05/02/2019
I think my dad had a little more nuanced experience being Black in America. So he always talked about racism... More than a regular Tanzanian person I think. He had read all the books - Martin Luther King, Malcolm X - you know, he had gone through that entire process, so he told me about it when we were younger. Now that I think about it, we watched Roots when I was like six (laughs). And my parents actually didn’t want me to watch it, but like, they were watching it, and I was there and kind of watched it anyways. So it there was always in the back of my mind this knowledge that there was division and racism in America. And also, we had our own version of the slave trade in Tanzania, right? So it was easy for us to understand how it happened on the opposite side of Africa because it happened in East Africa. So, growing up I had a general understanding of Black American History, and as I got older, I think one of the things - personally, I was on Twitter a lot, so Black Twitter was a thing for me, it was an entity in itself. It educated me on so many other things that were happening to black people in America. So I think I didn’t necessarily have an accurate understanding of what the Black American experience was, but I kind of understood, I think I had enough context by the time I got here.
Golder-mier, with a hyphen. My father’s name is Faustin. The way it works in Tanzania is that your father’s name is your middle name, so I usually use Golder-mier Faustin. I used to use Golder Faustin actually. I was born Golder-mier Faustin Kamuzora. When I was a kid, I didn't like my name. I d...
