No, Where Are You From?

I started another internship at a publishing company and its perfect, exactly what I was looking for  while I’m here. I’m still working for the non-profit and I really like , but to make a long story short I had to please Wheaton first and make sure I get all my credits, public relations just isn’t one of them. So I get two internships, each twice a week. Planning events at a non-profit and overseeing the production of custom magazines at a publishing company.

At an event last Saturday a photographer from a newspaper in Sydney asked to take my picture. I had no problem with that, and smiled from ear-to-ear like I always do; making sure each tooth got its five seconds of sunlight. He was an older man, and asked me where I was from and what my name was for the caption I guess. I told him I was from New York City studying here until December, but that wasn’t the answer he was looking for. He asked again, ‘no, where are you from? Ghana or another country?’ I said ‘no, I’m from New York.’ Then he said what every black person wants to hear; ‘oh you don’t know exactly where? It’s too hard to trace back that far huh?’ I let out a BIG sigh, and ha then said, ‘you can say that,’ and started to turn away. After that he said ‘wait I didn’t catch your name.’ I said, ‘Bryant like Kobe and Kenya like the country, but I’m from New York.’

There are some ignorant people in the world, and you’d think working for a newspaper would teach you how to talk to people. I used to be jealous of my friends whose family come from another country and have a place to claim outside of the US, part of me still is. All I know is southern, North Carolina and home, New York. Tracing back my family history is something I always wanted to do and in time hopefully I will.

To add to the lineup, I started my first day publishing. Custom magazines are produced by publishers for a specific company, so you basically polish the vision the company has in mind for their magazine. I was looking for some pictures to go with an article and asked one of the editors about what I should look for. She told me to look in old issues to get a feel of the client’s style, then added ‘you know, plain, simple, clean-cut and Caucasian, sad but true.’ I looked at her and said ‘yeah I can tell, the world is just lovely,’ – and I can’t wait to change it.

Kenya