So American

Betelihiem Tecleab

Instructor’s Introduction

Betelihiem’s essay “So American” movingly critiques racism and xenophobia in the United States through her own personal narrative. Betelihiem’s memoir is an important rallying cry to address the horrors and assumptions of whiteness in the United States. 

In her essay, Betelihiem recalls some of her earliest memories immigrating to the United States. We read the racism and xenophobia she faced in the classroom as an Eritrean. Crucially, she conveys this formative moment on one of the most stereotypically American days, the Fourth of July, while being forced to consume, but ultimately unable, to eat one of the most stereotypically American foods, the hot dog. The moment that she vomits the hot dog conveys her rejection of being forced into a racial category. 

Betelihiem submitted this paper for her final assignment of my class WR 120: Contemporary Memoir. In the class, we learned how memoir is used in everyday life through reading and discussing how memoir appears in how we talk about ourselves, long-form social media posts, celebrity ghostwriting, autofiction, and politics. The final assignment for the class was to create a memoir to talk about a research topic of their interest.

Beteliheim’s essay went well beyond what I expected for the class assignment; it is bold, affecting, well researched, and also a beautifully executed essay. Her attention to the form of each sentence, including her staccato sentence structure, her attention to the blank space of the page, and her use of repetition conveys the inanity of racism in the United States, the possibilities of radical rejection, and its effect on the subjectivity of the person being raced.

Fallon Murphy

From the Writer

Conversations on racism are often centered on the overt and familiar, but as people evolve, so does racism itself. The modern, subtle expressions are no less damaging, defining what it means to be an American through a piercing white gaze. This is about redefining the borders of identity, how one operates in a futile system, and embodying radical acceptance. 

So American 

We had gotten our tests back. Something about clouds. The substitute teacher with white hair and aging lines on her face was looking right at me. Weird. I went back to my individual work. She came right up to my desk. Went on and on about how she hated the last school she taught at. There were too many Black and Native students in her opinion. 

She preferred to teach white kids. Was I not one? A kid. Afterwards, she stood over me and waited. For a reaction. A confirmation of what she thought of me. To see if I would transform. Have I been changed? 

Finally, I had it. Black. That was it. All I was to her. To them. 

Was I always Black? Was it when I stepped off the plane? In Eritrea. In Sudan. In Ethiopia. I was Betelihiem.

Here I was singular. Unimportant but labeled. Walking a path made for me, far from the American dream. 

They cut my name. My hair. My speech. 

A line drawn, like fact. The Prime Meridian. 

I think about the dog hair. The tables. The nausea.

A static version of “Take On Me” was playing softly from the speaker. The first grade. A rehearsal. No recess. The sun blared through the mirrors that made up the outer left wall. Blinding. I looked down. Gone were the days when I could rely on Princess Sofia to teach me English. 

The teacher was going off on a tangent. The Fourth of July. I understood. In America, you spoke English. In America, you ate hot dogs. 

“Beth,” she called. With that midwestern elongation, tongue poking out. Behhhth. Asmara. 

My grandmother, Zuwudi, cradled my name. A soft, reverent: Betelihiem. No one could say my name. Or tried. It’s my turn now. 

A hot dog in my hand. I grabbed the mustard, warm from the sun, and squeezed a line onto the brown meat. It was immediate, the sour invading my nostrils. 

Everyone else had taken a bite of it. It was just me. I could feel the teacher and my classmates’ eyes on me. Watching. A test. 

At an orchestra recital, a classmate will lean in. “Dog hair” they will say. Not a whisper, a statement. Like it was true. Then she watched and waited. 

They are always watching. Always testing me, as if I am supposed to know something. No. I am something. America was a test. A game. A hunger clawing in my chest, unable to reach my tongue. So utterly stupid in English. 

I did not want to eat this. Aydeleyoneh. My feet moved back and forth. Stalling.

Now, the same teacher who refused to let me speak Tigrinya was measuring me up, to see whether I could swallow America. I raised the hot dog. 

I could try America. I bit down. 

Swallow. 

Swallow America. 

Swallow the bread, the mustard, and the meat. 

Swallow their eyes. 

Swallow the test. 

Swallow Beth. 

Back in kindergarten, I skipped my math class. Hiding behind the overarching iron gates that surrounded the school, looking out to the palm trees. The principal found me. And my teacher, who was so so mad, grabbed a pencil and rolled it between my fingers, the wood grinding against the bone. I understood. I broke a rule. 

