What does it mean to be Somali?

[SheekoIyoShaah]

http://sahanjournal.com/somali/#.VepRYfZVikp

Interesting piece on identity by Maxamed Ibrahim

 

[Freebandz]

There is no way his parents didn't tell him stories about somalia or the civil war
I was told about the civil war in details when I was very little

 

[Duchess]

I wanted the world to stop making me cry. Even at seven years of age, I knew the world outside the Vermont curtains were stained red in the blood of other less fortunate children. I think this knowledge produced an anxiety that has lasted my entire life. I ask myself “who am I to enjoy this life”.

I always used my Somaliness to escape from my blackness, and it was easy because Somaliness was something America didn’t understand, so it was easy to hide. I bring up blackness because that is the prism through which I knew no matter how long I live here, no matter how well I speak the language, no matter how American I am, America will always insist I’m not quite American enough.

My greatest desire has always been to belong; to a team, to a country, to a people, to a crew, to a family. Being from somewhere else has a liberating quality, it allows you to liberate yourself from the history and crimes of the place you are.

I honestly couldn't make sense of what he was trying to say. He was all over the place and sounds like someone who suffers from depression, which is exacerbated by his obvious anxiety issues.

 

[Sultana]

It seems there are similar criterias here, specifically you must speak Somali and be Muslim. Two criterias that I can not meet. Nor do I feel that I must meet.

Hmm...

 

[Geeljire]

He is the bestfriend of that social justice queer on twitter PayItForward87.

This it the guy who wrote that article

They are trying to desperatley link this foreign American/western exonym ''blackness'' with somaliness, in absoulute failure
Somali identity have nothing do with a color. A color does not define a human being , making am abstract color ur identity is dehumanization it in its finest. Who in the right mind would want to confine themselves with a name that only reflects their skin color?

Black is a construction, which articulates a recent social-political reality of African Americans.
Black is not a racial family, an ethnic group or a super-ethnic group. Political blackness is thus not an identity but moreover a social-political consequence of a world which after colonialism and slavery existed in those color terms.

This btw have nothing to do with somaliness , somali history or identity and never has.
it has zero constituency with the somali reality

Black and Somali are not interchangeable in any logical sense and will not ever be.

I told you this term ''Black'' is pushed by the self hating diaspora who rather be just an empty abstract color rather than to reconnect with their motherland - that is the depth of their self hatred