BLACK AND GREEK
BLACK AND GREEK
Description
Born of a Greek mother and a Ghanaian father, Loukas recounts his childhood, showing us that identity is much more complicated than it appears. What happens when you're made to feel that your national identity doesn't "match" the color of your skin?
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Basilhs Koutsogiannhs
Interviewee
- Loukas Kemabor
Podcast Producer
- Magia Filippopoulou
Sound Designer
- Dhmhtrhs Palaiogiannhs
Sound Editor
- Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director
- Mixalhs Mpekos
Voiceover
- Γιάννης Νιάρρος
Music
- William Ryan Fritch
My mother is from Greece, from the island of Naxos to be more specific, and my father is from Ghana. Now, my exact origin, I wouldn’t know to tell you...
My father came to Greece during a big wave of immigration from Africa in the ‘90s. I didn't grow up with my father, because he was in jail for drug trafficking. And the needs that forced him to “push” drugs were clearly material. It mainly has to do with the lack of integration in Greece. Which was, and continues to be, totally non-existent.
Kypseli, in general, is a multicultural neighborhood. And you could see in the square all the nationalities living there. I went to the 30th primary school. And there, when I went out in the square, there were Russians, Poles, Albanians, Africans, Filipinos, and a bunch of other nationalities, we all played together. In school I was suddenly the only Black boy, and two more kids, who were my sister and my brother, in the entire school.
My first day in school, I go into the room, and all the kids were lined up, sitting along the walls on benches. And I went to sit in the first opening I found, and the child I was sitting next to, got up and moved, and went to sit further away. And this went on with two or three other kids, until the teacher stopped them from getting up from my side, because I was sitting there. And this was my first day in school, and that is when I started to realize that I truly have a unique identity.
I had very few friends. I mean, the friends I had from school were Albanian immigrants who also came out in the square. We played ball. Most frequently it was the Albanian, Greek and Polish kids, we kind of had national football teams. I was usually in the group of Greeks, regardless of how I felt and how these same Greeks made me feel in school. It was easy to target me as a Black person, and this was mainly done by Albanians, who were oppressed and they wanted to find someone they could oppress more. And this also helped them form a shared identity with Greeks.
It is not only that I had the identity of a second generation immigrant, which is blatantly obvious, because I am Black. I also had a class identity. I was clearly among the poorest children of the school. I mean, we would eat in the school, and I was one of the children who never, or nearly never, had any lunch with them. And there were many teachers who realized this and helped me. They would say: “Go”, for example, “and get something from the canteen, and get something for yourself too”, and that is how I got my meals. Or children would forget their meals in the refrigerator for a couple of days, and the ladies that were there to warm up your food in the microwave would give it to me to eat.
Our neighbors never liked us, for various reasons. The average Greek family man is not used to our class, let’s say. We were very free, in general. We would go out and wander around more or less anywhere we wanted, and roamed the streets as much as we wanted, and our mother would never say anything, and there were people who would say: “Children can't be raised like this.” I was six or seven years old and I would play out in the square until ten or eleven at night, they would say: “What can a child do at this time outside? It’s dangerous for the child.” And it was actually dangerous, but we didn't feel it at the time.
When I was nine, the neighbors filed a complaint and by prosecutor’s order, we found ourselves in an institution. It’s called the Association for the Protection of Minors, and it is in Nea Ionia.
The social worker who was responsible for this entire process, was totally incompetent, to say the least. This lady came to our house, she came two or three times, and I didn't even know who she is, what she is or what she does. One day she told us: “Let’s go camping.” We went, we got ready for camping, me and my brother, and instead of camping, they took us to the institution.
In the institution you hang out with everyone. Because you have many common experiences that bring you together. I mean, you may not like someone, but it’s essentially a new family, and no matter how much you dislike certain things in your family, it's still your family. We all had this relationship when we were there, in the institution. And everything else, potentially keeping us apart, was ‘torn apart, from the beginning.
I mean, we would very often pick out someone, and take a characteristic that made him stand out and make him a target, and in a very cruel way, which was to make fun of him all day long, this element was totally torn apart. The fact that I was Black was totally torn apart in this way. That fact that the other guy was Albanian, was totally torn apart, the fact that someone was a gypsy, was totally torn apart, and only the core of our identity would remain, which had more to do with our experiences and our feelings, than the image which people would see.
I went to school in Nea Ionia afterwards, because I was in the institution. When I walked into the classroom, the first thing I did was to look around and find the foreigners. And I saw that in our class there was only one Albanian, only one Albanian!
When you’re a foreigner there is a very big overlap with being poor. And that is why I was looking for the Albanians. Because I knew that in all likelihood, they were poor like me. Because the class aspect was even stronger. Many children had a mobile phone, had bicycles, they all had a balcony, at their house. And, in Kypseli, I was used to seeing the homes of my friends with most of them living in basements, not even semi-basements. And I was in shock there.
High School, Lyceum, again in Nea Ionia. And I felt better. And we have very good teachers in school who knew about the institution, and they helped our integration a lot. I had friends from school, mainly Greeks. I mean, I could now hang out with children who were a lot richer. My romantic relationships helped a lot in this too. I mean, a girlfriend I had, who I was in a relationship with, she had a five-storey house, or two-three-four houses with swimming pools and all that, country houses and the like. And I realized at some point in our relationship that if I focus on common stories and common experiences in order to hang out with people, I will end up on my own. I started focusing on the emotions that people feel. And emotions are the same for all people.
Coincidently, they were all Greek girls, all the ones that I have been in a relationship with that lasted for more than a few months. And I could never like, to begin with, a girl who didn’t like me because I was Black. But yes, there are also those women who may want me for the sole reason that I’m Black.
I don't perceive my racial identity at all, I perceive myself only as an emotional entity. I meet Black people, I mean, and I feel a distance between us, because I have not actually grown up with my father, I don’t have the cultural background they have at all. On the other hand, I don’t have the visual essence of a Greek, so I am very much in the middle. And I realize that when your identity consists of two cultures and you have adopted the culture not reflected by your skin, there is a very big problem.
I am at a phase in my life right now where I am trying to overcome the fact that when a Greek meets me he expects me to be culturally African, and I am not. The fact that I meet an African and he expects me to have African cultural characteristics, and I don't, puts me in the margin, I feel very much in a vacuum.
I am here in Greece, where I am growing up, and I am Greek, and it is the only country I know, and I meet people in the street and they ask me where I’m from, all the time, when I am clearly Greek. I mean, I often wake up, and I see myself in the mirror and I am surprised because I am Black! I say: “Oh, I am Black!” And only then do I realize that I have an identity which everyone can see immediately.