In an interview with Hayat’s editor-in-chief, Firangiz Gasimova, Walla Elsheikh discusses her journey of reconciling her multicultural identity and how it led to her founding the Birthright AFRICA organization.
Walla Elsheikh on the Cultural Muslim Identity and the Fight for Peace
Elsheikh: I’ve dealt with the challenges that a lot of us have had as first-generation Muslims. Well, point-five generation for me because I came to America at eleven years old. My friends and I dealt with reconciling our Americanness, our national identity, and being a Muslim, especially within a predominantly Christian country. We also dealt with not feeling connected to Islamic practices. However, for the last five years or so, it’s become clear that I’m culturally influenced as a Muslim. I describe myself as a spiritual Muslim because I connect with many of the spiritual principles of Islam, and what I believe are the spiritual principles of all religions. Growing up in a Sudanese-Muslim home, I am cultured by Islam. To hear that there is a community of people intentionally calling themselves “cultural Muslims”, I was happy to not feel alone.
I started to feel more connected, especially with what happened in 2016 with he who shall not be named started running for president and attacking the Muslim religion. It made me want to fight for dignity and the culture, and, for that whole year, I was looking for peace in my life. Then it suddenly clicked, and I realized “Islam literally means peace, so what am I missing that I can connect to?” So, between the attack on Islam and this desire to connect to peace, I realized there was no need to feel shameful. There’s an aspect of Islam that I can adapt. Just because my mom wanted me to pray every day or to wear a certain kind of clothes, I don’t have to look at it in this negative light. I asked myself: what are the positive things that I can really embrace for myself in my mid-thirties?
The Desire for Identity and The Origins and Evolution of the Birthright AFRICA Organization
Gasimova: What events and experiences led you and Diallo Shabazz to found Birthright AFRICA?
Elsheikh: Diallo and I met in New York City when I started laying the groundwork for the organization. I had been in the education field for about ten years at that point and felt ready to bring this mission and vision to life in collaboration with educational institutions. He had had a long career in education, non-profit at that point. He grew up in a black American home being exposed to all the greatness of black and African history under Nigerian Yoruba tradition. His grandparents and great-grandparents were Garveyites. These were people who followed the philosophy of Marcus Garvey, who was looking to help black Americans return to Africa. For him, Africa was this place to aspire to get to since he hadn’t grown up there. Now, the opposite from me in the sense that I was born in Sudan, and raised only a couple of years there between Sudan and Uganda. I was the child of a diplomat, which is why I had such an international childhood. I identified as a multicultural and global citizen more than anything else and had even been to an American international school in Uganda starting in the second grade. So I’m learning English from American teachers and starting to feel very connected to American culture, so much so that even in Sweden I was watching the Cosby Show at four years old. All the music was coming from artists like Micahel, Madonna, and Diana Ross, so we were aware of the place known as America.
I moved to America and started my career in finance, and I feel like I’m killing it. My friend could see the way I talked about America as this holy grail of a country, land of opportunity: secular, great assimilation. She asked me “Walla, do you know what happened to black people in America?” It dumbfounded me. There is this history of the depth and devastation of enslavement linking back to being stolen from the continent, and it still plays out today. It’s the land of opportunity for everyone, but what you don’t know is that there are policies that are still in place or have not fully been rectified that create unconscious bias and a stigma on being a black person in America. That is what I started to feel in the workplace. You start to second guess and internalize some of these oppressions and we feel that even as Muslim Americans. There are not that many of us, in places of leadership particularly, so I focus on centering pride in my African descent because for me that was the most visible identity. I wasn’t seen as Muslim because of people’s perceptions of what a Muslim looks like.
The nail that hit the coffin was my friends of Jewish descent getting their birthright to Israel for free, ten days to study their history and culture. I was twenty-four at the time and I thought: I’m African, I’m disconnected. Why isn’t this happening for black people? For young black people? At that point, I hadn’t been home to Sudan in fifteen years and that was the moment that I felt that this could be my calling. I have a dual understanding, I have a desire to connect myself, I love culture, and I love history. I’m gonna make a shift, build my career in education, co-found Birthright AFRICA, and find who else is looking to bring young people to the continent to connect them to their roots and culture. That was in 2004, so that was twenty years ago. I’ve essentially built the program that I needed at a young age to build pride and confidence in my heritage.
Gasimova: What was the first trip for Birthright AFRICA? Is there anything about it that sticks out to you?
Elsheikh: We incorporated in 2015, and the first group trip was in 2017 in collaboration with the City University of New York and their Black Male Initiative (BMI), which serves both young men and women. Birthright AFRICA is more like an umbrella organization that raises awareness and provides technical expertise and some funding to our education partners — high schools, colleges, and community-based organizations — that have young people of African descent to support. We also register young people and refer them to these programs, and we have over 27,000 young people registered. So there is a high demand.
That first group of seven called themselves the Sankofa Seven. Sankofa is a principle in Ghana that means to know where you are going in the future, you have to know your past. Its signature is a bird flying one way while looking backward the other way, literally to know where it is going and its history. Before we are even on the continent, we explore heritage, culture, and innovation in America. So many of us don’t even know our history and don’t go to those places of inspiration in our own cities. In New York, we visited the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, there’s an African burial ground full of the bones of enslaved black people downtown on Wall Street. It was five or six blocks from where I used to work, and I never knew about this place. Never knew about it until the Birthright cohort, at thirty-seven years old. There are only about two percent of us of African descent that are at the levels of leadership and entrepreneurship, despite us being thirteen percent of the population. There is an extreme gap. They met leaders and entrepreneurs there, and they went to Harvard University Innovation Center. We constantly expose them to people who represent a version of themselves that is five, ten, or fifteen years ahead. We hear their career and life stories, what they’ve had to go through to get where they are, and the racism that is involved. We took the group of young people to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. They make this great connection between the two histories of the US and Africa.
These young people go to Africa thinking that they’re just going to see dirt roads, but then they see entire highway systems, luxury, and hotels. But then they also go to the dungeons where enslaved ancestors were held; it is all still there for us to see and witness. It’s so emotional and so spiritual. Then they get to meet leaders and entrepreneurs, some of whom are their age. They realize that Africa is not a foreign place, and start to feel at home there as if they could see themselves living and working there. Everyone says their life changed, everyone wants to come back. I’m so proud to say that 98% of our scholars and alumni, feel like they have the resources, and clarity, to believe in themselves in a way that they did not before.
Elsheikh’s Hopes for the Future of African Descendants and the Organization
Gasimova: What does Birthright AFRICA have in store for 2024?
Elsheikh: We have 5 Birthright Partner programs confirmed that are traveling to Ghana and South Africa starting this April. That includes Frederick Douglass Academy and Brooklyn Kappa League taking high school youth from New York while The Hood Exchange Birthright Program out of Atlanta is taking formerly incarcerated young people to Ghana. We are currently working towards having a partnership with AfricanAncestory.com, for every DNA kit that we sell, we will get a $25 donation. We are also launching our exclusive virtual community for scholars, alumni, donors, and partners that will allow us to truly engage with each other and continue to create that community and sense of belonging and provide access to resources and opportunity. At the end of the day, we’re trying to increase the percentage of us who get leadership, funding, rights, opportunities, and access to networks that make a difference. We will also soon announce the locations of the Birthright Partner programs. We anticipate having about one or three that are open for registered scholars. We hope to gain new partners, celebrate at a gala around the time of the UN General Assembly week, and work to bring more awareness and funds to support the essential Birthright AFRICA mission.
