By Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine

Since my first day here, I’ve come across something that I’ve quite literally never experienced. For the first time in my life, I am identified as a white woman. And I don’t know how to feel about that.

In Ghana, anyone who doesn’t look Black or Ghanaian is considered an “obroni,” or white person. That’s the only racial social construct here: you’re either Black or you’re… white. It doesn’t carry a negative connotation necessarily, but serves more as a title – kind of similar to using the term “haole” in Hawai‘i. 

I know I’m a foreigner. But a white woman? Never saw that one coming.

It’s actually caused a lot more reflection on my identity than I expected. As someone who is half-Black but doesn’t look like the Black side of my family, I’ve had a bit of impostor syndrome my whole life with my relationship to Blackness. Since I was little, I was always the kid who looked like I was adopted at family reunions. And even though I’ve grown up with and around my Black family and friends, I’ve kind of accepted at this point that I understand my own identity with Blackness, while still operating as an ally in many spaces due to my appearance.

Honestly, I was already expecting to be othered coming in. But on top of that, being (basically) handed the same pedestal of racial privilege as whiteness holds in my mind is a whole different feeling. 

In the US, I’d be considered a brown woman, or at least a person of color. In reality, I’m a chameleon; an ethnically ambiguous person who can check all the different boxes. But my connotation of a “white woman” is neither an experience nor a culture that I have ever related to. And as someone who lives in one of the whitest cities in America, I’ve tried to reject whiteness as much as possible, protecting my identities and histories as both Afro-Cuban and Indigenous Islander.

It’s becoming a giant pill I have to swallow. To everyone here, yes — I am indeed a privileged white woman. And yet, it’s something I have to both accept and be uncomfortable with.

The coworkers who know that I’m Afro-Cuban encourage me to learn more about my history while I’m in Ghana. My other Black peers in this cohort have tried to validate my experiences as both an “ally” and a member of the community. There are glimpses of acceptance here and there. And sometimes, I don’t even know if I should be accepted in the first place.

Whenever I get called on in the workplace and turn my shoulder, or when someone wags a finger in my direction and says “obroni” while mid-conversation in Twi, a small whisper in the back of my mind asks if this is justifying the severing of my connection to Black identity.

But of course, they don’t know when they look at me. People in the US don’t even know. So… how could they?

So for today, I’m an obroni. I might not be Black, or Black enough, for the people around me. And that’s okay. I’ve been dealing with that reflection my whole life. But I’ll continue to recognize this space of privilege I hold here as a mixed Black and Indigenous woman. And I will also continue to question the colorism and racial structures we operate in this world.