CONFLICT OF CULTURE

The typical African individual living in any western nation makes an effort to balance his culture with what the foreign society or environment demands. It is a continuous battle trying to adapt to the foreign culture and society while at the same time striving to hold on to the traditional African within the individual.

While in the western society, if the typical African insists on being an African to the core, the western public will misconceive him, but if he wholly imbibes the foreign culture, he would likely lose the core elements that make him a traditional African. And if in that condition, he goes/comes home to Africa, he would be seen by the typical traditional Africans at home (and there are millions of them) as a disgrace to the motherland and culture he was supposed to represent. He would be regarded as a sell-out. He would be viewed as one without consideration or respect for his roots. He would be treated as one who chose to snub his culture out of egotism and pomposity.

To avoid being continuously tongue-lashed and insulted, the returning African would try to hide the influence of the foreign accent on his speech. Usually he fails at it because sooner or later, the foreign accent slips through. In the end, he only subjects himself to ridicule and scorn. He becomes the worst of two worlds – neither being able to properly speak and exhibit his original language and traditional culture, nor successfully imbibing the western accent and culture. A sort of dilemma hardly understood by those who have never been faced by the reality of this dual situation on a first hand experience.

This predicament is further compounded by the fact that the individual thus becomes a master of neither his original African traditional culture, nor the previously strange western culture. It is worse when he now has a family, perhaps an interracial one. How complex it is, probably becomes manifested in the characteristics of the children raised with such background.