Respect yourself

By Deborah Burstion-Donbraye

‘Respect Yourself’ was one of my family’s favourite songs during the turbulent 1970s in the US during the Civil Rights Movement. Sung by the Staple Singers, a father and his daughters, the lyrics were simple and powerful. Black Americans needed to respect themselves as they fought for basic rights.

“If you don’t respect yourself ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot (kobo)” about you, is the refrain.

The songwriters said they were inspired by seeing negative behaviour among some Black Americans that harmed their struggle to obtain basic civil and human rights. Their message continues to be relevant.

People will respect what you respect and value, so first, respect yourself.

I have thought about this often over the decades when I’ve encountered Nigerians here and in the US, especially those who are not Yoruba or Igbo.

In my experience, Yorubas and Igbos love and proudly celebrate their language and culture everywhere, the other 358 groups, not so much. I’ve lived discovered this during my decades of interaction in America, Nigeria and other countries. I’ve lived intermittently in Nigeria since the mid-90s, and just retired to Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, so I’ve encountered and befriended many, many Nigerians along the way.

As a former journalist, I ask a lot of questions to learn about them. My natural curiosity, which often makes my Nigerian husband cringe, leads me to ask people about their language and their culture. Who are your ancestral gods or oracles? What are your fables, expressions, traditional clothing? My most common question is: How do I properly greet you in your language? This is how I’ve learned, even sign languages of the deaf.

Often to my dismay, when I’ve asked this of Nigerians, I’ve been overwhelmed, even saddened that many seem to have quickly shed their tongue, and haven’t passed it on to their children or their spouses. An embrace of a religion today should not erase what your ancestors upheld. The beliefs that they held sacred, that defined them and helped them to survive should not be sacrificed on the altar of modern beliefs. 

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a ‘what’s good in America versus what’s wrong in Africa’ column, a topic often hotly debated in social media. Actually, on the contrary, it is a plea to all Nigerians to be proud of their language and culture, keep it alive, and pass it on to the next generation. Don’t let it die from your indifference and shame.

Today many have wholly embraced the identity of a majority group, whether it is the English of the colonizers, Christianity of the missionaries or the Igbo or Yoruba culture of one parent. To me, those people have casually destroyed their culture, their souls and their ancestral values.

Cherish your language, value your culture, and respect yourself.

Why does this bother me?

I’m the descendant of those who were stolen centuries ago from Africa, tribal groups mixed to prevent communication and escape, their language and culture beaten and tortured out of them across the Atlantic, and continued into bondage.

Centuries later, we African descendants in the Diaspora are painstakingly and expensively trying to recover our own language and history. We Black Americans literally pay to give our blood and saliva to companies that will give us some idea of who were our ancestors, to know what language they spoke. We pay to learn our history and cultures by percentages from scientists, not passed down from our ancestors.

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of parents and several generations from the southern United States. I received my journalism degree from The Ohio State University, meeting many Yorubas and Igbos, among the African students at one of America’s largest universities. With their food and clothing stores, festivals and ceremonies, for the longest time I thought those were the only groups in Nigeria. Much later, as a journalist for several newspapers, a political appointee in Washington, DC during two administrations, trips to African and then marrying a proud Ijaw, I learned the myriad reasons why some Nigerians are proud and highly represented, but many others are not; reasons both simple and complex range from the US immigration policies and domestic fighting to the strong importance of identity within a Nigerian state or region.

But I also learned why an Ijaw or an Itsekiri could be named Femi or Bello, because the family lived in the North or the South-West and wanted to fit in, but never meeting an Igbo or Yoruba, much less a Hausa, named Ebi or Tari, who were raised in the Niger Delta. The common denominator seems to be a strong sense of ancestral identity and pride, fostered by parents and community, a strong sense of self-respect.