This was worse. So much worse. But still I could not swallow. The mustard was nauseating, overwhelming my senses. The meat in my hands felt like mush. The dry bread scraped the inside of my mouth. Something was coming up. Dripping from my mouth. Bile. I vomited in front of everyone. 

My eyes burned and I was dizzy. I had failed. 

I wiped my mouth with my hand. 

The hot dog had come back up, and everything with it. My body knew something. They knew something I did not. A secret about me. The rejection reverberated from the unknown, in every look, provocation, and lines drawn all around me. 

There would be more tests. A classmate would say hello to everyone. Hello. Hi. Hello.

When she got to me: Hey Bitch. 

Questioning looks. 

Tables that dispersed when I sat down. 

Teachers who refused to pronounce my name. 

Beth again. 

I was learning rules. Navigating in the dark, a maze. Was all of America like this? Had I gotten lucky in Eritrea, getting to be Betelihiem for a while? 

Constricted by white expansion. White faces, white rules, white spaces. 

Cutting and molding me into a caricature. 

No amount of hot dog eating would get me across. No amount of politeness. No amount of silence, of toleration. 

The line enmeshed so deeply with American soil. 

I was tested then. I am tested now. Guilty before I had arrived. 

I wanted to pass. To cross that horizon, a clean slate. 

I will never be white adjacent. Never earn their respect. 

Fine. Good. 

These are their rules, not mine. 

I remember Asmara. The palm trees and never–ending sun. Aygodelen—never lacking. I remember. 

Reflection

My essay is my earliest experience of racialization. We had to do a Fourth of July lesson, which included eating a hot dog. I understand that moment as a test of American assimilation. I had never eaten one before and disgust and nausea became the center of the narrative. 

In order to execute this narrative, I looked back on George Yancy and his work on the white gaze, Sheri Lynn Johnson and respectability politics, and W. Caleb McDaniel’s analysis of the dilemma abolitionists faced in the United States. Beyond that research, I experimented with the form of my writing, incorporating repetition, imagery, and leaving some things out in the open. When I described a secret they knew about me, I was referencing my Blackness. They could shun me for being Black but never tell me I was Black, which was apparently a greater offense. Yancy was crucial for helping me articulate that feeling. Yancy argues that one becomes Black not through biology but by perception, through the white gaze that brands and policies us (217). This is the same white gaze that pierced me on “Independence Day.” 

I was not Black in Eritrea, I was Betelihiem. In that classroom, under the watchful eyes of everyone, Betelihiem had transformed into a Black body, object of management and interpretation. Yancy navigated what it means to be scrutinized under the white gaze and have your identity be defined for you by another. I tried to execute this by moving rapidly between the past and future, which helped to articulate a moment that defined my American experience. From that realization, I functioned as a silent person for a while. Fitting into the box of respectability, that if I appease and appeal to the system, I can deflect the brutality of their prejudice. This is where I utilize Johnson. That reality was broken when I came to realize that a line had been drawn centuries ago. There is no model minority in Blackness, because whiteness is measured by its distance from Blackness with no set marker. 

Although Johnson writes on respectability in reference to the justice system, the message remains the same, neutrality does not work. It demonstrates how respectability politics requires Black people to perform for the stamp of white approval, further distancing themselves from anything that might confirm those stereotypes (Johnson 2621). In that small classroom, I learned what it meant to perform under the white gaze. 

Speak English, and when you can’t, shut up. To eat the hot dog, and when you can’t, do not complain. Prove that I could assimilate, that I could be altered from what they believed my nature to be. Respectability politics force Black people to perform for toleration by suppressing their authenticity, their sense of self, outside of the label of Black. I faced a similar dilemma to what McDaniel described in this moment and others. Abolitionists had to decide whether or not to celebrate a holiday that would never acknowledge their freedom. 

Do I give in to the holiday and change myself to avoid scrutiny, or do I intentionally exclude myself in light of who I am? I chose to end it on a complete rejection of white assimilation. That to be Black meant to reject all preconceived notions and lines drawn for me.

Works Cited 

Johnson, Sheri Lynn. “Respectability, Race Neutrality, and Truth.” The Yale Law Journal, vol. 107, no. 8, 1998, pp. 2619–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/797352. 

Yancy, George. “Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 4, 2005, pp. 215–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670583.  

McDaniel, W. Caleb. “The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform.” American Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 1, 2005, pp. 129–51. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068253.

Betelihiem Tecleab is a freshman studying Political Science and Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences. Growing up in Asmara, Eritrea, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, she sustained her passion for writing. She credits Professor Fallon Murphy for rekindling her love for literature and immersing her in a richer learning environment.