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Without weighing into the latest racial impersonation scandals I just want to say that a few years ago I was devastated to find out that a group of largely white academics had begun and actively spread the rumor that I impersonate a race not my own.
That these were mostly but not totally white men who work in Black Studies who began this rumour did not surprise me. I can see why they'd need to step on a woman of color to legitimize their own political positionality.
What did surprise me was figuring out that nobody knew what I was, which is amazing because I've been writing and publishing about what I am and where my family comes from, for almost 30 years.
...amongst other places. How I got over being hurt and figured out a way to metabolize the whole experience into my next project, which is about the relationship between North Africa and western racial modernity, is a story for another day...
But what I did learn, as that false rumor did its ugly work in the world, is this: when it's a question of the violence that happens between or within communities of color, or towards communities of color, white people need to stay out.
Let communities of color adjudicate those things in their own language and their own time. Just be quiet and stay out.
And I know that because it was people of color, Black scholars and others who sat me down and said: people don't know what you are for *these* reasons. You are being misread for *these* reasons. And I had to look at myself squarely and see that....
...the question of racial legibility in the U.S. academy is far more fraught than I had understood, and I needed to make sure that my own identity was more clearly front and center, and also that when all of this came down, many of my most "woke" white friends ran away.
And also that real wisdom came from other people of color who sat me down and made sure that I knew how to be more careful and more legible as what I am. I count that as the moment that I stopped being Canadian and really became American.
That experience changed me, at the deepest level.
But also I learned: it is utmost and ethical for all of us to guard against the idea that identity is a monetizable commodity in the academy. That is a gross distortion of the work of equity and justice that needs to be done.
Also let me say: sometimes people just thought they were being funny and cute, and those people, those ethical people, I've long since straightened things out with, with respect and love. But man. That was a hard lesson learned.
Incidentally, if there are any questions left: I'll restate what I've always said: I am North African Jewish. Jewish people have been in North Africa for close to 2500 years. Some of us intermarried with/became a part of the Amazigh peoples. That is where "Wazana" comes from.
Some of us are also descended from the Jews who escaped the Inquisition following the collapse of 800 years of Moorish rule. I'm pretty sure that is where my name "Dona" came from.
For Americans I think that North Africans are outside of time - literally outside of the modern - and unplaceable within the West's topography of race.
Better defining that story is the work of my next book.
