Finding my Moroccan American identity away from Morocco

For a long time, saying I was Moroccan American came with an awkward ritual. I would introduce myself, mention Morocco, and wait for the inevitable questions: Where is that? or Is it really in Africa? Then Morocco made its run at the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Suddenly, everyone knew where it was. We had become recognizable through soccer, tourism, and the occasional person planning an aggressively expensive vacation to Marrakesh.

I found the sudden visibility great, but it also made me think about what it actually meant to identify as Moroccan American. I entered Whitman College in Walla Walla in southeastern Washington in 2023 carrying an identity that felt familiar but, in many ways, remained tainted and unexplored.

My first year at Whitman was mostly an exercise in saying yes to everything. I joined the Whitman African Student Association (WASA), Women of Color Voices, the student government’s nominations committee, and several other organizations. WASA, however, became particularly meaningful to me thanks to the group’s annual Taste of Africa event.

The event is a student-organized celebration of African diasporic cultures. It brings together our students, faculty, staff, and members of the surrounding community through performances, fashion, music, and other forms of cultural expression. My first Taste of Africa was also the first time I participated in a space in which African identity was not something I had to explain or defend. It was simply there, everywhere, and visible.

That experience became more significant because of what I was beginning to understand about my upbringing.

I grew up in a household where racism and misogyny were deeply intertwined with ideas about religion and culture. As a child, I knew that some of the things I heard from relatives felt wrong:

“Don’t go in the sun, you’ll get darker and look Indian.”

“Your hair is a crazy mess when it isn’t straight. You really shouldn’t stop perming it.”

But knowing something felt wrong and having the freedom to question it are two very different things. I had learned to accept family beliefs before I had developed the tools to examine them.

College gave me those tools.

At Whitman, I began recognizing forms of anti-Blackness and misogyny that had previously been presented to me as normal, traditional, or culturally justified. That realization was unsettling. It meant reconsidering parts of my upbringing while also figuring out which parts of my heritage I wanted to claim for myself.

My understanding of Moroccan identity became more complicated as I learned about my Indigenous Amazigh ancestry, and confronted Morocco’s history of anti-Blackness and colorism. It was uncomfortable to acknowledge these realities, particularly because Morocco was not some distant country I knew only from textbooks. I had traveled to Casablanca repeatedly to visit family. Morocco was extremely personal.

That made the process of questioning my relationship with the country feel almost contradictory. How could I be proud of my heritage while also criticizing aspects of the society connected to it? Eventually, I realized that these things did not have to cancel each other out.

My participation in Taste of Africa became one way of working through that contradiction. During my first year, I modeled a Moroccan takchita in the fashion show. The next year, I performed a choreographed dance to Tyla’s “PUSH 2 START.” Being able to participate in African culture alongside other students allowed me to engage with my heritage in a way that felt chosen rather than inherited.

That distinction mattered so much.

More recently, events surrounding the 2025 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) complicated my relationship with Moroccan patriotism even further. 

People may say it’s just soccer, but it’s much more. The Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) decision to strip Senegal of its AFCON title and award it to Morocco has turned a controversial final into an even bigger crisis for African soccer. Senegal’s players briefly walked off in protest, but the referee allowed the match to resume, and Senegal ultimately won 1–0 in extra time (making CAF’s decision two months later to overturn the result especially contentious). The ruling truly undermines the authority of referees, damages AFCON’s credibility, and leaves Morocco with a title that claims faux victory.

Seeing racism associated with Morocco made it difficult to maintain the uncomplicated national pride I had inherited from my parents. The version of patriotism I had grown up with suddenly seemed much less convincing.

What helped me through that discomfort was, ironically, the community I found at Whitman.

I met people who gave me space and respect to reconsider my identity without demanding that I resolve every contradiction immediately. Domestic and international students alike became part of a community in which I felt comfortable learning, questioning, and changing. I had never felt like I had quite so much room to exist in my own being (and I know I still have far to go in that regard).

There is a certain irony in realizing that I learned so much about being Moroccan American at a predominantly white liberal arts college. Something many second-generation Asian American kids and other children of immigrants feel as well.

 I had grown up in a Moroccan immigrant household, traveled to Morocco many times, lived with relatives, and assumed that proximity to my culture would naturally make me understand it. Instead, it was distance that gave me perspective. Whitman did not teach me to reject Morocco. It taught me to look at it more honestly.

I can appreciate Moroccan culture while acknowledging its problems. I can celebrate Indigenous culture while questioning the social prejudices that exist within the country. I can participate in African diasporic culture without pretending that African identity is one simple, unified experience.

Perhaps that is what Taste of Africa ultimately gave me: not a perfectly packaged answer to who I am, but permission to keep asking questions about my identity. Permission I didn’t have before.

Aya Mahmoudi has served as JoySauce’s summer intern. If you’d like to hire her for anything related to communications and writing, or if you’re interested in learning more about JoySauce’s internship program, please contact samantha@joysauce.com.