05/07/2026
Edit: July 13
To the Ghanaians in the comments: I can see why this post bothers you, and I'm sorry.
For context: what you're seeing on Instagram/Facebook is not the full article I wrote. It's an excerpt someone on my team pulled from a longer essay to promote the full piece.
I have that person handle some of my social media posting so I don't need to be on these platforms constantly, because that's unhealthy. I started doing this a few months ago. The tradeoff is that sometimes what gets posted isn't a perfect reflection of what I intended.
That's what happened here, and I’m only seeing it now, 9 days later. This excerpt kept the worst thing I witnessed in Ghana and cut everything I wrote about what's beautiful about it. That's a framing failure, and I take responsibility for it since it went out under my name.
Here's what the excerpt left out. I asked a cab driver what he was proudest of as a Ghanaian and he said "hospitality." I walked past a wedding that was a rainbow of bright, beautiful dresses. I went to my grandmother's 90th birthday and saw a lifetime of her love reflected in everyone who came. My parents are Ghanaian. That heritage is mine too, and I'm grateful for it.
The essay's whole point is that every place holds both beauty and ugliness, and I'd never pretend Ghana is only one of those.
I'm sorry the version you saw made it look that way. The intention was to share a personal experience I had, and how it prompted me to be more grateful for my parents and the sacrifices they made for me.
If you want the full picture, the complete piece is linked here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thatskaizen/p/im-grateful-to-be-american-because?r=59cjpm&utm_medium=ios
