Top Nigerian singer, David Adeleke, better known as Davido, has recounted how he was mocked for being black while he was at a college in Alabama in the United States.
The award-winning singer brought the revelation to light in an interview with Recording Academy, organisers of the Grammy Awards, wherein he reflected on some of his experiences with racism.
He said he was often the butt of racial jokes due to his colour at the college which is dominated by whites.
“It’s crazy, because I’m from both America and Africa, so I know how both sides think. I went to school in Alabama. I went to college at 15. I was very young. And Alabama was a predominantly white state,” he said.
“So being an African kid in a university where it’s 13% black people, it’s amazing. It’s not easy. I had to learn a lot of the things when I was like, “Yo, why you look at me like that?” And not even just being black, being African. They used to ask me questions like, “Yo, how’d you get to America?” I’m like, “What you mean? I came on a plane.” “Oh, y’all got airports?
“It’s crazy because like I said, I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, this was when I was 15, 16, so I’ve always understood like, yo, this is going to happen. You know what I’m saying? Sometimes just because of the color of your skin, you might not get a lot of honesty from somebody. You feel me? So it was just crazy.”
The ‘OBO’ crooner, however, said while attention has been majorly on racial attacks against blacks by whites, there is need also to look into inherent hatred among blacks.
“The other way I look at it, we’re screaming Black Lives Matter, right? But we killing ourselves too. So the conversation is both sided, it goes both ways,” he said.
He went on to commend the fact that the narrative about Africa has been changing for good, adding that many Americans now crave to visit the continent.
“Now every American wants to go to Africa. Everybody wants to know where they’re from. So it’s good to see the transition from not being appreciated, to being appreciated right now. Even with fashion. You got designers that making African print fashion, so it’s not only music. The culture is being felt everywhere,” he added.
