaspora that “nod” and smile, and even strike up an unexpected conversation, it is rare that I initiate the interaction. The gulf between who I was when I arrived and who I’ve become today has widened in many ways, but I still recall that initial feeling of shock in the stacks of the library, when a girl that I saw as a “sista” saw me as a stranger.
