The Nigerian Boondocks

Nigerians Romanticizing Living White

At some point during the timeline of this life I call mine; as I dart in and out of the house because I’m such a busybody, I overhear a conversation between my mum and my cousins. Now, the topic of the conversation I honestly cannot tell you as with most conversations of interest, it jumps between topics, making its original context lost in translation. But in my “overhearing”, something catches my eye, so to speak.

Apparently, at this point in the conversation, they were talking about what they’ll term religious extremism(?). This was about Christians that don’t wear makeup and jewellery, how we pray so hard, ‘kabash’ all week and yet Nigeria (and Nigerians) is still whatever in the name of all sense we are right now. Yet, our Western counterparts, specifically of the “Whyte” inclination, seem to do less of all that and things seem to work out. They don’t pray so hard and God answers their prayers. Over there abroad (think the US, UK and every other majority white populated country), you just work hard and life will be easy. Like they’ve cracked the code or something.

The reason this piqued my interest is that this notion of the easy-going, no stressing, seems to do everything right American and by extension the white man and his society is quite the common perception in Nigeria. Most Nigerians on some level believe the Americas (or any equivalent white country) to be the land that flows with milk and honey. The society that has gotten it “right”.

I have heard so many statements of “white man romance” from Nigerians. Things like: “Americans don’t pray like us because most of what they need to pray for has been answered by God already” or “They don’t go to church because someone told them if they come, God will make them rich or will bless them somehow”.

If only they knew that the prosperity gospel lays its root deeply in American Pentecostalism. The problem of the prosperity gospel that currently plagues the Nigerian church was taught to us, by white men. And yes, some Americans still go to church because they think God will make them rich.

I find this concept of romanticising the life and acts of white people by Nigerians to be fascinating because there’s an obvious cognitive dissonance there. Many Nigerians see America as the epitome of existence and yet simultaneously the very bottom of the moral barrel. This is why despite how much Nigerians might demonize American society and its people, they will migrate themselves to that very place where the devil dines, quicker than you can whisper go!

Nigerians both love and hate Americans. We see them as immoral, lazy, ungrateful and [insert derogatory term here]. Yet we desperately want to be them. We want what they have, we want to live where they are, and most of us would do whatever it takes – no matter how morally defunct it is - to get closer to “being white”. We do recognize on some level, that we will never really be them, but we darn well will do our best to get closer to the standard that is the romanticised white.

Nigerians can hence be categorized into two based on how strongly they hold to the delusional image of the “white apple of God's eye”. To borrow from Malcolm X, there are the “house negro” and the “field negro”. Those who will do whatever it is to get closer to the white world, who think and desire so strongly to be where the white man reigns are the house negros, and those who might desire the same, but probably would never achieve it for whatever reason are the field negros. And like their historical counterparts, the house negros think themselves better than the field negros. For those who are unfamiliar with these terms, I will give a summarized description.

The house negro was a black slave who got to live in the master’s house. He/she worked in the master’s house doing domestic work and whatever else the master wanted, in the master’s house. Due to the proximity to the slave master, and also how better the conditions in the house were compared to the fields, the house negro deludes himself into thinking he owes the master for his goodness and will do his best to preserve his position and earn his master's love.

The house negro thought himself better than those in the fields due to his proximity to his owner (Massa). The house negro got to wear clean clothes, stay out of the sun, maybe learn to read etc. The house negro saw himself as the favoured one because he doesn’t get to wear his shackles constantly. Forgetting that just like the dark monkeys in the field, he’s also a dark monkey. He holds no extra value to his white owner. The field negro sees his proximity to whiteness as a blessing, a status of high regard. But to the actual commoner of whiteness, the house negro is just like every other slave. If you’ll like to know more, I’ll link some resources at the end of the article.

With that out of the way, let me explain why I classified Nigerians as either house negros or field negros. Many Nigerians who have successfully started from the bottom and are now “there”, tend to look down on those who aren’t. They see themselves as those who have done it right and hence were rewarded for their efforts. They migrate and within a span of at most a month, their accents, dress sense, morals and attitudes have been transformed. Even their names reform to match the blandness of a Whyte tongue’s intonation. To those who they “left behind”, they are left behind because they never committed themselves enough. They just won’t get off their ass and work. Honestly, why won’t they just be like them?

This is why when they do “help” someone get there, they see themselves as saviours to whom you the “helped” must now swear undying allegiance and everlasting submission. Just like how the slave master has elevated the negro out of the fields and given him the privilege of walking the same living floors as he does, so have they done to and for you.