I get it. Being a minority of any type is difficult, stressful, I’m one in my own country. Not seeing people who look like you or hearing your mother tongue in school, the workplace, in the media or at play isn’t easy. Being laughed at or ridiculed is a wound that never really heals, a scar that never fades away.

I led a discussion on this and other topics last year at the African Art Museum of Maryland, in Columbia, a city between Baltimore and Washington, DC. I learned about this issue from indigenous people from several countries such as Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Ghana. I learned even more from the curator at museums, such as the Sankofa in Baltimore, as I studied carvings and artifacts about these minority groups and their various societies.

Throughout the years I’ve spoken with educated adults from the Ijaws, Ishan, Tiv, Itsekeries, Ogonis, Urhobos and other groups who still recall being laughed at, ridiculed by primary teachers and classmates for their pronunciation of consonant blends that are foreign to their native languages, for names that are different and no one wants to take the effort to correctly pronounce them.

Not having your culture uplifted or celebrated can destroy your soul when you are daily forced to view yourself being de-valued through a larger group’s eyes. And we’re now in an American climate that is boldly practicing revisionist history at best, or at worse trying to erase contributions and history. And it isn’t just Black Americans, often other people of colour have the same outlook speak English only.

Historically, other Europeans coming to America have faced the same issues. Talk like an American, forget your language, kill your roots. But they had the same skin colour as the majority. It isn’t as easy when your skin colour, not your language, makes you stand apart from the White crowd and you didn’t come to America on your own free will.

Certainly a country needs a national identity, but not at the cost of sacrificing your individual one. A melting pot suggests a blending of culture into a whole; but I prefer the salad bowl theory, that each culture retains their distinct identities for a diverse mixture.

More than a century ago, the great scholar and write Dr. W.E. DuBois called this double consciousness for American Blacks. He wrote about being forced to look at one’s Black self through a White perspective while trying to maintain one’s own self definition and worth, always seeing yourself through two lenses, your own, and the one society puts on you. The goal for a healthy perspective is to view your group individually, maintain your culture, and not let the majority culture become the measuring stick for the minority culture.

That perspective, even in 2025, has returned with a fury, spreading around the globe like an unchecked cancer, that certain groups are organically less than human, can never equal to the majority and have little to value, nothing to respect or add to the culture. That outlook, conscious or unconscious, can be soul-crushing. The erroneous remedy can be assimilation -lose your culture and values and take on the majority’s culture. It is easier to become like the majority as much as possible, blend in, don’t stand out, don’t be different, don’t be your real, authentic self. We’re still debating if our natural hair cornrows or braids, or our non-European first names are ‘professional’, or if our wider noses are lovely, if our dark black skin is beautiful.

I say enjoy and take pride in being different, having a different language and history. Stand out, stand up, and don’t try to look like the others. Respect who you are and what you are.

Many Nigerians I’ve met are downright proud that they can’t speak their native tongue, and if they do, they don’t bother teaching their children. In inter-cultural marriages, the men say their children spend more time with their mothers, and that’s why they don’t speak their language. The moms say they are dealing with other things and trying to teach children a language they are not using in the school or home is too difficult.

Even in homes where both parents are from the same group, they neither use the language nor teach it to their children. Sayings, wisdom, humour of their culture all gone. They are not only killing their culture, but harming the children. Yet in my marital family those men who have married Igbos have children who speak Igbo.

In my own American family, my only nephew’s children speak flawless Serbian because their mom is proud of her heritage, and their church provides language and history lessons after church service, to keep a culture and heritage alive that both Europe and America have tried to destroy over the centuries. 

Psychologists say that children who know more about their family’s past have a higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of control over their lives. They call it the intergenerational self – the idea that when we know where we come from, we feel more confident in who we are.

As I continuously say: what was stolen from us, what we Black Americans are seeking and buying, many Nigerians are throwing away. Please stop, I beg.

Respect yourself. If you don’t respect yourself ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot” about you. 

•Burstion-Donbraye, a former journalist, wrote from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State