I’ve really got a taste of what it is to be a minority this past year, and truth be told, it’s not that fun. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an oppressed minority by any stretch, but the thing is, a fair amount of experience comes from the visible part. I mean, I suppose I belong to a minority of “immigrants” and “Americans” in Canada, but the truth is that being white, and having been raised in Canada since infancy, that minority status is completely invisible and virtually never affects me. And I suppose that “women” are categorized as visible minorities when it comes to jobs, but in no way does being a woman in Canada compare to being white in Ghana.

When I say this it will be obvious, but I think that it’s something us non-minorities don’t tend to give much thought to: when you are a minority, you experience the aggregate of people’s reactions to you. And when even 1% of the population is aggressive or rude, that can mean many instances every single day. And as an individual, experiencing this, your tolerance for aggression and rudeness goes way down, then down some more, then way, way, way down some more, until you are ready to scream at anyone who singles you out for any reason.

So, to be less abstract: very very few Ghanaians are aggressive to me. I’ve been grabbed (by the arm or hand) a few times in the city, and there are people who will raise their voices and demand explanations if I don’t please them (like the complete stranger who started yelling at me and demanding to know why I wouldn’t marry him, didn’t I think he was good enough), but these people are very few and far between. However, after a year and a bit here, those experiences start to aggregate, and lesser things start to bother me. Whereas I started out not much caring if people called out “White man! white MAN!!” to get my attention, now I find it intensely irritating. When a man sat down in a shared taxi next to me the other day and asked me to pay for him, I got very irritated, and wasn’t able to keep that out of my voice. The conversation went something like:

“Please, pay for me”
“No.”
“Yes, you can pay for me, please. I want to be your friend.”
“I have lots of friends. I can’t pay for them all.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to pay for them all, just for me.”
(My voice starting to rise) “If you think it’s okay to ask a perfect stranger for money how many people a day do you think ask me that, huh? Why don’t you ask her for money.” (Indicate other lady in taxi)
“oh, no, she is… she can’t. You…”
“I can’t give everybody who asks money”
“I’m not asking for money, just for you to pay. I want to be your friend.”
“You just want to be my friend for money.”
“Oh! no! Where are you from?” (And it goes on with the more usual script: what is your name, where do you stay, are you married, etc.).

There were two other women in the taxi watching, and I got the impression that they did not have much sympathy for the man. What he did is pretty rude by Ghanaian standards. Friends often pay for each other, and sometimes strangers who strike up a conversation will pay for each other, but demanding some gift as the beginning of friendship is not done here. And yet I get this all the time. And that’s the thing about being a minority. There are things that people would never do with their fellow members of the majority, but that they will do to and with minorities.

So why am I recounting all this? Well, I think that there is a tendency when you are a member of the majority who is confronted with an angry, insulted member of a minority to feel like you are being unjustly blamed. And there is a tendency when you are a minority to have difficulty separating the people who are jerks from the people who are curious, from the many more people who are indifferent. But the other thing that its important to remember when you are a majority is that while you can choose not to harass and insult and otherwise harm minorities, they can’t choose to not be harassed, insulted, and otherwise harmed. And I know from talking to other white people here, and from how I’ve found myself feeling, that the relentlessness of that fact, combined with the aggregated experiences of it can lead to an anger that can be hard to put aside. So, I guess what I’ve been thinking lately, is that I shouldn’t try so hard in Canada to emulate the indifferent masses, as I have in the past as to emulate the people here who have welcomed me and given me counter experiences to draw on and remember when confronted with irritations large and small. People who take time not just to give me directions, but show me the way, who smile, who ask if my needs are met, people who show a polite and not too pushy interest in where I’m from and what I’m doing here.

Filed under: Daily-Living Ghana