Onyx Worldwide Part II: Black in New Zealand
7.14.08


NEWSFLASH -- Several friends of the African Diaspora have told me that they never feel more American than they do when traveling abroad.  While this is true for many born and raised in the good ole U.S.A. , I feel it is especially true for most African Americans.  A close friend of mine visited a European country with his family.  They were standing in a tightly clustered group of five on a semi-deserted street corner when a car sped by and a passenger yelled out two words, one that they’d never been called before, “Heeeeeyy!  Americans!!!!!!!”  “What,” he later asked, “do you think we were bracing ourselves to be called when we saw a speeding car with three white men in them coming our way?” I responded with silence.  That was clearly a rhetorical question.

The reasoning behind his question was the exact reason it’s so great to travel. You expand your knowledge and perspective while finding that the world is really quite a small one.  Despite culture, race, and history, people are just people in more ways than can be counted.  Still, their differences range from subtle to mind blowing.  There is no doubt that the color of my skin, along with the knowledge of and identification with my heritage in this country, puts a unique spin on my traveling experience.  Not only am I a curiosity to the locals, but I have an entirely different connection to what I see and experience when I’m globe trotting.

Of course where I’ve chosen to travel has something to do with all this as well.  Since I’ve had European history shoved down my throat via classes in high school and peppered throughout my undergrad years as an English major, I consider other continents far more exotic and of immediate interest.  Various countries in Europe are on my list, but none of them are at the top (save Siberia ).  With the exception of Egypt (and Southern Egypt at that), I’ve traveled to places where black people are even more of a rarity than we are in the U.S.  

Enter New Zealand.

It was never my intention to travel abroad as anything but a tourist.  Like my friend, I’ve felt the most American when outside of my own country – a fact that I will neither apologize for nor explain. I have never ventured anywhere with the goal of representing slave descended blacks from America, but oddly enough – I ended up doing so in NZ.  Throughout my entire trip, I saw four black people and all of them were in the capital city of Auckland .  At different times, I was keenly aware that I stuck out, not because people openly stared (okay, some did), but due to what I found of interest that tourists of other ethnicities did not. 

I figured I’d share some of those observations as they highlighted stereotypes while also dispelling them and made me keenly aware that huge chunks of Americanized black culture permeate the islands of this sparsely populated country even in our absence.  The first experience centered around my race seemed to come out of nowhere.  I was in the middle of a canyon in Queenstown ( South Island ). I’d just been fitted tightly into a harness.  I was bracing myself to take a free fall of over 350 feet when I was asked a question by one of the Canyon Swing crewmembers.  I could tell by the bugging of his eyes that it was something he really wanted to know.  I had trouble hearing him over the rap music blaring from a crystal clear sound system (Yung Joc, Cube, Lupe Fiasco, and Method Man among others).

“WHAT’D YOU SAY?!”  I shouted nervously, allowing my attention to wonder slightly from the scary ass task at hand.

“You said you’re from L.A. ”

“Yes,” I responded.

“I asked if you were there during the riots!”

I don’t say anything for a second.  I haven’t been asked that question in so long.  “Ah- yeah.  But that was 15 years ago,” I say loudly.  “I was a teenager.”

He’s not finished though.

“Did you get anything?”

“WHAT?”

“Were you one of the ones out there grabbing stuff?”

Jesus, I think to myself, has this man been waiting to ask a black person from L.A. this question for a decade and a half? I know white people from Los Angeles have already been through this remote neck of the New Zealand woods.  For a minute I forget that I’m about to jump backwards off this obscure scaffold embedded in a canyon wall and I wonder.  Just for a few seconds. I wonder if he’s been holding on to this image of blacks (and Mexicans) looting up and down the streets of South Central.  Deciding that I should answer honestly, I spit out the truth in a mild state of confused annoyance.

“No, actually.  I was one of the ones inside my house watching my entire neighborhood get covered in a layer of ash from the fires.”

“Oh,” he stammers.  “I see.”  Do you? I wonder.  Do you see that there are other parts to that moment in time that did not make it into a fuckin’ rap song?  He moves on and asks me what do I do for a living.  I’m tempted to say, “Rob liquor stores.”  That’d be pointless.  I’m not here to change his mind and I’ve already thrown him off.  As I glance over my shoulder at the canyon riverbed, I think briefly about all of my friends who were out looting.  But he didn’t ask about them.

The rest of my time in Queenstown was just a reminder of how similar NZ is to the United States .  My race didn’t come up, but reminders of how alike people of the western world are did.  I talked to a 70-year-old shopkeeper who wanted to understand why the Americans he sees have been getting fatter and fatter with each passing season.  He also wanted to “get his hands on” one who had voted for George W. Bush.  He claimed every American he’d talk to hadn’t.  “That’s quite possible,” I said.  “The hard core Bushies don’t get out of the U.S. very often.  And most of the ones that do wouldn’t come to New Zealand if they couldn’t do so in a private jet.”

New Zealand was in the heat of election season and claims from their National Party sounded like the traditional Republican yick yack.  The Labor Party, like the Democrats, was having trouble keeping its promises to people who’d put its members in power.  The economy was in a slump and the housing market in urban areas was in the same crises mode as ours.  Truckers were holding demonstrations over the price of gas (which translated last month into about $7.50 a gallon).  The “mainstream” news did a special on how more New Zealanders were opting for plastic surgery though they were being quiet about it.  They didn’t want people to think they’d “become too much like Americans.”  And yet our country’s influence was everywhere, but primarily via overpriced McMansions and a KFC in more places than I could keep track of.  Why, I wondered, is the worst kind of American food being exported?  Profit and corporate muscle, I figured.  I had these same thoughts when I looked across the street from the Sphinx in Giza and saw a KFC atop a Pizza Hut.  My annoyance returned when I spotted two restaurants on large ships cruising the Nile.  One had a Chili’s and the other had a T.G.I. Fridays (not owned by Magic Johnson).

