Duretti lives in the dorms downtown, among restaurants and honky-tonks and lots of Nashville traffic.ĭONNELLA: Her friend group here is made up of people from a bunch of different backgrounds from around the country and around the world. It's one of the South's most elite and storied institutions.
Like, I've never been.ĭONNELLA: Today, Duretti is a public health student at Vanderbilt University. LEAH DONNELLA, BYLINE: Duretti Amhad has never been confused about her race.ĭURETTI AMHAD: I knew I was Black - like, always.ĭONNELLA: Growing up, though, there were aspects of Black American culture that she had to get caught up on.ĪMHAD: This one girl I used to be friends with - I remember she asked us, like, oh, like, you've never been to a cookout? Like, that's, like, a Black - like, you've never been to - and, like, me and, like, two of my other Ethiopian friends were like, no, like, I'm sorry. She asked some of them to share how they understand their racial identities. She spent months in Tennessee, which has the fastest growing percentage of Black immigrants in the region. Leah Donnella is NPR's Above the Fray Fellow. That's according to the Pew Research Center.
But what does it mean to be a Black Southerner without this history? Today, 10% of Black Americans are immigrants, and the greatest number of them live in the South. Soul food to signifying, civil rights to the blues - the American South is often considered the cornerstone of Black American culture.
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