My contract with America began on a shaky foundation. I came to America with only the will to bring life to my children. I had met their American father in Africa. I was not altogether happy about leaving. It meant leaving a thriving career as an international actor, university lecturer and arts producer. My departure meant saying goodbye once again to a supportive family structure in Africa. I had previously left for 20 years of fighting as an artist against white racist apartheid in South Africa. I had no idea that I would actually be entering the belly of the beast by coming to America. I had a false sense of security after seeing the gritty romanticism of the black ghetto explored by Eddie Murphy, who was playing an African Prince in the Hollywood movie “Coming to America.” I should have known better.
Unlike apartheid in South Africa that promised the Black population dehumanization and misery, America promised “liberty and justice for all.” Deep down, my instincts knew it was an illusion created to maintain slavery in a sophisticated way. Yet I cautiously signed that contract knowing I would have to start my life from scratch again. At the time, I was not yet married but very pregnant and craved to reach my highest potential. What I didn’t know was that I would end up alone in Pittsburgh, which would become, by far, the most challenging and agonizing place on Earth I would ever live because of its hypocrisy. It would nearly take away every freedom I came with — my life, my liberty and any pursuit of happiness.
The ‘American Dream’ crushed my dreams over and over again. It played out when I tried to earn a Ph.D. from a well known New York university. I was told I had to take another master’s degree — their master’s degree — to be eligible. I fulfilled that requirement at great expense and suffering for my young family in Pittsburgh. I had to commute 10 hours by train every week for 18 months, only to eventually be told by the university that there was no one to advise my study. Scrambling to get a terminal degree, the highest degree awarded in the field, I finally registered at a local university. There, I thought, I would be safe from struggle, intimidation and sabotage. But in the plantation called America, these things inevitably find you. It took the form of passive aggressive classmates who vandalized my work, or name-calling by a professor when I walked into a classroom (”the Barbarians are coming”) and eventually even physical assault by a dean. Yes, she was fired for that.
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