Being golden brown in a black and white world

A unique, useful and universal cultural identity

Where do I belong? I have had to struggle so much, coming to grips with my own cultural identity. Puberty and adolescence were challenging, in this respect. And it’s no surprise, I suppose, considering that I’m light brown in a world that seems to be getting more black-or-white by the day. Why I’m so happy I figured out my cultural identity. And how that could be of use to you. Lightbrown or other.

It’s tricky being light brown

In the Netherlands, where I live, a fairly common phrase to call someone that’s brown on the outside but acts and maybe speaks more as one would expect a white person to, is ‘bounty’. This after the candy bar everybody here knows, made up of coconut gratings covered in dark chocolate. It’s also fairly common in colloquial conversation to call someone a ‘neger’ which basically means negro, a ‘mocro’ which is street slang for a person of Moroccan descent, or a ‘Turk’ which means, well, a Turk.

The Dutch multiculturalism is a funny thing. People whose roots are from the wet lowlands for more than an arbitrary number of generations, are referred to as ‘man’ or ‘woman’ and occasionally as a ‘white man/woman’ or ‘kaaskop’ – which means ‘cheese head’ and can loosely be taken at par with the American slang ‘cracker’ for a caucasian person.

Some people seem to think I’m a bounty. I never felt comfortable with that. And now I know why.

Puberty was tricky, and so was adolescence as a fairly well adjusted or ‘integrated’ Dutch kid of mixed African (Cape Verdean) descent. My parents named me Erwin which says a lot: Erwin is a hard core typical Dutch farm boy name, like a ‘Jack’ or ‘Buck’ in America – my cousins and uncles are all Manuels and Josés and Joãos. My dad has the beautiful Benvindo – which means welcome- as a first name; I got the abbreviated and easily pronounced Ben as a second name.

I fit in everywhere, in my childhood. And I kind of fit in nowhere. The fun and the beauty was being in the middle between working class and then somewhat upper class white people, and nice and neat and then some kind of ghetto brown and black people, all at the same time.

Hopping back and forth between these goups on a day-to-day basis. Bringing them together at house parties. Learning from each of these cultural groups; developing a unique perspective on their similarities and – more so perceived than nessesarily real – differences.

The hard and shitty part was having to sort of advocate the cause of the one group whenever I found myself in the middle of the other. Sort of being automatically pushed or pulled toward being the champion of all black people, brown people and muslims – whom I never dealt with much, coincidentally – or immigrants in general, when a conversation around or between white people gravitated toward the often unwanted behavior of the perceived out-group. The stupid, the lazy, the loud and the riding of the welfare system. “What do you think about how…?’

Being the spokesperson for, I guess, ‘other white people’ and bounties just like me when brown or black or mixed groups of people derided their sausless, greedy, kind of dirty and stuck-up white neighbours and countrymen. ‘You know what they’re like, explain it to us?’

Now I must state, that neither during my childhood, adolescence or adulthood did I ever pause for two seconds in a group where people didn’t make me feel welcome and respected. But at the same time, I always kind of felt like the odd man out, and at times was treated like that. Maybe that’s a chicken-and-egg discussion, I’m not sure.

Being lightbrown and culturally mixed was fun and weird and awkward, but always slightly confusing to me. Up until just last month. And mind you I am now 34 years old and a father of two.

I’m 100% Cape Verdean, I am 100% Dutch

My parents are from the Cape Verde Islands, a small archipelago in the Atlantic ocean that is a former Portuguese colony. The people, the language, and the culture of Cape Verde are essentially a beautiful mixture of east and west African, southern European Jewish, and east and south Asian (Macao, Goa).

I have always felt like 100% Cape Verdean, but I never felt strongly accepted in the Cape Verdean community at large. I have come to realize that must be a two-way street kind of thing. I will commit more to getting a firmer handle on my CV roots.

But the problem, the pain and the pride couldn’t be sung more beautifully than they have been by Teofilo Chantre and Mayra Andrade, in ‘Segunda Geracão’:

What does being Cape Verdean mean for my identity?

That I know what it means to long for someone or something, because sailing all the seas is in my blood and ‘Sodade’ is in the blood of my culture. That I am open minded and have an open heart to any foreign thing, person, culture, food, tradition or music, because I am a quintessential Creole: I exist by the grace of the open mixing of people and cultures.

It means I have a knack for language and creative arts, because it’s common for us to speak three or four languages fluently and because of the – I suppose – natural creativity that gets honed in creole populations as they invent their own language, culture and ways to live.

You want to know what’s the funny thing I found out?

The same as being from Rotterdam

Those three are the exact same things that I get from being Dutch, and more specifically a Rotterdam boy. The Dutch have a long history of sea faring, and specifically the port city of Rotterdam is still, up to this day the world’s gateway to Europe.

Rotterdam also has longing in her veins, as you can hear in the beautiful old timey poem ‘Ketelbinkie’.

Dutch people also have a very elemental openness to them, which greatly spurred on their antics in their golden age where a miniscule cold country with a soggy bottom became one of the world’s leading and most prosperous nations. The Rotterdam mentality as I experience it is to say: ‘I don’t care what you look like, I might be interested in what you’re cooking but the main thing is can we get along and get ahead together. Long as that’s fine, we’re fine.’

And finally the Dutch and again, specifically Rotterdam people are immensely creative and innovative. Nessesity in the form of low lands spurred on immense innovation in the Dutch water works. Have a gander at Rotterdam architecture to get a feel for how possibly also here, nessessity was the mother of creativity after the bombings of our fair city in WWII:

I suppose you could say that The Netherlands was built partly on the profits from slave trade, and Cape Verde is a developmental country as a result of the same. But to me it feels like it’s no coincidence that Cape Verdean immigrants flocked to the port city here, as they have elsewhere (whaddup, Boston area?) all over the world, and that the Cape Verdeans integrated so smoothly and softly into the Rotterdam way of life as compared to other non-western immigrants.

Both quintessentially open-minded, both — nowadays at least — comprised of people from all colors of the rainbow and both with sarcasm as a strong first language, Dutch Rotterdam and Cape Verdean people are essentially the same people.

De-polarize: find the gold in the middle

I believe that that thing that makes you different in any group or social situation you may find yourself in, is what constitutes your super power. The thing and the value that only you can bring to the table the way that you can. Embrace it.

So that’s maybe it: I think I found one of my secret super powers: I’m the man in the middle. I’m the odd one out, and maybe that makes me uniquely capable of bringing polar — or, more so, polarized- opposites together. In the end, in the world and in the universe — we’re always going to be more alike than different, arent’t we? It’s time to celebrate the gold in the middle again.

The gold in the middle

Being golden brown
In a world of black and white
Is like being the twilight that divides
And unites day and night

And as hard as you may find it
To define me and decide
What group I should be in

As hard is it for me to find a place
Where I fit in

Yet, in
My and your world that’s every day
More polarized

It’s the note that’s in the middle that makes
Or breaks the music

So I
Fit in, belong and harmonize with every
Single One of you
And no one group
Exactly like none of you

Just like all of us:

Golden on the inside and
Me, also the out.

Come be Golden in the Middle, with me?

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