African-American culture , also known as Black-American Culture , refers to African-American contributions to US culture, either as part of or different from the mainstream American Culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in the historical experience of African-Americans, including the Middle Passage. Both cultures are different and very influential on the global culture of America and Global as a whole.
African-American culture is mainly rooted in West and Central Africa. Understanding his identity in American culture, in an anthropological sense, is aware of its origins as a cultural blend of West and Central Africa. Although slavery severely limits the ability of African-Americans to practice their indigenous cultural traditions, many practices, values ​​and beliefs persist, and over time have been modified and/or mixed with European culture and other cultures such as Native Americans. African-American identity was established during the period of slavery, resulting in a dynamic culture that has and continues to have a profound impact on American culture as a whole, as well as the wider world.
Complicated rituals and ceremonies are an important part of the ancestral culture of African Americans. Many West African societies have traditionally believed that spirits live in their natural surroundings. From this disposition, they treat their environment with full attention. They also commonly believe that the source of spiritual life exists after death, and that the ancestors of this spiritual world can then mediate between the supreme and the living creator. Honor and prayer are shown to these "ancient people", the spirit of the past. West Africans also believe in spiritual possession.
In the early eighteenth century, Christianity began to spread throughout North Africa; this religious shift began to replace the traditional African spiritual practice. The enslaved Africans carry this complex religious dynamics in their culture to America. This combination of traditional African beliefs with Christianity provides a common place for those practicing religion in Africa and America.
After emancipation, the unique African-American tradition continues to grow, as a distinctive tradition or radical innovation in music, art, literature, religion, cuisine, and other fields. Sociologists of the 20th century, like Gunnar Myrdal, believe that African Americans have lost most of their cultural ties to Africa. However, anthropological fieldwork by Melville Herskovits and others suggests that there is a continuum of African tradition among Africans from the diaspora. The greatest influence of African cultural practice on European culture is found below the Mason-Dixon line in South America.
Over the years, African-American cultures have developed separately from European-American cultures, both because of the enslavement and persistence of racial discrimination in America, and the desire of African-American slaves to create and maintain their own traditions. Today, African-American culture has become an important part of American culture, yet, at the same time, remains a different cultural body.
Video African-American culture
African-American cultural history
From the earliest days of American slavery in the 17th century, slave owners sought to control their slaves by trying to erase their African culture. Physical isolation and social marginalization of African slaves and, later, of their free breeds, however, facilitate retention of the essential elements of traditional culture among Africans in the New World in general, and in the US in particular. Slave owners deliberately try to suppress an independent political or cultural organization to confront many of the slave uprisings or acts of resistance that take place in the United States, Brazil, Haiti, and Guyanas of the Netherlands.
African culture, slavery, slave uprising, and the civil rights movement have shaped African-American religious, family, political, and economic behavior. African footprints are proven in a variety of ways: in politics, economics, languages, music, hairstyles, fashions, dance, religion, cuisine, and worldviews.
In turn, African-American culture has had a widespread and transformative influence on many elements of mainstream American culture. This mutual creative exchange process is called creolization. Over time, African slave cultures and their descendants everywhere not only have an impact on the dominant American culture, but also on the world culture.
Oral Traditions
Slave holders restrict or prohibit the enslaved African Americans' education because they fear it will empower their property and inspire or allow emancipatory ambitions. In the United States, laws that reject formal education slaves may contribute to maintaining a strong oral tradition, a common feature of indigenous African culture. Oral traditions based in Africa are the primary means of preserving history, customs, and other cultural information among people. This is consistent with the griot practice of oral history in many African and other cultures that do not depend on the written word. Many of these cultural elements have been passed down from generation to generation through storytelling. The folklore gives African Americans an opportunity to inspire and educate one another.
Examples of African-American folklore include the fraudulent Br'er Rabbit stories and heroic tales like the story of John Henry. The Uncle Remus story by Joel Chandler Harris helps to bring African-American folklore into mainstream adoption. Harris does not appreciate the complexity of the story or its potential to make a lasting impact on society. Another narrative that emerges as an important, repetitive motif in African-American culture is "Signifying Monkey", "The Ballad of Shine", and Stagger Lee legend.
The heritage of the African-American oral tradition manifests in various forms. African-American preachers tend to do not just talk. The subject's emotions are brought through the speaker's tone, volume, and rhythm, which tend to reflect the increased action, climax, and down action of the sermon. Often song, dance, verse, and pause are structured placed throughout the sermon. Calls and responses are another widespread element of the African-American oral tradition. It manifests in worship in what is often referred to as the "amen corner". Contrary to recent traditions in other American and Western cultures, it is the reaction of an acceptable and general audience to interrupt and affirm the speaker. This interaction pattern is also evident in music, especially in the form of blues and jazz. Hyperbolic and provocative rhetoric, even extravagance, is another aspect of the African-American oral tradition that is often seen in the pulpit in a tradition sometimes referred to as the "prophetic speech".
