Nairobi — For those of us born black just after the Second World War, we had front row seats for the collapse of American apartheid. We started out confined to all black communities and schools at a time when skin colour was still destiny.
But as segregation gave way, many of us were vaulted out of this sequestered world and into colleges, jobs and walks of life that had been closed to us since the nation's founding. The rush of upward mobility produced the inevitable identity crisis, which in turn led to endless discussions about the meaning of blackness in a world where skin colour was beginning to matter less and less.
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