It’s extremely triggering to watch people conveniently plot all while reproducing neo-bourgeoisie rhetorics of meritocracy and moral virtue that create a climate of exclusionary group politics.. https://twitter.com/sucolorfavorito/status/1311675794461163520

I am speaking specifically for myself as a Cameroonian/Zimbabwean woman: my diasporic stance is in constant redefinition and up for criticism: it is a geo-political positionality that creates particular conditions of ontological possibility for self-definition

Also given my class privileges (one part of my family is neo-bourgeois while for the most part, my other part is working class and rural), I have realized that it is my duty to deprioritize my class identity over my desire to create organic relationships with my community

This is particularly because of the damage caused by diasporic Cameroonians who have spread a dangerous rhetoric about their European experience erecting it as the ultimate experience of humanization and social mobility: no matter what class they belong to

This experience is exaggerated by the general belief that the “mbeng” (western countries) is what automatically generates class mobility. Thus mbengistes ( the diasporic class) generate both a feeling of envy & distrust resulting in othering: a reactionary defense mechanism

This dynamic of othering is also/mostly upheld by the most privileged from the diaspora wth the general support of upper-class Cameroonians who insist on preserving themselves from activities, places, people from lower-classes unless it is part of their aesthetic

It’s a liberating experience to be hyper-conscious of these dynamics, on one hand, it impacts me to be othered by my own people, but on the other hand, I have the agentic power to also access both worlds because I had to learn how to code-switch.

and that is because in Africa, specifically Cameroon, my class politics (educated worker) my desirability (I am medium brown deemed light-skinned in colorist grading), my cisness, my ethnicity (part of discriminated ethic group) all inform the power of my agency/ or lack of

Now what determines my methodology and course of action is mostly, my vocation as an educator and pedagogue in training: it is my radicalized awareness that inform my agentic power and the choices I make when moving across class lines: there is where lies my relative privileges

I can move freely and this is why I encourage us all to examine how much power we actually have to navigate our communities ethically and in solidarity with the particular experiences of the most vulnerable humility has taught me that my service is in listening and sharing