But there’s a subset of the Nigerian house negro, the ones who haven’t yet gotten there, into the white Massas’ house, but deem it only a matter of time. They are the ones who eat “swallows” with a fork and knife. Not out of convenience, but rather to display their “European sensibilities”. They draw their “R’s” and collapse their tongues in a slur, simply to have an accent. They make fun of those who sound too Nigerian. Mock people who would dare use their hands to eat in public and so on. They turn their nose upwards in disgust at how they still have to dwell amongst those who they perceive as too Nigerian (the field negros). We might be in Nigeria together, but we are definitely not the same. Also, just to be clear, this isn’t decided purely along the lines of class. But it’s a delusion in a class of its own.

They remind me of a beloved character from the Boondocks animation, Uncle Ruckus (No relation). Uncle Ruckus is… well he’s something alright. He’s a poor black man who lives in a rundown shack at the edge of the suburbs (the whitest of neighbourhoods). He works every low-end job available in the community and has absolutely no upward financial or social mobility available to him whatsoever and yet, sees himself as better than every single black man on earth for one main reason: he loves the white man. He strongly believes that the white man is superior to all races, especially blacks.

Uncle Ruckus is like the Nigerian house negro that’s stuck in Nigeria. He looks down on all black people regardless of whether they’re richer or poorer than he is, although it’s difficult to imagine a black person poorer than Uncle Ruckus (No relation). In the very first episode of The Boondocks, when the Freemans move into the neighbourhood and are invited to the Whyte people's party, Uncle Ruckus finds it unbelievable that they aren’t there as servants but rather guests. He considers it a travesty that they are allowed to sit at Massa’s table when he has to guard the gates. He finds it so unbelievable that he concludes that they have deceived the Whyte man and tries his best to warn his beloved Massas to beware the negro.

In the episode “The Color Ruckus” we learn that Uncle Ruckus is “secretly” a white man, or rather a failed white man. According to him, he was born to a white man with a unique skin disease that colours his skin black. His parent learning that this skin disease is incurable, horrified at the prospect of raising a black baby, abandons him to be picked up by one of the most dysfunctional black couples to ever grace television. It should be noted that this origin story of his was told to him by his adopted mother who reveres the looks of white women and seeks to look like them. Blond hair, blue eyes and the whole shebang. He’s raised by his adopted mother to believe he was born Whyte and hence to love whiteness and thus resent himself for being “black”.

Like Uncle Ruckus, the Nigerian house negro forgets that his skin colour is and will always be darker than his beloved “white apple of God's eye”. Even if he burns his skin through a bleaching process, he will never truly be white enough. His name is a dead giveaway. The way he carries himself. The structure of his body. The size of his lips. The black in his iris. The way he exclaims at everything that excites and bothers him. He forgets that regardless of whether he’s allowed into the master’s bedroom and not walking barefooted on the fields, all he can do is clean it for the master’s use. Make it sparkle in contrast to his dirty existence. He might touch the sheets of the master’s bed, but he can never enjoy their comfort. Whether he is there or here, he is always one of us.

For the white masters, a negro is a negro, a black man is a black man, and a Nigerian will always be a Nigerian. The proximity to whiteness, the America where milk and honey flow is nought but a fantasy. The white man who doesn’t struggle, the notion of there being no poor Whyte man is nothing but a delusion. It’s a form of escapism that house negros in Nigeria engage in to escape the horrid reality that is Nigeria.

Now it is profitable to note that the Nigerian house negro isn’t necessarily a deplorable character, nor is he one to be pitied. They should be ignored; except they make themselves difficult to ignore. Like the YouTuber Emdee Tiamiyu, the house negro will always announce themselves by throwing everyone else and most times even other house negros under the bus. They will lie and sing whatever tune they think will please their white daddies. All to the detriment of their people. Except for the house negro, he is “different”. He might be a slave, but he’s an elevated slave. Like Emdee, their path to relevance is securing favour in the eyes of the master that could and does care less about them, at the cost of the field negros flourishing.

The Nigerian house negro is not to be pitied or laughed at. If he cannot be ignored, then he should be ostracised in full force. He should be made a pariah, a jest. Like Uncle Ruckus with no relation, he should never be allowed amongst his true kin. He should have no safe refuge, no comforting bosom when his illusion of being loved by his owner is shattered. Then will he know, that the laws and narratives he promoted about the field negro, also apply and will always apply to him.

Resources on House and Field Negros:

Malcolm describes the difference between the "house Negro" and the "field Negro." - https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxa17.html

Malcolm X - The House Negro and the Field Negro -