Why can an Irish Miss be black and a Zimbabwean Miss not be white? Or what does it mean to be African, and can there be white Africans?

I had promised to give my opinion on this subject, which had excited many people last month, and perhaps still does.

Some posts accused Black people of being racist for denying Miss Brooke Bruk-Jackson her hard-earned crown. In an era where diversity is celebrated, this should be no surprise. Plus, that same year a Black woman, Aishah Akorede, won the title of Miss Universe of Ireland to a standing ovation.

Does Diversity apply to just a few?

Undoubtedly, it is discriminatory (not racism, I had already explained in one of my posts why white people cannot be victims of racism) to want to exclude Miss Brooke Bruk-Jackson, from the crown because of the colour of her skin. Welcoming diversity means celebrating the different traits of human beings, but above all normalising those who until now have been marginalised and abnormalized.

And this is hardly a question of minority; you can be a minority and still be more privileged, as is the case for white bodies in a post-colonial world structure. In this, I agree with those who mentioned the aspect of representation. In a world where the ideal of beauty long preached is that of fair skin, it is important to give black women their ambassadors. If only these Misses would wear their natural hair, less make-up, and not always this skinny look that we rarely see among Black women! But that's another story!

Moreover, the history of the presence of black people outside the African continent and that of white people outside Europe is not the same. I'm not talking about the new voluntary migrations from Africa to Europe and from Europe to Africa, of which I have been a part. If that is all, you can and should be able to be of whatever country you want. There are people who migrate to a country and spouse the values and cultures of that country better than the indigenous people.

I am talking about the burden of history, which made some people settlers and others slaves. Many black people were deported from Africa during the transatlantic passage by the Europeans themselves, and in the process were forced to lose their identities. Between the slavers' boats, and the cotton plantations, the perverse slave master obstinated by the generous hips of the beautiful slave was born a nation, between many nations, or rather a nation with many nations. White people, on the other hand, have forced themselves on others to the sound of rifles and the cry of death. And this does not leave the same scars.

History has left its marks on Miss Jackson, Miss Akorede, and all of us differently. We could all escape from it. If only we would not continuously reproduce history!

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The real questions here are: who is an African and whether a white person can be African?

The issue that agitates people is beyond whether or not Miss Brooke, as a white woman, can be Miss Universe Zimbabwe. The real questions are who is an African and can a white person be African?

• An African is someone who has an African parent or ancestor
• But it's also someone who has immigrated to Africa and decided to make it home, to embrace its cultures, values, flavours, scents, and so on

In this case, anyone can be African, whether they are white, blue, or green, right, just as a European, or Asian can be Black?

This would be the ideal.

But,

• to be African is also to bear the trauma of slavery and colonisation
• It means experiencing racism
• It's having to explain that you did not go to school under a big mango tree and that you had enough to eat while growing up
• It's having your photos plastered on giant placards in the Christmas run-up, with the words "One Euro for an ice cream = a future for children in Africa" underneath.
• It is being refused a visa on the grounds that you don't have enough proof to return home
• It is being called "exotic"

...

To be African is to be marked by the seal of Sulbaterne, but above all to resist the colonial system that wants to keep Africa below other continents.

This is why Africans would relate more to a Haitian, a Honduran, an Indian, a Black American, or an Iraqi than to a white person from southern Africa.

This is why sometimes even a person of African descent who has grown up in the West can be excluded from this Africanness.

Who built this Africanness?

But who constructed that definition of "African"? Certainly not me! I long for the freedom of all to decide which country they want to be part of, to blend cultures and citizenships, something "glocal" (global and local). Most of this African identity, I had learned?it myself when I came to Europe.

So do not ask me, but

• ask the European ethnologists, Blumenbach, Kant, and Gobineau, and their long descriptions of Africanness.
• Ask the Western geo-politicians who call Africa black Africa the "Black continent"
• Ask the Western media who only show black people whenever they talk about sub-Saharan Africa.
• ?Ask the Western politicians why they rushed to impose economic sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2000 when its president wanting to restore a balance of power decided to redistribute land and give back to black people a bit of the land of their ancestors which had been brutally taken away from them under the Rhodesian regime from 1890 to 1980, plunging the whole country into a violent economic crisis.
• Ask the United States, Australia, the UK, and the EU why they demanded that black people pay compensation to the children of those who killed their ancestors, expropriated their land, and pushed them into barren areas, rather than the other way around.

And this in a post-Apartheid country, pregnant with memories of domination by Rhodesian racial supremacists,where 70% of fertile land was in the hands of the white minority (1%), like the von Pezold family, who never lost track of where in Europe they came from, creating a huge gap in economic power that has not been bridged to this day. A country where there is still little social integration: where there is still an urban division, as in many African countries, where white people live in exclusive suburbs of Harare like Mount Pleasant, Glen Lorne, and Borrodale, have their own private clubs, their own private restaurants, their own public schools with enrolment fees so high as to keep out the majority of black people who are less well off.

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You would have understood, that these are the repercussions of the colonial division of the world, not by region but by race.

Instead of being indignant about cases like these, let's build a world where everyone belongs, a world where you can be from the North Pole if you want!