35: If Not Us, Who? Stop outsourcing indigeneity to your parents.

About this episode

Christabel and Kachi explore the impact of colonialism on Igbo child-rearing practices and the implications for contemporary African identity.

In this episode of Rich Queer Aunties, Christabel and Kachi go down the rabbit hole: how far back does Western influence actually go in Igbo land, and what does that mean for the way we talk about “African culture” today? Christabel went down a research rabbit hole after someone on Instagram told her that Africans must have been beating their children long before colonialism, otherwise why is it so widespread today? She went looking. What she found should make every person of African descent pause. In this episode, Christabel and Kachi trace the actual timeline: 500 years of colonial contact, a British model of child-rearing that was explicitly theological, and an Igbo cosmology in which children were revered as reincarnated ancestors sacred beings you could lose if you struck them too hard. This is not ancient African tradition. It is colonial management practice, repackaged as culture and handed down as inheritance. They also get into what it costs us today: hiding tattoos from parents who are themselves 500 years removed from knowing any better, calling queerness un-African, policing each other's bodies, performing respectability for a version of culture that was installed by…

People in this episode

Host: Christabel Mintah-Galloway

Guest: Kachi

Topics covered

• colonial influence
• African culture
• child-rearing practices
• indigeneity
• queerness
• cultural inheritance

Keywords

• colonialism
• Igbo
• child-rearing
• African identity
• queerness
• cultural practices
• indigeneity

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Igbo land, Africa, British