fallbackandrelax:
We have created this false division between what is an essentially continuous expression of African culture.
There is a deep cultural connection between Africans on the continent and the displaced/emigrated Africans throughout the Diaspora. There are reams of scholarship that identify the presence of “Africanisms” in African-American culture (e.g. Adisa Ajamu, Lorenzo Dowd Turner, Joseph Holloway).
So we are picking up a long resolved debate. Melville Herskovitz refuted E. Franklin Frazier’s claim to African-American cultural loss in the 1930s. (And we can even more strongly reject Frazier’s claim today). The idea of “loss” or “cultural absence” of black Americans is historically inaccurate.
And also, neither of us has inherited a pure and seamless African culture. Cultures are modified and changed through generations of experience. And if you add to this the impact of political pressures and colonial/oppressive experience, then we definitely differ in how we manifest our shared heritage.
But the continuity is undeniable. Many icons of African-American culture explicitly define their African ancestry. “Harriet Tubman” is born as an Asante Araminta; Benjamin Banneker’s grandfather was Dogon.
Collectively we see the same pattern. We can use migration maps to track the passage out of Africa to the Americas. For example, we find that 60% of Black Americans in New Orleans have Yoruba, Fon, and Kongo ancestry. The unconscious inheritance of African cultures is evident in features of Southern experience (e.g. the significance of metallugy, bottle trees).
But yes, there is definitely evidence of African-Americans thoughtlessly depreciating and appropriating of African culture: Afrocentricity is a good example. But we can’t afford to overlook the appreciative studies of African cultures by Black Americans (W.E.B. Du Bois, Alexander Crummell, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Jacob Carruthers, Asa Hilliard, Marimba Ani).
And also we shouldn’t forget the reciprocal influence of black Americans on Africa. The Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania; Amilcar Cabral, the political activist from Guinea Buissau was in talks with Black Power Activists in the US; Ali Farka Toure, the “father of African blues”, was also known as “the African John Lee Hooker” because of the impact of John Lee Hooker on his phrasing and performance style.
We can see that the main difference between continental and diasporan Africans is social prestige and political power—and not culture. Once we acknowledge our shared culture, then we shift the discussion to how we use political identities to attain political power.
this is really important and i wish i would’ve seen it earlier! thank you for writing and sharing it!
i wanna pick up on the bolded because i kind of sort of said some of these things, without the hyperlinked references of course. i should really start doing that so i can provide important references and share. note to self.
this is kind of jumbled so i apologize in advance.
i think although the idea is historically inaccurate, the force that makes it falsely accurate is white supremacist capitalist patriarchal racist colonialist etc etc practices, methods, exportation and the like. that is at least what i gathered from bloggers like blackamazon, so-treu and others, when they spoke of cultures (here speaks broadly about diasporas and how they missing from the convo). it’s not that everyone is saying they are cultureless and don’t know that they are creators. some are. it’s that when you are lied to every single day about your shit, and told that it’s “global” and tied to those before you and not tied to your essence, your place, and the ancestors that built created and made your space, it is extremely hard to own and even create boundaries on. because while people, places and things are using and mixing that shit that Af-Ams created, the claim to it is given to the “global-cultural” exported idea of blackness and black cool rather than to the people. it’s not tied to place or experience. because if it was attributed to the people and then some? then a discussion about who built the motherfucking country and made it GRAND - which would question this idea of privilege being simply and about marginalization/oppression because those who are supposedly supposed to have it are the ones who EARNED IT - would become wide open. then we’d have to talk about those who are unnamed, those who have no graves, those who are a part of the diaspora who practice what they did before, those that live on in the memories of Af-Ams, those who are around. like, in a real way. and if i misunderstood any of the words of those i linked above, well, let me know because again, that’s what i gathered.
and to the second bolded paragraph? yes and yes. this is what i was saying, although in a kind of one-sided way. that shit has been in exchange THE ENTIRE TIME AND STILL IS, albeit with a lot of forces involves like capitalism and whiteness. our cultures have changed and continue to all the time. but again, when Af-Am culture is not even looked at as a culture, it just looks like Af-Ams be stealing shit all the time when that’s not the case. and this is why we can’t even use appropriation (on any side because of power) because again, WHAT PRIVILEGE ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE? AND HOW IT WORK? like, i know that there is privilege in terms of being Western, being able to say you aren’t Af-Am and in terms of what can be accessed, but when it comes to cultural exchanges, there needs to be more context and nuance. because what needs to be understood is that we changing all the time. like so-treu and i think someone else was saying, we have exchanged and empowered each other back and forth. we’ve been each other’s examples. we have also shit on each other. like, it’s more complicated than just appropriation and taking. like, ima need for people not to use some anti-black AMERICAN sentiments to say that AND ima need for folks not to use the word appropriation on any side when speaking in this situation because it really doesn’t cut it and makes it seem like we all have some hegemonic power that we really don’t. remember who the theives, forces and culprits are here.
and the third paragraph is interesting because i didn’t know that. i knew a lil bit about Kongo but not anything else. my whole thing is that there is this idea that people should always be looking to one place, which is Ghana. and while i understand that, Ghana does not equal Africa (as hard as that was for me to admit) and that there needs to be a serious effort on anyone’s part that is trying, to be as specific as possible. because our narratives are complex as hell. and i guess this would be a way to take accountability and check yourself. because i think the question yesterday was not if people would fuck up because like karnythia and so-treu said, people WILL. it’s that, what will happen AFTER THAT? and what about when people fuck up with diasporic cultures? Af-Am cultures? with these circumstances, what do we do? that’s those are all the questions. so if that was a *solution* that i could offer, that’s probably it. just to try like that and do it with integrity as i know folks have and continue to do. and the same with me. if i’m going to complicate my narrative i’ve received about Af-Am histories and cultures AND African diasporic cultures and even my own, i have to be specific to place, region and class. like, that needs to happen. i have to realize what i am doing. because speaking for myself, i know that Af-Ams are family and that is why i speak with them and treat them as such. everyone who was on some anti-black American shit last couple days (i saw two and some anons on eclecticspectrum’s page), does not consider y’all fam, but just didn’t say. so ima just clear that up for everyone because it was annoying for that shit to not be said explicitly. y’all are family to me. there’s no question about it in my head. and i’m fucking proud of that family for being here in this moment. nuff respect all day.
and the last paragraph. yes to it all. this is what folks was tryna say about hip hop and then some. it goes well beyond being able to study. but even that has to be respected -that people actually fought to create spaces in which black Af-Ams could even have some access to African cultures and make those necessary links. what do i think i have? because i can only speak for me, i think all i’ve got are some exported stolen shit, not a department, library section nothing. the credit to Af-Ams is there. i’ve got really busted narratives. and so what i find is an undermining of the WORK. because like the products, the work is also not attributed specifically and efficiently to Af-Ams i find, the work that i and we benefit from. and this is hundreds of years, as opposed to thousands, that we’re talkin bout. i guess one is within the other.
i had more to say about my particular context just being a lil north of the border but i think that’ll be another time.