The modernity and migration of the black community to the North has had a history of putting tension on the retention of black cultural practices and traditions. The different urban and radical spaces in which black culture is being produced are causing fear among anthropologists and sociologists that the black southern aspect of popular black culture risks being lost in history. The study of the fear of losing the roots of popular black culture from the South has a topic of interest to many anthropologists, including Zora Neale Hurston. Through his extensive research on folklore and Southern cultural practices, Hurston claims that popular Southern folklore and practice are not dying. Instead they develop, develop, and re-create themselves in different regions.
Other aspects of the African-American oral tradition include dozens, signify, garbage talk, rhymes, semantic inversions and word games, many of which have found their way into popular American mainstream culture and become an international phenomenon.
The spoken word art is yet another example of how the African-American oral tradition has influenced popular modern culture. The spoken word artist uses the same techniques as African-American preachers including movement, rhythm, and audience participation. Rap music from the 1980s onwards has been seen as an extension of oral culture.
Harlem Renaissance
The first major public recognition of African-American culture occurred during Harlem Renaissance pioneered by Alain Locke. In the 1920s and 1930s, African-American music, literature, and art received widespread attention. Authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen and poets like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen wrote works depicting the African-American experience. Jazz, swing, blues and other musical forms enter popular American music. African-American artists such as William H. Johnson and Palmer Hayden create unique artworks featuring African Americans.
The Harlem Renaissance is also a time of increased political involvement for African-Americans. Among the famous African-American political movements established in the early 20th century were the British Negro Uprock and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons. The Nation of Islam, a leading quasi-Islamic religious movement, also began in the early 1930s.
African-American cultural movement
The Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s followed behind the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. This movement promotes racial pride and ethnic cohesion differently by focusing on the integration of the Civil Rights Movement, and adopting a more militant posture in the face of racism. It also inspires a renewed awakening in African-American literary and artistic expression commonly referred to as the African-American "Black Art Movement".
The works of popular recording artists such as Nina Simone ("Young, Talented and Black") and The Impressions ("Keep On Pushing"), as well as poetry, art, and literature at the time, shaped and reflected the growth of racial and political consciousness. Among the most famous authors of the African-American Art Movement is the poet Nikki Giovanni; poet and publisher Don L. Lee, later known as Haki Madhubuti; poet and playwright Leroi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka; and Sonia Sanchez. Other influential authors are Ed Bullins, Dudley Randall, Mari Evans, June Jordan, Larry Neal, and Ahmos Zu-Bolton.
Another key aspect of the African-American Art Movement is the infusion of African aesthetics, the return of the collective cultural sensitivities and ethnic pride that much to the evidence during the Renaissance Harlem and in celebration of the NÃÆ'Ã… © gritude among artistic and literary circles in the US, Caribbean , and the African continent nearly four decades earlier: the idea that "black is beautiful". During this time, there was an awakening of interest, and the embrace, an element of African culture in African-American culture that had been suppressed or devalued to conform to Eurocentric America. Natural hairstyles, like afro, and African outfits, like dashiki, are gaining in popularity. More importantly, African-American aesthetics encourage personal pride and political awareness among African Americans.
Maps African-American culture
Music
African-American music is rooted in polyrhythmic music typical of African ethnic groups, particularly in the West, Sahel and Sub-Saharan regions. The African oral tradition, preserved in slavery, encourages the use of music to continue history, teaches lessons, reduces suffering, and conveys messages. African African American music history is evident in several common elements: call and response, syncopation, percussion, improvisation, swinging notes, blue notes, falsetto usage, melisma, and complex multi-part harmony. During slavery, African Americans combine traditional European hymns with African elements to create spirituality.
Many African Americans sing "Lift Every Sound and Sing" next to the American anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", or as a substitute. Written by James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson in 1900 to be performed for Abraham Lincoln's birthday, the song, and continues to be, a popular way for African Americans to remember past struggles and express ethnic solidarity, faith and hope for the time front. The song was adopted as "Negro National Anthem" by the NAACP in 1919. Many African-American children were taught songs at school, church or by their families. "Lift the Voice of Ev'ry and Sing" traditionally sung soon after, or instead, "Star-Spangled Banners" at events hosted by churches, schools, and other African-American organizations.
