🇬🇭 Finding Identity in Ghana

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-06

[00:00:01]You know, being here in Ghana has really given me uh has highlighted for me the opportunity to think a lot about identity.

[00:00:13]Um and identity can be so many things. You could have uh cultural identity based on the country you come from, but even more [clears throat] than that, based on the part of the country, the area of the country that you come from. And along with that can come religious identity, along with that can come language or connection to uh land, to the ground, to the earth.

[00:00:38]Um and then unfortunately, all over the world, you also have um you have racial identity, right? And we know that race is not a real thing.

[00:00:52]I think most people know that by now.

[00:00:54]Race is not a real thing. Race is a thing, a system of um categorizing people for the purpose of control, for the purpose of exploitation, for the purpose of maintenance, for the purpose of getting a certain thing done. That's why race was constructed.

[00:01:16]Um and in the US very often identity is very closely tied or completely tied to race.

[00:01:28]And in the US you have two major races, black and white. Those are the two major races, but we know that that is not all encompassing of who people are, right?

[00:01:42]For a long time when I was when I was younger, when I was in my early teen years, I remember wondering why I was required to hyphenate my identity with a place I had never been.

[00:01:59]My first time coming to the continent of Africa, I was um I was 21 years old.

[00:02:05]And so, or I'm sorry, I was 20 years old.

[00:02:08]And up until that time, I had never been to the continent. I had a desire to come, but I had never been.

[00:02:16]But I always wondered this term African-American.

[00:02:22]I've never been to Africa.

[00:02:24]I'm from America. I'm from the United States of America. I was born here. My parents were born here. My grandparents were born here. My great-grandparents were born here. My great-great-grandparents were born here.

[00:02:34]So, why am I hyphenating that?

[00:02:38]Because there are other people on this land called the United States of America who they were born here. Their parents were born here. Maybe their grandparents weren't born here.

[00:02:49]They're not required to hyphenate.

[00:02:51]Maybe their heritage is in Ireland or or England or Germany or Portugal or Spain or France, but they're not necessarily required to hyphenate.

[00:03:03]But I am required to hyphenate. What I am called is hyphenated. Split between two places, one of which I've never been.

[00:03:14]And so, I never understood that. And because I didn't understand it, I didn't want to identify that way. I didn't necessarily want to call myself African-American cuz I'm like, I've never been there.

[00:03:24]I'm American. This is where I'm from.

[00:03:27]It's interesting to me that there are still so many people uh who don't understand why black Americans or African-Americans aren't able to identify the place where their ancestors come from.

[00:03:46]It's strange It's interesting. I I don't want to say strange. It's interesting to me that so many people still don't understand that when the transatlantic slave trade happened they weren't exactly keeping excellent records and telling everyone where they came from and making records of that.

[00:04:04]People were mixed from all different kinds of places, from all different tribes. You know, these these country lines weren't even drawn yet at that time.

[00:04:14]And so they were just snatching people from territories and throwing them on ships.

[00:04:18]You know?

[00:04:19]And so after hundreds of years of doing that, people mix and mix and mix and mix and mix.

[00:04:26]And you don't necessarily know whether your bloodline leads you to the land that is now Ghana or the land that is now Nigeria or the land that is now Togo or the land that is now Ivory Coast or the land that is now Sierra Leone or the land that is now Mali. You don't know. You don't know.

[00:04:44]You know that you're black and you know that you're called African-American.

[00:04:49]And so I've always identified with being black because for me that is a person of the African diaspora. Someone whose heritage, whose roots is on the continent but but they could be from anywhere in the world. They could live anywhere in the world.

[00:05:07]And this time being in Ghana is the first time in my life I think I'm embracing the phrase African-American.

[00:05:20]The reason being when I come here I'm so welcomed.

[00:05:31]You know, that's one thing that I love and I've said this before but that's one thing that I love about being in Ghana is that there is an open-armed welcome for the most part that I've experienced that a lot of African-Americans, black Americans experience. We experience that welcome.

[00:05:51]We are told, "Welcome home."

[00:05:54]I was in a a taxi, an Uber.

[00:05:58]Uh I had been here maybe a week and I was in an in an Uber.

[00:06:02]I was talking to the Uber driver and a lot of people tend to think that I'm Ghanaian. So, then they hear my accent and then they ask where I'm from and I say I'm from the US and they say, "Oh, your parents are Ghanaian." And I'm like, "No." And I'm like, they're like, "Also, your grandparents are Ghanaian."

