"Do You Live in Huts/Trees?"

Hello {{ first name | friends}},

I know you're probably amazed at this one. After all, surely there can't be anyone who'd actually ask a Black person this question to their face.

I've been asked this question several times by folx racialised as white, across multiple decades. And though I thought things might have improved, I've heard from Black friends that some people STILL ask this question.

It always puzzled me, because you really couldn't imagine a more Westernised upbringing than mine, beaches and palm trees nothwithstanding.

But let's break it down a bit. When the Europeans encountered Africans they tried to make sense of what they saw, then they tried to justify taking what they wanted by discrediting what they saw. That's a very reductive description of decades and centuries of exploitation and genocide which better historians than I have covered in detail. Read An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi to hear the side that's often deliberately obscured.

But anyway, those descriptions of how people lived (in harmony with their environment much as other peoples did) plus the whole enslavement and exploitation thing contributed to a particular view of African and Black people as somehow backwards and less developed or civilised (which is a hoot considering that many of the tenets of civilization emerged from Africa before being co-opted and whitened, but that's another story,).

So people have these ingrained ideas about places largely populated by people racialised as Black. That applies to the African countries, Caribbean islands and more. These ideas and stereotypes have been reinforced over decades by media portrayals.

Hence the question. I don't think the people asking even thought it was odd or potentially offensive - they thought it was a valid question and were very embarrassed to find that in fact I had grown up in concrete houses with walls considerably solider than those in most British homes.

Lately, I've experienced other versions of this, where the question isn't about huts and trees, but the expectation of a "shack" may or may not cross some people's lips.

This level of unawareness is wild in an age where many of us are relentlessly online and have access search engines and other tools to help us find information.

Those who bother to do some research will realise that the colonisers imposed their standards in all things and that achieving those standards associated with whiteness was a hallmark of success. So we live in houses, some wooden, some concrete, some limestone, some a mix, but all houses. And there are many aspects of our culture that would be instantly recognisable in countries where most people are racialised as white. Again, thank you, settler colonialism.

The harm in this question lies, as in the one about articulateness, in the expectation that people racialised as Black will be in what's considered a lesser situation. That is true in some countries and cases, usually because of the harms done by colonialism and resource extraction, but not in all. As one friend from an African country said: "I had to show my co-workers actual photos of my house before they would believe I hadn't grown up in poverty."

As I always say, people racialised as Black aren't monoliths. A little research goes a long way here. And as for the question itself, time to retire it, I say.

Finally, a question for my Black readers: what versions of this question have you heard? And what other questions like this would you like me to cover in this series? Feel free to reply to the email or post and let me know.

Thanks for reading,

Sharon

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I am an anti-racism educator and activist, the author of “I’m Tired of Racism”, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.

© Sharon Hurley Hall, 2025. All Rights Reserved. This newsletter is published on beehiiv (affiliate link).