Paper short abstract:

Whiteness retains a potent symbolism around the world, including in places without significant white populations. My research in Lagos, Nigeria seeks to explore African perspectives on whiteness that have been largely unexamined, but which inform the lived experience of many millions of people.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to open up and explore questions of race in the context of Africa. My specific interest is whiteness, how it is made and what it means in Lagos, Nigeria. That whiteness should flex and morph with its geographical, historical and social contexts is well established. Yet analysis of how those not considered 'white' perceive, and co-constitute, whiteness is rare. Compared to the immense and diverse academic literatures devoted to documenting other peoples, consideration of how non-Western non-whites understand their Others is even rarer. The main contention of this paper is that the Anglophone academy will benefit from considering African spaces and incorporating African perspectives into analyses of race and whiteness.

This is particularly important in view of the fact that across the globe there are a multiplicity of terms that can be roughly translated as 'white person', often with powerfully evocative local meanings. In the Yorùbá language, widely spoken in south-western Nigeria, parts of the Republic of Benin and across a global diaspora, this word is òyìnbó (also òyìbó). Usually translated as 'white person' or 'European', the usage of òyìnbó is in fact far more subtle, incorporating a wide spectrum of difference.

I take these imperfections in the translation of òyìnbó as a starting point, and suggest that the term might be a useful way to explore localised understandings of whiteness in Lagos on their own terms.