How is being an American journalist covering Africa an advantage?
A disadvantage? I’ve found that Americanness isn’t a big issue in working here because my skin color will always trump the passport I carry. I am white. Whether I like it or not, Africa’s maddening skin game defines my worth, my power, my unreliability, my ancestral sins, the sum total of my identity via my dose of melanin. Goodbye subtlety. True, on a superficial political level there remains—amazingly—some residual good will towards Americans in Africa by the simple virtue that we weren’t a colonial power here. But that’s been eroded by deepening anti-American anger in the Sahel, or Muslim black Africa. So again, black and white are the only flags that really matter to most U.S. journalists toiling in Africa. Everyone handles this differently. (See Keith Richburg’s controversial book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.) In my own odd case, it led to some revelations. Having grown up among bronze people in Mexico, I’ve never felt completely at ease in the dominant white cult
