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Korto Williams
A Cultural Autobiography:
‘The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here’?
Background
My cultural identity is characterized by contradictions that reinforce my deviation from the mainstream values of both the peripheral and core beliefs of my culture(s). With the increase in the number of my life interactions, I have come to terms with accepting that while I represent several identities at face value, my background, ethnicity and experience(s) have altered my interpretation and translation of these identities.
It is a difficult place that I find myself, vis-à-vis my relationship with people from my country, continent and various social groups. It is difficult, since it seems to be the natural inclination for other cultural groups to judge individuals on stereotypes, or on what they believe should be the centrality of culture in their lives. When it becomes apparent that I do not ‘fit’ into any of the defined slots, I am usually called one who has no culture, or asked why am I not acting like an African. Against this background, I spell out the conflicts and the manner in which my ethnicity, gender, social status and exposure to war has affected my interaction with people, changed my values, and deepened my personal impression of self.
Ethnicity and Social Status
Edward Hall and Mildred Hall state in their book Hidden Differences that the single greatest barrier to business is the one erected by culture (p. 90). In Liberia, culture has had a strong political and economic influence. Said to have been founded by former slaves and free blacks, supported through a supposedly humanitarian economic venture of the American Colonization Society in the early 1800s, Liberia is sometimes called the first independent African country. Today it has become absurd to state this as relates to the fact that the former slaves and free men and women arrived in a land that was already occupied by indigenous people. For this reason and many others, they settled along already occupied coastal areas and negotiated, manipulated and fought wars to gain additional land in the country they named Liberia. Known as Americo-Liberians, they constituted about 5% of the country’s population up to 20 years ago. The present percentage is difficult to state, given the level of intermarriages that have occurred.
My mother was an Americo-Liberian, my father, of indigenous ancestry. With respect to ethnicity, this defines my identity in many ways beyond the imagination. This, in my country, has determined social status and upward mobility for a long time. As a result of this dynamic, many indigenous Liberians who went to work as ‘house slaves’ for Americo-Liberians (many of them descendents of former American slaves) went through a regimental change of identity, especially with their names.
My family name, Reeves, is not our name. My father lived with the Reeves family and inherited the name, since his indigenous one was too difficult to say. Moreover, people like my father went through the painful and difficult period of serving other people, being treated as sub-human, and worse still, as he had to do, having the exclusive monopoly of disposing of the family’s excretion on a daily basis.
With this baggage, my father defined his life.
When he had children, we were named based on the background of our mothers. My older siblings, born to an indigenous mother are called Hilda, Nancy, Cornelius and Sylvanus. By the time he met my mother, a fair-skinned Americo-Liberian, he named us Korto, Nahnkarmu, Lemu.
Indigenous Liberian mother: Christian English names; Americo-Liberian mother: indigenous Liberian names.
While I do not necessarily agree with this quick-fix solution to my father’s issues, I believe he tried to find a social balance to compensate for his past. My father was wrong, because for our names, we were judged. This was also evident in the fact that we were never taught his native language, Kpelle, and we lived among a different indigenous group in an elite neighborhood.
This social placement, he assumed, would make us safe, balanced citizens of Liberia. He thought no one would have the power to judge us based on our ethnicity. He went as far as telling us that our mother was an indigenous Liberian.
Today as I write this and have access to the Internet, I do a search on my mother's last name: a name that only her family of less than a hundred persons have. I am linked to the US Bureau of Census records from the early 1900s, focusing on ex-slaves traveling to the Liberian colony.
My father did not tell us the truth as he did not know how to deal with it, with respect to his pain. Most importantly, he failed to recognize that the concept of Liberia was derived from a racist system and perpetuated. Long before he was born, the idea of being Liberian meant two things: denying one’s past and heritage, or replicating the slave industry of North America on the indigenous people of the land. There was no easy middle ground, especially for an indigenous Liberia. Today I have found it, despite the discomfort that goes with confrontation.
