Americanah

She called Araminta. “I feel like the confused wife calling her sister-in-law to explain her husband to her,” she said.

“In high school, I remember there was some fundraiser, and they put out a table with cookies and whatever, and you were supposed to put some money in the jar and take a cookie, and you know, I’m feeling rebellious so I just take a cookie and don’t put any money in, and Blaine was furious with me. I remember thinking, Hey, it’s just a cookie. But I think for him it was the principle of it. He can be ridiculously high-minded some times. Give him a day or two, he’ll get over this.”

But a day passed, then two, and Blaine remained caged in his frozen silence. On the third day of his not saying a single word to her, she packed a small bag and left. She could not go back to Baltimore—her condo was rented out and her furniture in storage—and so she went to Willow.

What Academics Mean by White Privilege, or Yes It Sucks to Be Poor and White but Try Being Poor and Non-White

So this guy said to Professor Hunk, “White privilege is nonsense. How can I be privileged? I grew up fucking poor in West Virginia. I’m an Appalachian hick. My family is on welfare.” Right. But privilege is always relative to something else. Now imagine someone like him, as poor and as fucked up, and then make that person black. If both are caught for drug possession, say, the white guy is more likely to be sent to treatment and the black guy is more likely to be sent to jail. Everything else the same except for race. Check the stats. The Appalachian hick guy is fucked up, which is not cool, but if he were black, he’d be fucked up plus. He also said to Professor Hunk: Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can’t we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied—that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice. The black guy on the street in New York doesn’t want to think about race, until he tries to hail a cab, and he doesn’t want to think about race when he’s driving his Mercedes under the speed limit, until a cop pulls him over. So Appalachian hick guy doesn’t have class privilege but he sure as hell has race privilege. What do you think? Weigh in, readers, and share your experiences, especially if you are non-black.

PS—Professor Hunk just suggested I post this, a test for White Privilege, copyright a pretty cool woman called Peggy McIntosh. If you answer mostly no, then congratulations, you have white privilege. What’s the point of this you ask? Seriously? I have no idea. I guess it’s just good to know. So you can gloat from time to time, lift you up when you’re depressed, that sort of thing. So here goes:

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult for you to join?

When you go shopping alone at a nice store, do you worry that you will be followed or harassed?

When you turn on mainstream TV or open a mainstream newspaper, do you expect to find mostly people of another race?

Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race?

When you apply for a bank loan, do you worry that, because of your race, you might be seen as financially unreliable?

If you swear, or dress shabbily, do you think that people might say this is because of the bad morals or the poverty or the illiteracy of your race?

If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as “different” from the majority of your race?

If you criticize the government, do you worry that you might be seen as a cultural outsider? Or that you might be asked to “go back to X,” X being somewhere not in America?

If you receive poor service in a nice store and ask to see “the person in charge,” do you expect that this person will be a person of another race?

If a traffic cop pulls you over, do you wonder if it is because of your race?

If you take a job with an Affirmative Action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race?

If you want to move to a nice neighborhood, do you worry that you might not be welcome because of your race?

If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you?

When you use the “nude” color of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?

CHAPTER 39

Aunty Uju had taken up yoga. She was on her hands and knees, back arched high, on a bright blue mat on the basement floor, while Ifemelu lay on the couch, eating a chocolate bar and watching her.

“How many of those things have you eaten? And since when do you eat regular chocolate? I thought you and Blaine eat only organic, fair trade.”

“I bought them at the train station.”

“Them? How many?”

“Ten.”

“Ahn-ahn! Ten!”

Ifemelu shrugged. She had already eaten them all, but she would not tell Aunty Uju that. It had given her pleasure, buying chocolate bars from the newsstand, cheap bars filled with sugar and chemicals and other genetically modified ghastly things.

“Oh, so because you are quarreling with Blaine, you are now eating the chocolate he doesn’t like?” Aunty Uju laughed.

Dike came downstairs and looked at his mother, her arms now up in the air, warrior position. “Mom, you look ridiculous.”

“Didn’t your friend say that your mother was hot, the other day? This is why.”

Dike shook his head. “Coz, I need to show you something on YouTube, this hilarious video.”

Ifemelu got up.

“Has Dike told you about the computer incident at school?” Aunty Uju asked.

“No, what?” Ifemelu asked.

“The principal called me on Monday to say that Dike hacked into the school’s computer network on Saturday. This is a boy who was with me all day on Saturday. We went to Hartford to visit Ozavisa. We were there the whole day and the boy did not go near a computer. When I asked why they thought it was him, they said they got information. Imagine, you just wake up and blame my son. The boy is not even good with computers. I thought we had left them behind in that bush town. Kweku wants us to lodge a formal complaint, but I don’t think it’s worth the time. They have now said they no longer suspect him.”

“I don’t even know how to hack,” Dike said drily.

“Why would they do this sort of rubbish?” Ifemelu asked.

“You have to blame the black kid first,” he said, and laughed.

Later, he told her how his friends would say, “Hey, Dike, got some weed?” and how funny it was. He told her about the pastor at church, a white woman, who had said hello to all the other kids but when she came to him, she said, “What’s up, bro?” “I feel like I have vegetables instead of ears, like large broccoli sticking out of my head,” he said, laughing. “So of course it had to be me that hacked into the school network.”

“Those people in your school are fools,” Ifemelu said.

“So funny how you say that word, Coz, fools.” He paused and then repeated her words, “Those people in your school are fools,” in a good mimicry of a Nigerian accent. She told him the story of the Nigerian pastor who, while giving a sermon in a church in America, said something about a beach but because of his accent, his parishioners thought he had said “bitch” and they wrote to his bishop to complain. Dike laughed and laughed. It became one of their stock jokes. “Hey, Coz, I just want to spend a summer day at the bitch,” he would say.

FOR NINE DAYS, Blaine did not take her calls. Finally he answered the phone, his voice muffled.

“Can I come this weekend so we can cook coconut rice? I’ll do the cooking,” she said. Before he said “Okay,” she sensed an intake of breath and she wondered if he was surprised that she dared to suggest coconut rice.

SHE WATCHED Blaine cutting the onions, watched his long fingers and recalled them on her body, tracing lines on her collarbone, and on the darkened skin below her navel. He looked up and asked if the slices were a good size and she said, “The onion is fine,” and thought how he had always known the right size for onions, slicing them so precisely, how he had always steamed the rice although she was going to do it now. He broke the coconut against the sink and let the water out before he began to nudge the white meat off the shell with a knife. Her hands shook as she poured rice into the boiling water and, as she watched the narrow basmati grains begin to swell, she wondered if they were failing at this, their reconciliatory meal. She checked the chicken on the stove. The spices wafted up when she opened the pot—ginger and curry and bay leaves—and she told him, unnecessarily, that it looked good.

“I didn’t overspice it like you do,” he said. She felt a momentary anger and wanted to say that it was unfair of him to hold out forgiveness like this, but instead she asked if he thought she should add some water. He kept grating the coconuts and said nothing. She watched the coconut crumble into white dust; it saddened her to think that it would never be a whole coconut again, and she reached out and held Blaine from the back, wrapped her arms around his chest, felt the warmth through his sweatshirt, but he eased away and said he had to finish before the rice got too soft. She walked across the living room to look out of the window, at the clock tower, high and regal, imposing itself on the other buildings of the Yale campus below, and saw the first snow flurries swirling through the late evening air, as though flung from above, and she remembered her first winter with him, when everything had seemed burnished and unendingly new.