photo from AddLife Blog/Ndaje Conference'Boston

The women of color valued the relationships they had developed with African American women who have mentored and nurtured them in African dance. They seemed to really appreciate the friendships with black women that have developed and expressed a feeling of belonging to the community. An interesting moment developed during one of the interviews. A group, comprised mainly of African American women were expressing some pretty strong views against whites in the community. There was also a woman of color present. For the African American women she did not appear to be the object of their comments and the woman of color did not appear to be discomforted by their remarks. The group seemed homogeneous. Talk about the complexity of identity!

We wondered whether the apparent acceptance of other women of color was geographically based. New York and Washington seem to be places where natural alliances between all people of color would occur. Unfortunately, we were not able to observe interactions in enough locations to be able to conclude whether it was geographical or whether it had to do with the way other women of color approached membership in the cultural community. Perhaps the fact that they enter as clear outsiders, both to African culture as well as to the experiences of African Americans helps them in that they don't seem as if they felt entitled to acceptance.

As for the African instructors, few were willing to speak on the subject. When we raised the subject all of the sudden there was a language barrier. Before introduction of the subject, the English would be flowing somewhat comprehensibly, but when we introduced the topic of whites in African dance , then we mostly got a mixture of French and some indigenous words. And, that is perfectly understandable. We are our teachers' livelihoods. And while we all want to think that they also like us individually, the truth is they are trying to earn a living, just like the rest of us. Offending a portion of the class may negatively impact their bottom line. For that reason, we are very grateful to the few who did agree to share their thoughts on this issue. As has been our practice in the other two parts, we will not mention the names of the teachers we talked with. Although we only had a few to work with, the views of the teachers ended up representing the spectrum of possible positions an African teacher might take.