3 The Case: Americanah’s Social Relevance 

With these theoretical frameworks in mind, we now turn to the case of Americanah, whose protagonist experiences confusion in forming and solidifying her racial identity. Here, quantitative data is useful in contextualizing Ifemelu’s experience and enabling us to draw broader sociological conclusions. For example, Ifemelu is not alone in feeling a sense of “impostor syndrome” in her role as a student within the network of elite universities. At Princeton, where she has a fellowship, only 3 percent of doctoral and 1 percent of post-doctoral students identify as Black (Inclusive Princeton 2021). This dearth of diversity manifests itself in her everyday life — there is no braiding salon in Princeton, forcing Ifemelu to travel to Trenton for her hair braiding. The absence of a salon for her hair serves as a reminder that Princeton, and institutions like it, are not structured to serve Black people, and can therefore cause their Black students to feel alienated or disconnected. Although elite spaces of higher education are making a concerted effort to recruit more Black or otherwise marginalized students, their endeavors are futile if they don’t also make a concerted effort to make their spaces inclusive and welcoming once the students arrive. One Black student at Yale commented to the Hechinger Report that Yale has “fostered an environment that questions whether Black students like me are smart enough to be there” (Willen 2020). This data, both qualitative and quantitative, bears itself out in the case of Ifemelu.

Furthermore, Ifemelu’s experience as an African immigrant is different from that of an African-American who has lived in the United States for their entire life. According to the Pew Research Center, African immigration to the United States has increased significantly in recent years: in 2019, 4.6 million Africans immigrated to the United States, compared to just 2.4 million in 2000 (Tamir 2021). But as we know well, it can take considerable time for social norms to catch up to a society’s needs and realities. As the Black community in the United states has become increasingly diverse, hegemonic narratives of what it means to be Black in America have remained static due to how deeply they are ingrained in society — still, Black people are treated as monolithic and the immigrant experience in particular is overlooked. We see the negative ramifications of this attitude in the case of Ifemelu. Additionally, ethnographic data shows that there are significant fractures between Black people in the United States: one study used interviews to find that “African Americans lack a sense of connection to Africans, attributed to Africans’ purported sense of superiority and disregard for African Americans’ ongoing struggle to end oppression” (Nsangou and Dundes 2018: 1). The results discussed here very closely mirror Ifemelu’s relationship with Blaine, in which Blaine repeatedly gets agitated with Ifemelu for not showing enough concern about African Americans’ efforts at activism. The failure of society at large to recognize these distinctions between groups is another factor that contributes to the erase and invisibilization of Ifemelu’s identity.

Statistical data also bears out Michelle Alexander’s observations regarding the dominance of colorblind rhetoric. An NPR poll found that 83% of Black Americans believe that white people have an advantage in society — a statement that only 49% of white Americans agreed with. This disparity highlights how white people are far more likely to deny the existence of racism or white privilege in America, and their denial forms a core tenet of colorblindness, which maintains that racism in the United States has been eradicated and that people of all races and ethnicities are now on equal footing. Thus, this statistic — and many similar findings from other polls — speaks to the persistence of color-blind rhetoric in the United States. In the same survey, only 21% of white Americans supported reparations from the federal government for Americans whose ancestors were enslaved; meanwhile, a staggering eighty percent of Black Americans supported reparations, revealing a vast racial gap. These data points seem to support Alexander’s central argument: as much as white Americans would like to deny it, racial tensions persist in America, taking a severe psychological toll on Black Americans.

Ifemelu also seems to experience feelings of DuBoisian double-consciousness, and is clearly affected by the invisible color line in a multitude of ways. As someone who hails from a non-elite background yet has ingratiated herself into elite academic environments like Princeton University, Ifemelu feels herself straddling the line between the two different worlds in America, teetering on the precipice of the proverbial veil. To Ifemelu, entering predominantly white environments seems to necessitate sacrificing her identity as a Black woman, a dilemma that she grapples with throughout the novel. This is further complicated by the role that power plays in hierarchizing social environments, particularly in environments such as schools or the workplace. Power plays an inescapable part in our behavior, and in the workplace, the pressure for those with less power to come across as “professional” and satisfy every behavioral expectation placed upon them is paramount. Zuhairah Washington and Laura Morgan Roberts capture this struggle succinctly in the Harvard Business Review: “Being the only woman of color on a team can be extremely taxing. You’re torn between authenticity and assimilating” (Washington and Roberts 2019). Studies have shown that Black women feel invisible in the workplace (Sesko and Biernat 2010), and their colleagues often forget what they have said or attribute their statements to another colleague. At the same time, Black women are held to a higher standard and are the scapegoats when an organization is doing poorly (Rosette and Livingston 2012). This pressure can cause them to develop defense mechanisms such as withdrawing from happy hours or other office social events (Phillips et al 2018): the stress of double standards, erasure, and unreasonable expectations takes a psychological toll on Black women like Ifemelu herself.

The concept of race as a social construct also recurs throughout Americanah. Ifemelu was born in Nigeria and does not identify as African-American; however, the people with whom she interacts tend to mistakenly conflate different types of Blackness under the umbrella of “African-American.” What’s more, Americans tend to ignore ethnic nuances, lumping all people of African heritage together despite the fact that Africa is a diverse, multiethnic continent with 54 distinct countries. Aisha, the woman braiding Ifemelu’s hair, comments on this phenomenon at the salon: when Ifemelu asks why Aisha says “Africa” rather than specifying the country, Aisha responds, “‘You don’t know America. You say Senegal and American people, they say, Where is that? My friend from Burkina Faso, they ask her, your country in Latin America?’” (Adichie 18). In itself, this is a powerful commentary about the dangers of colorblindness, corroborating the argument put forth by Alexander. By subscribing to the hegemonic narrative that all Africans are monolithic, white people have undermined Black people’s sense of self and their comfort expressing their identities.

Literary readings are helpful here in manifesting how race is a social construct: in James Weldon Johnson’s short story “To Be a Negro,” a young boy comes to learn that although he himself does not identify as Black, society sees and treats him as Black. His own self-identification is treated as irrelevant in the face of larger norms and unwritten rules about what makes a person Black. Another short story by Peter Abrahams reflects the different construction of race in South Africa versus countries like the United States, underscoring how inherently arbitrary systems of racial categorization are. In South Africa, there are three overarching categories of race: “white people, Coloured people, and black people” (Abrahams 1963: 314). This is not the case here in America, where there is no distinct racial category classified as “Coloured.” The fact that there is such significant variation in the way each country views race only reinforces DuBois’ claim that racial definitions are fluid and are developed with the specific goal of hierarchizing society.