Going deeper, my mother’s family did not associate with our family because my mother was seen as what Americans call “a sellout” to her class and social group. This rejection affected our family and divorced us from the other side of our heritage. Ten years after their marriage, in 1980, my maternal grandmother became terminally ill and wanted to make contact with my mother. My mother went to see her and our lives changed. My grandmother died. A coup d’état which ended Americo-Liberian hegemony occurred. And my parents got a divorce.
This was symbolism at its highest peak.
After that, we, my brother and I, became children in a single parent home, living in one bedroom with our mother, who no longer had the financial resources to meet our needs. Our father had taken our younger brother, who looked more like him and was not fair-skinned, to live with him. We remained with our mother because our father all of a sudden was not certain whether he, a dark-skinned indigenous Liberian, had fathered children like us.
We lived in a zinc shack that we were afraid our friends from school would see and judge us by. Our mother told us that if they did not want to be our friends because of where we lived, then they were not valuable enough to be our friends.
At our young ages, we did not understand her.
Eventually, we went to live with my mother’s sister in a provincial town in central Liberia. This region was also where our paternal grandparents migrated from in the 1920s to live in the coastal region of the country. We were now surrounded by people who shared our ethnicity, but given our background, we were strangers to the language and culture.
It was in Bong County and through our friends that we learned the cultural practices and language of our father’s people. It was there that we called our names in a village and we were told that we belonged, regardless of our ignorance. This sense of acceptance was undermined by my mother’s family efforts to make us assimilate and conform to the Americo-Liberian culture.
This meant that we had to go to the Episcopal Church, were forbidden to talk about our father, and had to learn the manners and etiquette of the Americo-Liberians. It was a very difficult period for us, but one that has had a positive impact on our lives. My aunt did a strong job in instilling values and discipline within us that I wish I had the capacity to pass on to my ‘suns’ today. And it is ironic that when we went to live with my mother’s sister, we were exposed to the culture of my father’s people. Not all members of my mother’s family thought the same.
I realize today that these changes in my life, as they relate to my sense of identity, have allowed me to reject the way of the Americo-Liberian, against the initial rejection I received, and also the way of the Kpelle people, given my lack of deep knowledge of my father’s people. Though both are integral parts of my heritage, I can never conform to any of these groups wholeheartedly, and this has strengthened my resolve on an even broader level, knowing that no one is superior to another, despite the delusion (and illusion) that controls the lives of people who think in this manner.
I acknowledge that I have these identities but know that my Americo-Liberian identity is not significant for me in any way, as I have been socialized to understand its negative impact on Liberian history and on my family.
Gender and Stereotypes
My identity as a woman in the Liberian society is one that I have grappled with over the last 10 years. Traditionally, women are considered to be subordinate to men with respect to intelligence and strength. Additionally, in most cases, they are seen as sexual objects to gratify men. Euphemistically, a woman is awarded the title of wife or girlfriend, and this is seen as a major achievement in her life. In this role, a woman is expected to be a domestic worker, cooking, cleaning, having many kids and taking care of them. She is also expected to remain outside of political, academic and intellectual environments and discussions. If she rejects all of these, she is said to "want to be like a man.”
In my rejection of any sort of cultural beliefs from society about my identity as a woman, I became what many Liberians call “a woman who does not know her place.” I have been the breadwinner in my family (immediate and extended) for the past five years. I do not do any of those domestic tasks that are expected of me just because I am a woman. I continuously challenge male colleagues, who are of the opinion that a woman can never be a professional and is only in the work environment to be a secretary or the note-taker at meetings. It causes a high level of discomfort and I am often advised that my marriage will not last as no man will accept my sort of behavior from a woman.
The zeal I have to challenge male domination stems from the similar behavior I saw in my mother and her sister. They did not accept the lower rung on any ladder and rose to be their possible best. I also realize that the belief in my society that puts women at a lower intelligence level is not true, as I had been an "A" student all through school and graduated at the age of 15 from high school. The boys who were my classmates came to college as freshmen when I was in my junior year. This knowledge has allowed me to debunk these beliefs and ask for more evidence when they are spoken as the truth.
