2 Literature Review: Interpersonal & Institutional Forms of Racial Subjugation  

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,”  provides important context for Americanah given the parallels between Adichie and Ifemelu. The talk reflects many of the themes in Americanah, connecting especially to the topic of identity erasure. In her talk, Adichie explains that thanks to hegemonic cultural narratives, many Americans have only a “single story” that comes to mind when they think of Nigerians like Adichie: they visualize a war-torn, impoverished country from which its citizens are desperately seeking to escape, and in turn, they look upon Nigerians with pity, failing to view them as full-fledged, three-dimensional people. In a meta-textual context, this is important to understanding why Adichie saw Ifemelu’s story as necessary to tell in the first place. Creating a story that bucks dominant narratives and creates a more nuanced portrait of Nigerians in America holds important social implications. Once the “single story” about Nigerians has been properly combatted, Nigerians can feel less encumbered by the expectations to act in accordance with the preconceived notions Americans have in their head of how a Nigerian person “should” act. Americanah, therefore, plays a key social function along with making crucial commentaries on the state of racial inequality today.

Turning to outside academics, Michelle Alexander’s work is essential to understanding the continued presence of racial injustice throughout America. In The New Jim Crow, Alexander addresses and deconstructs the prevalent misconception that we live in a “post-racial” society, where “colorblindness” has become a social norm. However, Alexander explains, racism continues to lurk under the surface (and occasionally boils over into overt, explicit acts of racism), so to collectively deny the existence of the problem only exacerbates its severity. Indeed, colorblindness is not an ideal to which we should strive — although well-intentioned, pretending not to “see color” often has the consequence of erasing and whitewashing people’s own unique backgrounds. Conceptualizing America as a “melting pot” may sound good in theory, but this implies the “melting” of ethnic and racial identities: we see the negative consequences of this approach in Americanah.

Rather than ignoring our differences, we should acknowledge and celebrate them — but Alexander shows that this has not been the case in the United States. She writes that as a consequence of the War on Drugs, predominantly Black communities have suffered greatly: they have seen their members rounded up and thrown in jail, only to be released with a stigma that follows them the rest of their lives, preventing them from accumulating wealth or social capital. This cyclical process enables the continued existence of a “racial undercaste” in America and hinders the realization of full equity — hence Alexander’s decision to refer to mass incarceration as a new iteration of Jim Crow laws. And just because the process is technically “colorblind” does not make its effects any less racist or pernicious, an important distinction to make. Colorblindness does not translate to justice or equality, a principle important to understanding the racial dynamics in Americanah.

A foundational author to this literature review is W.E.B. DuBois, whose work spanned the twentieth century and documented the persistence of the “color line,” both globally and in America. DuBois explains that Black people feel “shut out of their [white people’s] world by a vast veil” (DuBois 1903) which separates them and prevents Black Americans from accessing the same opportunities as white ones. Even with the abolition of slavery, the color line persisted throughout DuBois’ lifetime in the form of segregation and racial discrimination. The color line is not a tangible object, nor is it easy to pinpoint exactly what the color line is — it operates invisibly, meaning that those on the other side of the veil tend to deny or overlook the existence of the color line. And when the color line goes unacknowledged, it has no change of being deconstructed: as such, it has retained its staying power and continues to wield influence over American society well into the twenty-first century.

No sociological analysis of race would be complete without the acknowledgment that race is ultimately a social construct. As DuBois explains, race as a concept was developed to justify colonialism and the subjugation of those indigenous to the Global South: European superpowers claimed that because they were of a different race, they were therefore superior to the people who they were colonizing. There is no biological basis to assigning racial categorizations to people; rather, it was born out of capitalism. Here, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is important to understanding how certain beliefs and attitudes come to prevail in society. Colorblindness, and the accompanying idea that we live in a post-racial society, is problematic rather than being a niche belief held by a few, it has instead become a dominant narrative. Those who hold the most power are the ones who determine which beliefs become hegemonic; hence, it is white people who set the narrative about race relations in America. Further, they are the ones who construct notions of race and create the hegemonic narratives about what race is, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle where white people never relinquish their power. Instilling hegemonic ideas provides a less visible way for those in power to exert control over the rest of society and thereby maintain the existing social hierarchy.

Under symbolic interactionism, all of these facets of race relations in America influence how we present ourselves to others. Goffman, a pioneer of the symbolic interactionist field, helps explain this with his concepts of stigma and “presentation of self.” In Goffman’s view, we are like actors constantly putting on a show for others. We adjust our performance — from the physical appearance we present to the language we use — based on what we believe our audience wants to see from us. Cooley (1902) also adds nuance to the field of symbolic interactionism by emphasizing its reciprocal nature. Under Cooley’s “looking-glass theory,” the way we see ourselves is determined by the way others see us. As such, we internalize others’ perceptions of us and model our identity accordingly.

DuBois’ idea of double-consciousness complements symbolic interactionism well, as it recognizes the importance that people’s perceptions of us hold in shaping our own behaviors and self-image. Whereas Goffman and Cooley focused little on the relationship between race and presentation of self, DuBois adds important nuance by discussing how the stigma faced by Black Americans profoundly impacts the way they see themselves and interact with the world. He writes: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (DuBois 1903).

Through his introduction of double-consciousness, DuBois racializes the process of self-formation and links macro-level structural phenomena to micro-level interactions. The two, he argues, are inextricable from each other; the institutional oppression that a person faces will inevitably impact how they see themselves, how they see others, and the behavioral expectations placed upon them. Alexander’s discussion of stigma is similarly related to symbolic interactionism: Black people trapped in the cycle of mass incarceration recognize that society stigmatizes them and treats them differently, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and hurting their self-esteem. The following section will introduce a discussion of how Ifemelu herself experiences and copes with these complex feelings.