Americanah

Unsurprisingly, race is a major theme in Americanah. Ifemelu discovers race while living in America. She has grown up in a country run by people of her own race, and so does not share the cultural shame and anger of black Americans, like Blaine, and even what is passed down to Dike, who is Nigerian but knows no life outside America.

In Lagos, race was simple, divided between those who were Nigerian, and therefore black, and the small minority of white people, like Nigel, Obinze’s business partner. When Ifemelu first arrives in America, she assumes that Alma, Dike’s babysitter, is white. “If Ifemelu had met Alma in Lagos, she would have thought of her as white, but she would learn that Alma was Hispanic, an American category” (128). Ifemelu frequently states that she “discovered race” (406) in America, because Nigeria was not a land where black skin translated to different levels of social acceptance. It is only once Ifemelu lives in America that she learns about the particular prejudices that come with her skin tone. Ifemelu, whose skin is very dark, notes that Bartholomew, Uju’s one-time boyfriend, bleaches his own brown skin, causing it to turn a “greenish-yellow tone” (144). This is in keeping with Bartholomew’s “American accent filled with holes” (141). He is an aspirational man, and to aspire to be American is to aspire to be white—or at least, lighter skinned.

Ifemelu begins to document her racial experience in America through her blog: Raceteenth. Her blog posts, scattered throughout the novel in non-chronological order, highlight each lesson she learns about race in America. In “To My Fellow Non-Americans Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby,” she explains to fellow African immigrants that, despite their own country’s lack of racial diversity, which in turn leads to a lesser emphasis on race, in America they are black. They cannot escape this. She delineates what black Americans and immigrants must do, such as “nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area…It is a way for black people to say ‘You are not alone, I am here too’” (274). Black people in America, regardless of their origin, must avoid being angry about racial slights, about being followed in stores, because “Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism” (275).

Ifemelu is shocked by the discrimination against black bodies, and particularly black women’s bodies that she sees around her. She shows Curt how few black models are used in magazines. While online dating, she is appalled that when ticking boxes of the races they will date, “Black men are the only men likely to tick ‘all,’ but some won’t even tick Black” (379). She notes that when walking around with Curt, white women will stare at them and “instantly cloud their faces with that look. The look of people confronting a great tribal loss…although she might be a pretty black girl…she was not light-skinned. She was not biracial” (362). The fact that Ifemelu’s skin is darker than other African-Americans is enough to slide her farther down on the racial food chain. Even Blaine, the perfect liberal, is revealed to have dated primarily white women in the past, with one of his friends delighted that he is now dating Ifemelu, “‘a sister, and a chocolate sister at that!’” (385).