Africans’ Opinions of Congolese (DRC)

Hello, I am half Congolese (my father was born and raised in Kinshasa and didn’t come to the US until a few years after he graduated college) while my mother is African American/black

I’m proud to know where at least half of my African lineage comes from, just as I am proud to be black, and am happy to offer information I know about the DRC to anyone who asks

Tonight I had a meeting with some women I know from church and a woman from Uganda, after I told her I was Congolese, said that Congolese people didn’t know how to wash themselves because she saw a seminar at a community college nearby teaching- I believe- Congolese female students about personal hygiene. She said it while laughing and kept repeating it and I had to continuously say I’d never heard of such a thing and that I’d ask my father. Other girls laughed and I felt a bit disrespected. I didn’t get overheated because I thought there may be something I don’t know, but I wish she’d considered where exactly from the DRC those girls may have come from and what their situation was to feel like they needed to take such a seminar.

And now I’m wondering if other African countries have less respect for mine, and why that might be ?

I am aware of the Rwandan conflict, the corruption of the government, Belgium’s colonial scars and even the issues with r*pe. But do other countries in Africa not have these issues to a degree as well? And is it not understood that so many outside forces and countries pay good money and create horrible deals and policies with one another to keep my country down? To take our minerals and displace my people doing so? I know it’s far from perfect, but I thought there would be more respect there from African to African.

She also said I wasn’t African after I told her I was half, but my father has always made sure I had pride in who I was, so I consider myself not ethnically African, I’m American through and through, but I value my culture and heritage and don’t believe it’s within anyone else’s right to take that from me. He says I am African, and I know me family’s history there so I feel that I am truly African-American/Black-African. It’s possible to be both.