In the 19th century, as a result of the minstrel blackface show, African-American music entered mainstream American society. At the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of music with origins in the African-American community have transformed American popular music. Aided by the technological innovations of radio and LPs, ragtime, jazz, blues, and swing also became popular overseas, and the 1920s were known as Jazz Age. The early 20th century also saw the creation of the first African-American show, a movie like King Vidor Hallelujah! , and operas like George Gershwin Porgy and Bess .
Rock and roll, doo wop, soul, and R & amp; B was developed in the mid-20th century. This genre became very popular among white audiences and influenced other genres such as surfing. During the 1970s, dozens, urban African-American traditions used rhyming slang to knock down enemies (or friends), and the grilling tradition of West Indians evolved into a new form of music. In South Bronx, the half-spoken man, half-singing to the rhythm of the "knocking" path grew into a very successful cultural force known as hip hop.
Contemporary
Hip hop will be a multicultural movement, however, still important for many African Americans. The African-American Culture Movement of the 1960s and 1970s also fueled the growth of funk and then hip-hop forms such as rap, hip house, new jack swing, and go-go. Home music was created in a black community in Chicago in the 1980s. African-American music has experienced far wider acceptance in American popular music in the 21st century than ever before. In addition to continuing to develop newer forms of music, modern artists have also initiated the rebirth of old genres in the form of genres such as neo soul and modern groups inspired by funk.
In contemporary art, black matter has been used as a raw material to illustrate Black's experience and aesthetics. The way the Blacks face feature was once delivered as stereotypes in the media and entertainment continues to be an influence in art. The dichotomy arose from works of art such as Coffin by Dana Schutz based on the murder of Emmet Till to remove the painting and destroy it from the way Black pain was delivered. Meanwhile, Black artists such as Kerry James Marshall describe Black's body as empowerment and Black invisibility.
Art
Dance
African-American dance, like other aspects of African-American culture, found its earliest roots in the dance of hundreds of African ethnic groups who became African slaves in America as well as the influence of European sources in the United States. Dance in African tradition, and thus in the slave tradition, is part of everyday life and special occasions. Many of these traditions such as descend, ring shouts, and other elements of African body language survive as an element of modern dance.
In the 19th century, African-American dance began to appear in the singers' performances. These shows often feature African Americans as caricatures to be laughed at by many audiences. The first African-American dance that became popular with white dancers was cakewalk in 1891. Later dances to follow this tradition include Charleston, Lindy Hop, Jitterbug and swings.
During the Harlem Renaissance, African-American Broadway shows like Shuffle Along helped shape and legitimize African-American dancers. African-American dance forms such as beats, a combination of African and European influences, gained widespread popularity thanks to dancers such as Bill Robinson and used by prominent white choreographers, who often hire African-American dancers.
Contemporary African-American dances are derived from previous forms and also draw influences from African and Caribbean dance forms. Groups like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continue to contribute to the growth of this form. Modern popular dance in America is also strongly influenced by African-American dance. American popular dance has also attracted much influence from the most prominent African-American dance in the hip-hop genre.
One of the unique forms of dance, dance, African American dance, emerged from the social and political movement of the East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area. Turfing is a hood dance and a response to the loss of African American life, police brutality, and race ties in Oakland, California. Dance is an expression of darkness, and one that integrates the concepts of solidarity, social support, peace, and discourse of the state of black people in our present social structure.
Art
From its origins in the slave community, until the late 20th century, African-American art has made an important contribution to the art of the United States. During the period between the 17th century and early 19th century, art took the form of small drums, blankets, wrought iron sculptures, and ceramic ships in the southern United States. These artifacts have in common with comparable craft in West and Central Africa. In contrast, African-American craftsmen such as New England-based sculptor Scipio Moorhead and portrait painter Baltimore, Joshua Johnson, created artwork contained in a truly western European style.
During the 19th century, Harriet Powers made a blanket in rural Georgia, USA that is now considered to be the best example of a 19th century Southern quilting. Later in the 20th century, women at Gee's Bend developed a distinctive, bold and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional African-American blankets with geometric simplicity developed separately but such from the Amish quilt and modern art.
After the American Civil War, museums and galleries began to showcase more often the work of African-American artists. Cultural expressions in mainstream places are still limited by the dominant European aesthetics and by racial prejudices. To improve the visibility of their work, many African-American artists travel to Europe where they have greater freedom. It was only after the Harlem Renaissance that more and more European Americans began to notice African-American art in America.