Throughout the rest of my time in New Zealand people were eager to find out my views as an American, not an African American (which was refreshing).  But on many issues, I had no ability and made no attempt to separate the two.  People from several countries primarily wanted to vent about the war in Iraq and I rediscovered that the relationship most people have to America is a mixed one of love, hate, admiration, disgust, amusement, resentment, and ice cold fury.  Yet I welcomed the exchange.  As someone who lives in a country where people make venomous distinctions about blacks and where we don’t fit into the country’s fabric, it was interesting to have people make me synonymous with the place of my birth.  They assumed that I was in love with my country the way they were in love with theirs.  And it was odd to find myself owning my country with all its faults, as it is the only one I can claim with certainty. (I haven’t had a DNA swab done). 

But being a minority in America came to the surface again as I turned off the mainstream news and began to watch the translated Maori news, or rather, read the subtitles.  Suddenly, African Americans were the topic of various stories and mostly in negative ways.  Two very different news features stuck out.  One concerned the Maori Youth Council’s debate over hoodies.  That’s right.  Certain elders were rallying against youth of New Zealand ’s indigenous people wearing hooded sweatshirts and jackets.  Why?  Because they felt it was an homage to African American gangs.  “We don’t want our children glorifying the violence of those people,” an elder stated.  Ah, I said to myself as I prepared for another day of touring, here it is.

Another story focused on the men of Rotorua ( North Island ) holding a male-only meeting entitled Mana Men.  The purpose behind the meeting was an open and frank discussion about issues such as domestic violence, falling behind their women in terms of education, and raising their children.  “We don’t want to exclude women,” a spokesperson said, “but we need to get ourselves together and address these issues as men.”  I understood.  I’d seen the same concept enacted by black men in 1995 with the Million Man March.  Good luck to them, I thought.  I wondered what would really come out of it. I thought about the Million Man March, the original one, and its purpose versus its results.  While many touted it as a success and a supposed turning point in the African American male community, I remembered others tearing it down – stating that it was a farce and a superficial exercise that failed to gather more than 500,000 black men.  Even then, in my late teens, I remembered being pissed at those quibbling over numbers.  I thought that the Man part was more important than the Million.  Later on during a cultural show, I learned that the Maori people were Polynesian.  I asked the speaker why they weren’t still called Polynesian.  “Many reasons,” he explained.  “But mainly because a famous explorer gave us the name Maori.”  I looked at the rest of the tour group, who seemed not the least bit bothered by this explanation.  Explorer, indeed.  One name change because of a colonizer, I thought.  Not the worst bargain I’d seen.  Were African Americans on our 5^th or 6^th unofficial name?

It was around this time that anti-immigrant “activities” broke out in South Africa.   “We’re not like this,” one of the women interviewed stated.  “The blacks of South Africa are not like this.”  Another reminder that we all are “like that” on any given day with any given issue.  All these thoughts were milling around in my head during our last day in New Zealand .  I was walking around a local flea market when I passed an airbrushed photo of someone who looked familiar.  I went up to the artist, an East Asian man in his 40s, and asked him if that was his most requested tattoo. 

He glanced up.  “Oh, yeah.  I do more Eazy-E than anything else.” 

“Even Pac and Biggie?” I asked looking up at a black and white rendering of the gangsta rap pioneer who died of AIDS the same year as the Million Man March.  It was a good likeness – locs and jheri curl included. 

He chuckled, “Definitely more Eazy-E.  But we do Biggie, Tupac, Game, Fifty, all of them.  You interested?”

“No thanks,” I said.  “Just asking.  I’m from L.A. ”

“Really?  I have a question.”

Shit, I thought.  Please don’t ask about the riots.  I raised my eyebrows in anticipation.

“When is your election going to be over?”

Now I chuckled.  “November of this year.”

“You for Obama or Hillary?”

“I voted for Obama.”

“You think he’ll win?”

“Against Hillary or against McCain?” I asked.

“Against Hillary,” he clarified.

“Probably.  It’s been about 10 days since I was in the States.  When I left she really wasn’t trying to concede.”

“Yeah, but whoever wins will win against McCain,” he said with certainty.

“You think so?”  I asked.

“Definitely.  You guys wouldn’t vote for him. Another Republican!  He’s almost dead.”  The man paused as I considered this.  “Well, maybe you would.”

“What makes you say that?” 

“Because you voted for Bush.  TWICE!”  If he was waiting for an explanation, I didn’t have it.

I was about to say something about stolen black votes when two locals in their 20s walked in and asked if he could do a henna tattoo of Eazy on their backs.  I let him get back to business.  Is this all they think of us, I wondered.  Hoodies, Eric Wright, and Barack Obama.  Well, I thought.  At least the list is beginning to expand.

My trip to New Zealand was filled with much bigger moments and activities that added to my overall human experience, not just my black one.  Even so, these smaller moments and observations creep back and layer my brief excursion with profound meaning.  Even on vacation from the U.S. , there was no side trip from being black.  And that, I always end up figuring, is how it should be.  And even if it shouldn’t be, for me, that’s how it is.  And I wouldn’t change this.  I had a different trip than others who took the same flights and stayed at the same hotels.  I never know when the color of my skin will provide an experience that adds to the content of my character.  While I enjoyed New Zealand , two simple words said to me in Egypt is a better testament to this.  After being called Nubian in the warmest way and being asked where I was from by the same man who’d greeted the rest of my American group, a word was added to my greeting.  The others were told, “Welcome.” 

I was told, “Welcome back.”