[00:06:17]And I'm like, "No."

[00:06:18]And they're like, "Okay, so."

[00:06:20]And this guy, I was having this conversation with this guy and he said, "You're a returnee."

[00:06:26]And I said, "Wow, that's the first time I've heard that word >> [laughter] >> used in my direction."

[00:06:36]And the idea of being a returnee, I'm still working through that. I'm still working what that feels like to be called a returnee.

[00:06:47]Because what that says to me is there is knowledge, there is understanding that I may not have been born on this land, my parents may not have been born on this land, my grandparents may not have been born on this land, my great-grandparents may not have been born on this land, and none of them were. They were all born in the US.

[00:07:05]But there is still a recognition and an embracing of the fact that at some point my family, my bloodline was on this land and I don't necessarily mean Ghana cuz maybe it was Ghana, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was Nigeria, maybe it was Togo, maybe it was Ivory Coast, maybe it was any number of places.

[00:07:27]But the fact remains that at some point my bloodline came from this continent.

[00:07:36]And I am now returning to the place where my bloodline originated.

[00:07:43]And to be embraced in that way, and to be called a returnee, I'm like, I got no problems with that.

[00:07:51]But also to be to to go, you know, to Cape Coast and to go on the tour at Assin Manso, and to talk to people who are retelling the story of how people were taken, and to be informed of the um the ways in which various chiefs and government officials have acknowledged the wrong that was done, and have said, "Come home." You know, that that that is the that is the reason why I can now grasp and embrace the phrase, the term African-American, the identifier African-American.

[00:08:32]>> [snorts] >> That's the reason.

[00:08:35]The embrace, the welcoming, the the the the the welcome home is the reason that I can embrace that term, because it says to me that yes, I'm welcome here.

[00:08:49]I am desired here.

[00:08:52]I am seen and understood here, and even if not understood, there is an attempt to understand, because I do still think that there are a lot of misunderstandings between Africans on the continent and Africans in the diaspora.

[00:09:12]I do still think that there's a lot of conversation that can happen between us, a lot of cultural understanding that can happen between us. I've seen it, I've participated in it. I've seen I've had lightbulb moments, and I've seen other people that I'm talking to have lightbulb moments when I explain certain things to them, when they explain certain things to me. There's an exchange that is happening. There's an attempt at understanding that's happening, and there are many people who have that desire, that desire to connect and to converse and to understand.

[00:09:46]And so, when I experience all of that, I'm like, "Okay, African-American."

[00:09:54]Because as jacked up as the US is, still after 250 years of existence, still a hot mess.

[00:10:08]That's where I was born.

[00:10:11]Being born on that land provides me certain opportunities, certain um privileges that I can enjoy.

[00:10:23]And I can still say, "Yeah, it's jacked up."

[00:10:27]There's a lot of work to be done.

[00:10:30]There's a lot of healing to be done.

[00:10:32]There's a lot of ownership of wrongdoing to be done in that country, in my home country.

[00:10:40]But that's where I was born, and by birth and by culture, I'm American.

[00:10:48]But also by bloodline, I am of the African soil.

[00:10:56]And so, I can accept the phrase and I can embrace the term, the identifier African-American now much more than I could when I was younger.

[00:11:09]This is still an ongoing conversation in my mind and an ongoing uh a dialogue that I am willing to continue to have with people because I think it's so fascinating to me how people identify themselves um and how people have come to that identification, whether it's by choice or simply by virtue of birth.

[00:11:33]Here is caught in my earring.

[00:11:36]Um Yeah, I think this is this this is something that will continue, but I just wanted to share that.

[00:11:46]Man, this this this time in Ghana these past 2 months has been enlightening, illuminating, life-changing, heartwarming, frustrating, enjoyable, all of all of the above.

[00:12:10]It has been all of those things.

[00:12:16]I love this place.

[00:12:18]>> [laughter] >> If you don't know me by now, my name is Trefena Wade.

[00:12:23]I'm an actor, Broadway, TV, and film.

[00:12:26]I'm a certified master life coach, and I'm a globetrotter. And I'm an African American.

[00:12:31]And right now, I'm in Ghana.

[00:12:33]I love y'all. If you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting on? Press the red button, please.

[00:12:39]>> [laughter] >> Uh hit that like, leave a comment, share this with a friend, and I will talk to y'all soon.

[00:12:48]Bye-bye.