It is ironic also that my ethnic identity of being Kpelle has affected the way I view myself as a woman, but I realized this long after I set a pace for myself, opposing a socially-constructed position. Kpelle women are key in decision-making and can hold political positions in the tribe. A year ago, I read John Gay’s Red Dust on Green Leaves and I understood how much I belong to this people in a sense.
I went to a school run by Catholic nuns when I was at the elementary level. From middle school to high school, I attended a school run by Irish and English priests and brothers. This led me to question my identity and understanding of the Christian religion, as paradoxical as it may sound. In high school we were taught by Brother Martin O'Reilly
that Christianity was more than Jesus Christ, the love of God, the holy sacraments and the like. He enforced the idea that Christianity was about hard work, humility and tolerance. In afternoon masses, we sang the songs of Bob Marley, Simon and Garfunkel, and Boy George. This helped me to understand that belief in God was not only restricted to the bible and hymnal but also based heavily on human relationships. This is how I define myself as a Christian.
With respect to my identity as a mother, this is the only area that I am comfortable with conforming to society’s construct, with respect to the care of my children. However, I am open with them when it comes to explaining about various stereotypes and their negative consequences. They understand that no one people or race is superior to the other. They understand that we are different and there is nothing wrong with that difference. This was evident during their first two weeks in school in the United States. My children did not understand why they could not explain their cultural and national identities in class. They wanted to explain the Liberian flag’s similarity to the American
flag, and got frustrated when no one seemed to be listening. This was significant for me since I understood this to mean that they appreciated their origins, and though in a new environment, they felt a strong sense of connection to our country and its history.
Political Identity and the Liberian Civil War
When I was thirteen years old, I read a book entitled, The Love of Liberty: The Rule of President William V. S. Tubman in Liberia 1944-1971, authored by a highly successful Liberian lawyer, Tuan Wreh, who went on to become Dean of the prestigious Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law at the University of Liberia. At that age, I got my first shock that appearances could be deceiving, and from reading this book, I understood the treacherous social divide that existed in Liberia, which dictated political and economic systems, and benefited five percent of the country’s population.
I then decided that I would be a lawyer and support indigenous Liberian issues. I studied English Language and Literature in college, with the objective of following a legal path. However, this was not to be, as the last few weeks to completion of my undergraduate degree saw the eruption of the brutal war that lasted for approximately 15 years. All educational activities came to a halt in mid-1990. The university I attended had to evacuate all students to Monrovia. It closed for obvious reasons.
In the next few months, the campus became a training base for the rebels of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, the major rebel group during that period, and remained closed for the next eight years. During those years when I could not get my college degree, I worked as a staff writer for a local daily newspaper and attended computer school for two years. These activities complemented my undergraduate studies in English Language and Literature, and also allowed me to appreciate all of the social and political disparities that plagued my country. As a staff writer for the New Democrat newspaper, I had the opportunity to report on issues ranging from women’s participation in the peace process to the massacre of innocent Liberians.
I lost my mother to one of those massacres.
Conclusion
All of the incidents and experiences stated above have shaped my worldview and defined my cultural interactions with others. The strongest impact has been the social divide between the two groups I belong to. I see myself as a deviant to the status quo, especially when it involves social status and gender roles.
I believe that I have been able to overcome my identity issues by transcending societal views. I call myself nothing but know what I am at specific times: an amalgamation of all that is Liberian. I hate labels!
My experience during the war engendered in me the view that there is nothing that cannot be challenged and overcome. It is this outlook that has brought me where I am today, searching for deeper knowledge, finding ways to deal with the world against the background understanding that it is no easy place to live in. Mahatma Gandhi summarizes my cultural identity and worldview in his quote:
I do not want my house to be walled on all sides and my windows to be stuffed, I want cultures from all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
It is this outlook that allows me to stand out as an advocate in my professional and personal environments. In doing this, I have rejected my ascribed roles, because I know that they are only that and can never be more.
Copyright © Korto Williams
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