African American Exceptionalism

The African American experience is one that is quite different from other racial/ ethnic groups. The majority of the first African American came over, unwillingly, on ships from various African countries. They were brought to America by white, European settlers to be used as slaves in an order to plant and harvest their crops and make money for the white man. This racial group was treated as if they were property and not people. However, with the ending of the American Civil War, African Americans gained freedom, freedom that not all white American were quite ready to handle. After gaining their freedom came the need for education, jobs and suffrage rights. Now in America this racial group has come a long way, having elected its first African American present for two terms, yet still there are many issues that are very prevalent. This racial group has been fighting their way to equality since the birth of this nation. African Americans have experienced an array of conflict, violence, stereotypes, prejudice acts, and discrimination against them throughout their history in America.

Still between 1865 and 1876, there was a culture identity crisis for African Americans. We cannot explain the roots of African American culture without

African American Studies is a very complex subject. To confuse African American studies with black history is a common occurrence. African American studies is much deeper and more profound than just Black history alone. There are many unanswered and unasked questions among the Black American culture which causes confusion and misunderstanding in modern day society. In unit one there were many themes, concepts, and significant issues in the discipline of Africana studies. Both W.E.B Du Bois and Vivian V. Gordan touched on many concerns.

African Americans throughout the road to gain racial equality exercised many methods in order to attain such liberties. We start our exploration by viewing the most paramount methods to acquire racial equality; these methods included lobbying public officials through the court system and through peaceful public protests. We'll lastly address the violent methods used to gain racial equality but see how they were mostly unavailing.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek” Barack Obama. The question is always asked does the media reflect the reality of society, or does society try and imitate the reality shown by the media? There are a number of stereotypes associated with African Americans in our society such as African American men are athletes, rappers, criminals, deviant, streetwise, uneducated, and unemployed just to name a few. African Americans in the media have changed through the years. The history of African Americans on TV or minorities in general is hampered by the racial conflicts and segregation that are embedded in American society. Historically, black actors have been grouped stereotypically and assigned to comedy. This has often been traced to the genre of black minstrelsy that was popular in the early 20th century.

As Americans, we are privileged with diverse experiences. With this comes a perceived understanding of many cultures and their influences but in fact full cultural literacy is impossible to achieve.

The protests full effect was achieved through the feet and resiliency of the travelers that organized carpools and walked long miles to work. Even with threats of violence and job loss, African Americans, many of which were poor, effectively crippled a bus system that received over 60 percent of its revenue from the African American community- they were resilient.

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated; that is 60% of 30% of the African American population. African Americas are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. “Between 6.6% and 7.5% of all black males ages 25 to 39 were imprisoned in 2011, which were the highest imprisonment rates among the measured sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age groups." (Carson, E. Ann, and Sabol, William J. 2011.) Stated on Americanprogram.org “ The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison.” Hispanics and African Americans make up 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. (Henderson 2000). Slightly 15% of the inmate population is made up of 283,000 Hispanic prisoners.

Africans have, since the early settlement of America, has had a great influence in the nation’s growth. These contributions to the United States from enslaved Africans have been greatly portrayed in American culture. Varying from cuisine, to song and dance are not only portrayed today but it has a deep-rooted impact throughout the United States. During the middle passage, enslaved Africans were forced to abandon their everyday lives, their families and their homes and forced to adapt to a new lifestyle they knew nothing of. However, upon arrival into the New World, due to their prior knowledge and wisdom from back home, they were able to quickly adapt and custom themselves to this new lifestyle in order to survive with the hope of potentially one day returning back to Africa. Unfortunately, African contributions to the culture of the United States has received little to no recognition and it has been taken credit for by Europeans and Whites since the early establishment of the United States.

The American culture is define to everyone in their own way. Everyone grows up differently in a particular community that shares the same languages, values, rules, and customs. The American Culture on that is consider to be a “melting pot”, because of all the different cultures that reside inside of it making it so diverse. Race in this country has never been a great topic throughout history. African Americans play a huge role into defining what our culture is as a whole, as well as being a part of racism for the past 250 years.

All countries are defined by their specific religions, cultures and traditions. African culture is just one of those disposed with traditions, spirituality and music. Unfortunately, as Africans were taken from their homes to be sold in America as slaves, they were separated from the cultures that they understood and that were theirs. The Africans in America had to find ways to fit their culture into their new environment. In order to acclimate to their new country, African slaves from different countries and cultures in Africa combined their unique traditions with the Christian ideology of their masters to create their own new form of existence. Slaves were able to form their own culture with unique food, religion, and ceremonies. Slave culture was developed from Christian ideas, African traditions and devoutness, as well as the distinctive mentality that arose from slave experiences.

Over the course of this semester, I was introduced to many people, ideas, writings, and discussions that sparked my interest and enlightened me on African American history. However, I feel like this was just the beginning of my journey of learning the history of my people, as there is still so much out there to be brought to the surface. Prior to taking this course, I was always ignorant on the topic of African American history and simply made the connection to slavery. Additionally, I was unaware of other black activist, movements, and struggles that I had the chance to witness for the first time in this class. I came to a realization of how deprived of this information I was, because other historic events have been deemed more important. A quote that stuck with me throughout the course that was made by Arthur Schomburg was, “... African history and negro history, are the missing pages of world history”.

African Americans have endured many trials and tribulations over the centuries. Our people have suffered from war, violence, and anguish simply because of the color of our skin. Our history has been so blatantly missing from textbooks and the K-12th grade educational atmosphere. Our educational system continues to neglect the history of our African American ancestors and fail to provide them with the educational resources to inform them of our past and allow them to learn about the true origins of our culture. We have made many significant contributions to the world but those have also been highly ignored as well.

A feeling of affiliation with community and strong interaction with all of its members serve as the basis of the peculiarity of Black community. Membership of community has been always more important to African Americans than the feeling of individualism and competition among its members. Jagers and Mock (1995) have talked about Afro-cultural communalism. This communalism is the tendency of African Americans toward collectivist orientation or the preference for interdependence among people. Students who are driven by this communalistic orientation cannot describe themselves in individualistic terms. In fact, much of their self-identity is grounded in their social concern for, and need to be with, others [3]. Being a member of community young African Americans always relate themselves to it, because as it has been mentioned above, individualism is not a characteristic feature of Black community.

To contribute, African-Americans have a significant feature that portrays their culture tremendously in today’s society. We African-Americans have certain hairstyles, and fashion that separates us from various cultures. For example, in the article, “How does Black Hair Reflect Black History”, written by Rumiana Jahangir she states, “Black hair has been an integral feature of black history - from African tribal styles to dreadlocks and the Afro. In early African civilizations, hairstyles could indicate a person’s family background, tribe and social status” In today’s society, African-Americans have different types of wild hairstyles that makes us different from other cultures pertaining to us having thick, and curly hair. These hairstyles consists of fades, afros, dreadlocks, braids and more. To add, the article also emphasizes how dating back to African Civilization basically your lineage can be pictured through your hairstyle which relates to how African-Americans culture is expressed in today's society. Furthermore, Africans have a specific taste when it comes to fashion ware being made. To reiterate, in an article titled, “Clothing in Africa” written by the Muhonja Khamina he states, “Early clothing in Africa was also made from treated animal hides, fur, and feathers. Many African societies weave cloth from locally grown cotton.” Dating back to prior centuries in Africa, their clothing seemed to have been made out of animals, animal skin, fur, cotton and other useful