Black American or African American

This work is a meditation on race, heritage, and identity in America. What does it mean to be African American and who gets to define it? These questions first arose for me during a casual lunch. A co-worker recounted a trip to Europe where she traced her ancestors’ origins. Her story sparked a roundtable discussion about heritage and belonging. Each person spoke with clarity about their roots, connecting names, places, and histories with certainty.

For me, certainty has always been elusive. Unlike many Americans who can trace their lineage to a village, a region, or even a specific family name, most Black Americans encounter a sudden stop at the slave ships. Beyond that point, the threads are severed, leaving mystery and absence where knowledge should be. Black people in America are an amalgamation of cultures, African, European, Native, and more. We are a collage born of survival, shaped by violence, resilience, and adaptation.

During that lunch, as others pressed me with questions like “Are you from Nigeria? Somalia? Kenya?” I realized I was just as curious about my ancestors as they were. My immediate response was simple. “I’m just Black.” The group laughed, then added, “We know you’re Black, but you’re African American.”

But am I? That question has stayed with me. It is not just about labels but about what they reveal and what they obscure. It is about belonging, exile, invention, and the search for origin. It is about being from everywhere and nowhere at once.

This work grew from that tension. It reflects the uncertainty, curiosity, and longing that comes with an incomplete lineage. It is both a personal inquiry and a broader commentary on the African American experience, a space to sit with questions that often have no simple answers. The piece is meant to provoke reflection, to invite dialogue, and to acknowledge the complexity of identity that cannot be fully contained by words or categories.

African American? exists in the space between clarity and ambiguity. It is a record of history, a mirror for the present, and a meditation on the paths that connect us to our past, our culture, and to each other. It asks the viewer not to answer for me but to ask themselves what identity means when it is shaped by absence, resilience, and the unbroken desire to know where we come from.