There is a new minority organization on campus, and members of the one-month old African Student Association (ASA) say it is not to be confused with the Association of Black Students (ABS), founded in 1968.

            According to sophomore founders Aden Abiye of Ethiopia and Audrey Addo of Ghana, ASA’s main purpose is to educate people about the different cultures in Africa.

            “I believe there are about 28 countries in Africa,” Abiye said. “All of them have very different cultures. I’m from Ethiopia, and even just that one country there are over 60 languages and over 60 different tribes, so even in Ethiopian everyone’s different.”

            Abiye said that when she came to SMU, she was very disappointed to find that there was no student organization for African students.

            “I joined ABS,” she said. “But it wasn’t what I expected it to be. It is an African American organization, but for me, it didn’t talk about my culture. It was basically for black Americans. But for us newcomers, it’s totally different because we have different cultures.”

            For Abiye, “black American” refers to dark-skinned people whose families have lived in America for generations.

            ABS is what is an umbrella African American organizations, which include Sister Supporting Sisters, Black Men Emerging, National Society of Black Engineers, National Association of Black Accountants and Voices of Inspiration Gospel ChoirABS and ASA are discussing whether or not ASA will fall under this umbrella if they get chartered.

            Since ABS is the Association of Black Students, ABS President Courtney Kelly said that she spent a couple of weeks pondering over this question to decide what she thought about adopting ASA:

            What does it mean to be black, African or African American?

            “I was recently asked if I was African by someone that’s not American,” she said. “And I was like, ‘no I’m just black.'”

            She doesn’t see any reason why ASA should not fall under the ABS umbrella, but she does admit that they are completely different organizations.

            ABS Treasurer Linwood Fields said that the organization is an umbrella specifically for African American organizations. Since ABS is “geared towards everybody, regardless of race or color,” he said that the organization’s purpose was to be inclusive, not exclusive.

            ASA plans to focus on a different African country at their meetings, which are every other Thursday. They want to raise awareness about Africa because they said television portrays Africans just as stereotypically as they do black people in America.

            “I just think people need to be educated more,” said Zimbabwean Belinda Gopito. In Africa, “nobody lives in a hut. I don’t have a pet lion in my backyard. I didn’t grow up playing with monkeys. I live in a proper home.”

            In ASA’s second meeting on Oct. 28, members discussed the issue of defining race. Many people noted that the stereotypes people associate with certain races in America overpowers the actual cultures in many situations.

            “I feel like I’m not black,” said Gopito. “I wasn’t born here. I didn’t grow up here. I feel like when people say ‘black,’ they’re talking about the typical African American image that you see on TV. But I feel like I’m not that. I cannot relate to an African American, like a typical African American who was born here, grew up here. We don’t have anything in common. I feel like I can’t even talk to them.”

            SMU Freshman theater student and Dallas native Chinyere Oputa’s mother is from Arkansas, and her father is from Nigeria. Growing up in a multicultural home, she said that the African and African American cultures are not as different as people like Gopito might think

            “We are different,” Oputa said. “I’m not going to deny that. But we’re not as different as we think, as we expand it to be. They show these extreme stereotypes of African Americans on TV, and they do the same thing in America with Africans–they’ll show them in huts. I think the propaganda is dividing us more than we actually need to be divided.”

            ASA Treasurer Trisha St-Fleur is a freshman from south Florida. Her parents are from Haiti, but she was born and raised in America.

            “We are all different,” she said, “and that’s what separates us. But what saddens me is the fact that we can’t just all say ‘look, hey, I’m black.’ You know? We have to separate ourselves. We have to put these distinctions on ourselves.”

            To some people, ‘black’ is a blanket term referring to all people with dark skin who do not wish to be associated with Africa.

            However, being ‘black’ means something different to other people.

            ASA PR Representative Samira Abderahman sees being ‘black’ as being a part of a black American culture. Her Ethiopian parents raised her in the Ethiopian culture, and even though she is considered an African American, she doesn’t really relate much to the American part.

            “Being black, honestly, I feel like I can’t speak about it much,” she said. “Because I’ve never really been 100 percent accepted within the black community—just because I am different, and it’s okay.”

            According to ABS President Kelly, “in the American sense of the term, ‘black’ refers to anyone with a darker pigment in their skin.”

            Sophomore Isake Slaughter from Odessa, Georgia thinks so, too.

            “My mother would always tell me that I am an American from African decent. So I always associated myself with African Americans.”

            Slaughter can see why [people who were born in America but were raised in the culture of their African families would be considered African American, but she feels like that is not the kind of African American she can relate to.

            “I associated ‘black’ with dark skin,” she said. “I didn’t think ‘black’ was a culture.”