The "Motherland"

Ohhhhkay I have been needing to blog about this for awhile. The other day, I got on facebook. I was minding my own business, looking at my notifications when I saw this in my newsfeed, "Back in Africa....so glad to be in the motherland" and then there were all these comments like, "yeah we're all from Africa blah blah blah" or something stupid like that.

Whyy is it stupid? Because this girl is NOT from Africa. She's Indian. So then I was just like, whatever she's dumb. So then I went to work, and my co-worker suddenly tells me that we're all from Africa. I think it was because we were watching the Shakira video for "Waka Waka" and there were all these people in it that were Chinese and Italian and Indian and Australian and clearly not African and I commented on how confusing that was. Then she was all, "Oh we're all from Africa. If you study your ancestry you have African blood in you, probably from back in the slave trade."

Umm....no I don't. I am mainly Western European, and I do have an Native American great-great-great(?) Grandma. Also, one of my very very old ancestors was a king of Jerusalem. So no. No African blood here thank you very much.

I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but it severely annoys me when other people try to put Africa or really anything on a pedestal on which it really doesn't belong. I am not from Africa. I can name a billion people who are not from Africa. Actually, I can just save myself the typing and say "China." Those people are from China. They are not from Africa. They don't have African blood running through their veins, and I bet that 999,999,876 of them will never go to Africa.

I'm not African, you're not African (maybe you are, whatever....). and actually, I don't even consider myself French or British or Swiss or Jerusalem-ish, I'm an American girl. That's where I'm from.