?? San Diegans

I wrote this back in October. Please excuse the blatant and extreme generalizations made in this entry. I only left them in because they were part of a real conversation.

Do not take everything you read as fact. There are exceptions to every rule.. or theory in my case.

Thank you.


My friend Yinka and I decided to go out for a walk/drinks in downtown the other night. Towards the end of the night, we ended up at TGIFriday's (which happens to be situated between two nightclubs-- I'm sure you can image the type of traffic this brings in) for happy hour. We sat, ordered appetizers and talked about a lot of random ish as we usually do when we're together.

Our conversation drifted, but it eventually got to the topic of black males on the east coast and black males the west coast, particularly those in San Diego. We both agreed that the few young black men we've met from the east coast have carried themselves with an air that differed completely from that of their west coast counterparts, though we couldn't put our finger on what it was exactly. I continued to further compare black males in San Diego. I expressed how I believed that black males in San Diego were even still completely different from those of Los Angeles or the Bay Area. She agreed, and again, we couldn't pinpoint exactly why.



We began to throw out ideas. Was it drive? Was it demeanor? Was it their swag? Was it the communities they happened to be raised in? Was it the lack of black community there is in San Diego (I mean, there is a large white supremacist community here)?

Ehh, we shrug if off and are on the the next conversation.

A few minutes later, three young San Diegan (it was obvious) black men walk in to the restaurant. I don't really take note of them until I realize one is walking towards us. He gets to our table and invites himself to a seat. Oookaay.  Yinka and I exchange quick WTF glances to each other. I turn around to check to see where his friends went. Oh, The restroom, I realize, as they are walking directly to the back of the restaurant.

"Uhh, Hello," I say. My focus is back on the dude at our table.

"Hi. What are your names?" He asks us.

"Pearl," I say as I extend my arm to introduce myself.

"And yours?" He turns to Yinka.

"Yinka," she says.

"Huh? Inka?"

"Yinka."

"Nika?"

"Yinka," She replies again. She's used to this.

"Ohh, Yinka." He finally gets it. "What kind of name is that?"

"She's Nigerian--," I interject, mostly because I'm half annoyed by all of the repetition. "We're Nigerian," I
correct myself.

"Ooohhhhh, that's beautiful," he says in legitimate awe. "African Queens!"

Really? I thought, and couldn't help but to chuckle under my breath a little bit.

"Whats your name?" Yinka asks.

"Rome," he says definitively.

"What's your real name?" She asks again.

"Awhh, you know I can't tell you that. That's my government name. That's like giving you my social security number or something," he answers.

*blank stare*

By this time, his friends were making their way back to our table where they spotted their friend, "Rome."

They looked as confused as we were initially, so again, I began with introductions.

“Hi, what’s your name?” I asked them as I extended my arm and introduced myself. Yinka did the same. And again, as with Rome, there ensued the expected butchery of her name.

"Inka?"

"Yinka."

"Ninka?"

"No, Yinka," she responds firmly, but politely.

“Ohhhh, Yinka?? What is that Chinese or something?” Friend #1* asks. #2 is a little more reserved. “You do got them Asian eyes...”

Sigh.

“NO,” I speak up. She’s- we’re Nigerian.”

“Ooohhhh,” he says. “African Queens!...What tribe are you from? You speak Swahili?!”

Yinka and I exchanged are-they-seriously-asking-this glances.

“No, we don’t speak Swahili,” I answer. “I’m Igbo and she’s Yoruba,” I add in attempt to answer their question, but I’m cut off.

“I know a little bit,” he says as he proceeds to say something in Swahili in complete disregard to my response.

“You do realize that Swahili is spoken in eastern Africa, right? Nigeria is in western Africa,” I tell him.

“Oh, you don’t all speak it?”

“No,” I reply. “There are a lot of countries in Africa, and a lot of different languages too...” This is my attempt to educate them as much as I can, but again, I’m cut off.

“You know we love us some African Queens!” Friend #1 exclaims.

“Ohh, I had an African Queen on my necklace, but she came off. She was always near my heart. I’m looking for her,” Friend #2 says finally speaking up. He reaches for his cell phone and proceeds to show us the golden Nefertiti charm that fell off.

“Oh,” Yinka and I nod in unison.

Finally one of them asks the others if they’re ready to go. We all exchange farewell pleasantries, and they leave. Yinka and I sit there in silence for a few moments.

They were everything we were just discussing regarding the San Diego black male. Everything we couldn’t pinpoint, they embodied. They were nice, they were pleasant, but they were the San Diego black male we were previously discussing. I understand that this conversation could have happened anywhere and on any coast, but the untimely fashion in which they came confirmed my theory even further. :/ **







*I forgot their names.
**I normally do not generalize because I believe there are ALWAYS exceptions to every rule, but for the purposes of this story, I do.