In a hotel lobby in Accra

So on my recent journey to Ghana, I visited La Palm Royal hotel (hands down, the worst managed hotel I've visited) and as I was only there for one night, I decided to spend some time in the lobby of our bungalow just taking in the experience I had had over the previous 3 days and also to enjoy the fresh Ghanaian air. Then along came a spider....And here's my reaction to his major faux paux




Why is it that if you see me, a Black woman, sitting around in the lobby of a 5-star hotel in Ghana, you automatically assume that I work here?

This white devil, anglofied racist beast looked me in the face and dared to insult my intelligence with his Napoleon-syndrome-having pompous attitude...'Do you work here?" "No, do you?" "No" " so why would I work here?" "I dunno, I'm just asking".

And then reality set in! Is it really that no matter how far I go in life; no matter my level of education or status, earnings, grother, savings potential, no matter what, I will still be a negro woman who will forever be mistaken for a Ghanaian hotel worker who without her uniform is simply an off-duty hotel maid?

Well, I'll be damned if I allow the world to define Black identity as something less-than or unequal to power, prestige, persistence, perseverance, pride, and potential. I am not your Jemima! I am not giving your seedlings my soul to suck on for what feels like eternity and I refuse to let my children feel inferior or be made to feel inferior because they choose to embrace their identity. I refuse to be marginalized, exoticized, demonized, and criticized by your standards that reduce my resilient sisters to nothin gmore than a colonizer's concubine who cleans the slop from the tables of men who sold their souls for coffee and sugar cane! $.02