Beautiful piece! Yes, humans beings love to lump people together in neat little categories. It’s so fascinating when you peel back these oversimplifications and look at the diversities within the diversity, like what you said about people identifying themselves by tribe. Africa is a vastly diverse continent—I once heard that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than anywhere else in the world, even between say, a typical White person and a typical Asian person. I feel we in the West just think of Africa as Africa which is terribly ignorant and reductionist.

As a Chinese-Canadian I grew up clumping with the other Chinese and Asian-Canadians (Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwanese, South Korea, Vietnamese are the main Asian groups where I live). HK, Mainland, and Taiwanese people are all technically ethnically Han Chinese but the diversity between is enormous. In fact, if we were all in China, we probably wouldn’t hang out with each other. China is incredibly regional. In fact, Mandarin can only get you so far…most people prefer to speak their regional dialect.

I think White people from the postcolonial countries (U.S., Australia, Canada etc.) have a lot to learn from us in terms of diversity! They just all see each other as White, but to be honest, Europe is also an intensely diverse place.