What is your culture?

I am a 21 year old black British male born in Britain, with grandparents that came to England as part of the Windrush era. The strong likelihood that my Caribbean lineage is a result of modern diaspora due to transatlantic slavery suggests a deeply entrenched hybridity within the cultural cloth of my identity.  Around 60% of slaves that ended up in Jamaica were from Ghana and Nigeria, so it’s ironic that I write this from a concrete compound in Savelugu, Tamale, and Northern Ghana.

It is clearly important to clarify what culture is, and based on the introduction it is also important to try and disentangle culture from history. This blog holds culture to be the visible signs of a particular way of living within a specific time, often elucidated through language, dress, music, food, particular customs or festivals. Ulf Hannerz, a historian on world cultures, has stated that “rather than being separated from one another… cultures tend to overlap and mingle”. Let’s think about that. If culture is the visible signs of a particular way of living, but these particularities constantly mix and combine, then fixing culture into one rigid box is impossible; the social construct of the word culture has to account for the intermingling of people in the real, modern world.

Cultural appropriation is a great example of the interactions between cultures. In fact, I have an extremely relevant example. On this trip to Ghana, at least three of my white British cohort have braided their hair. Braids are a sign of a particular way of living, especially for black women. Why? The thicker texture of their hair means sweatier scalps; the heat in Africa and the Americas exacerbates this problem whilst the nappy quality needs to be managed in a way that is neat yet natural. For my three British counterparts now living in Africa, eating TZ, Waakye and attempting to speak Dagbani, the “particular way of living” of Ghanaians is their current reality. Cultural acceptance is a huge component of the modern world, a cosmopolitan space where globalisation and interdependency mean that cultures consistently interact. Does cultural acceptance permit my three British counterparts to have braids? Permission and authority are the undertones of my last question, and with a topic such as culture, with the potential to divide and delineate peoples, we have to ask who is really in control of culture…

If culture is a nightclub attended by millions of people sharing the same lifestyle, who allows you in? Is there a gatekeeper? Is there an initiation? Is there a VIP room for those who perfectly fit their cultural blueprint? How many commonalities do we need to share before I am welcomed?  For the sake of time, scope and sanity we’ll move on, but we need to interrogate cultural delineations and the power structures behind them in order to coexist in an interconnected world. On the topic of connections, ties and knots, let’s return to the braids situation. Here’s the most interesting point, when I asked two black women – one being Ghanaian, the other Black British – about why they have braided their hair, one answered “So I do not have to do much in the morning… it looks good” whilst the other said “they help me feel connected to my roots”. What is a culturally driven choice for one is a practical choice for the other, but an outsider could assume that both act out of cultural awareness.  Individual aesthetic preferences, marketing, shared spaces, international music awards, global fashion shows are just a few of the ways that we share culture,  so we need to be mindful of how we divide and prescribe based on cultural lines. We can clearly see that our awareness of culture is based on subjective perceptions of identity.

On an individual level, awareness of ones own culture is linked to both your relationship to the culture you identify with plus your perception of self. Sometimes coming face to face with a completely different culture encourages you to think of your own practices. It’s been a struggle adapting to the intense heat, carbohydrate diet, speaking a new dialect, and bathing with a bucket. However the practices I took for granted such as hot showers, wearing trainers and catching a bus to the tram stop, for a one stop journey to the train station are clearly not just a fact of life, but a part of British culture, a culture that I now look at from a distance and respect further out of increased awareness.

So what now? A blog is meant to do something. Did you laugh, get angry, say “good point” or think that’s completely wrong? Regardless, take this opportunity to think about your own culture, how you relate to it on a personal level and where the cultural lines between you and another person exist, if they even do.  Your own culture is something to hold dearly, but for how connected the world is becoming, we can all do a bit more for cultural cohesion and international development through education and sharing the best of we have to offer. Ladies, enjoy your braids!

Written by Jenniah Brown and Sophia Akuffo

09/10/15