During the 1920s, artists such as Raymond Barthà © Å ©, Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, and photographer James Van Der Zee became famous for their work. During the Great Depression, new opportunities emerged for these African-American artists under the WPA. In later years, other programs and institutions, such as the New York City-based Harmon Foundation, helped foster African American artistic talent. Augusta Savage, Elizabeth Catlett, Lois Mailou Jones, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and others exhibited at museums and jury exhibitions, and built a reputation and follow-up for themselves.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were very few widely accepted African-American artists. Nonetheless, The Highwaymen, a loose association of 27 African-American artists from Ft. Pierce, Florida, created beautiful Florida landscape images and quickly realized and peddled about 50,000 of them from the trunk of their car. They sell their artwork directly to the public rather than through galleries and art agents, thus receiving the name "The Highwaymen". Revisited in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as an important part of American folk history. Their artworks are widely collected by fans and original pieces can easily take thousands of dollars in auctions and sales.
The Black Art Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was another period of resurgent interest in African-American art. During this period, several African-American artists gained national popularity, among them Lou Stovall, Ed Love, Charles White, and Jeff Donaldson. Donaldson and a group of African-American artists formed AfriCOBRA's Afrocentric collective, which remains current. Sculptor Martin Puryear, whose work has been acknowledged for years, is honored with a 30-year retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in November 2007. Contemporary African-American artists include Willie Cole, David Hammons, Eugene J. Martin, Mose Tolliver, Reynold Ruffins, the late William Tolliver, and Kara Walker.
Literature
African-American literature is rooted in African oral tradition of African slaves. Slaves use stories and fairy tales in the same way they use music. These stories influenced the earliest African-American writers and poets in the 18th century such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano. These writers reached high starting points by telling the stories of slaves.
During the early twentieth century of the Harlem Renaissance, many writers and poets, such as Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington, struggled with how to respond to discrimination in America. The authors during the Civil Rights Movement, such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of racial segregation, oppression, and other aspects of African-American life. This tradition continues today with authors who have been accepted as an integral part of American literature, with works such as Roots: The Saga of American Family by Alex Haley The Color Purple > by Alice Walker, Beloved by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and fiction by Octavia Butler and Walter Mosley. The works have achieved the best-selling and/or award-winning status.
Museum
The African-American Museum Movement emerged during the 1950s and 1960s to preserve the heritage of African-American experience and to ensure proper interpretation in American history. Museums devoted to African-American history are found in many African-American environments. Institutions such as the African American Museum and Library in Oakland, the African American Museum in Cleveland and the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture were created by African Americans to teach and investigate the cultural history which, until the last decade has been primarily preserved through oral tradition. Other notable museums include Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Language
The generation of difficulties imposed on the African-American community creates different language patterns. Slave owners often intentionally mix people who speak different African languages ​​to prevent communication in languages ​​other than English. This, combined with a ban on education, leads to the development of pidgins, a simplified mix of two or more languages ​​spoken by different language speakers. Examples of pidgins that became fully developed languages ​​include Creole, common to Louisiana, and Gullah, common to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a variation (dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect) of American English closely related to speech, but not exclusively to African Americans. Although AAVE is academically regarded as a legitimate dialect because of its logical structure, some white and African Americans regard it as slang or a result of poor American command. Many African Americans born outside of South America still speak with instructions from the AAVE or southern dialect. Children in an isolated African-American town with talking only AAVE sometimes have more difficulty with standardized testing and, after school, move into the mainstream world to work. It is common for many AAVE speakers to switch codes between AAVE and Standard American English depending on the settings.
Fashion and aesthetics
Clothing
The Black Art Movement, a cultural explosion of the 1960s, sees the incorporation of living cultural clothing with elements of modern fashions and Western African traditional dress to create a unique African-American traditional style. Kente fabrics are the most famous African textiles. This festive pattern of fabrics, which is present in various varieties, was originally made by Ashanti and Ewe people from Ghana and Togo. Kente fabrics also appear in a number of Western fashion styles ranging from casual T-shirts to formal bow ties and belts. Kente strips are often sewn into liturgical and academic robes or worn as stoles. Since the Black Art Movement, African traditional dress has been popular among African Americans for both formal and informal occasions. Other manifestations of African traditional dress in common evidence in African-American culture are bright colors, mud cloths, trading beads and the use of Adinkra motifs in jewelry and in couture fabrics and decorators.
Another common aspect of fashion in African-American culture involves clothes that are appropriate for worship at the Black church. It is expected in most churches that an individual presents their best performances for worship. African-American women are particularly known for wearing bright dresses and clothing. An interpretation of a passage from the Christian Bible, "... every woman who prays or prophesies with her head denying her head...", has led to the tradition of wearing a complicated Sunday hat, sometimes known as the "crown".
Hair
Hair styling in African-American cultures varies greatly. African-American hair usually consists of circular curls, which range from tight to wavy. Many women choose to wear their hair in a natural state. Natural hair can be arranged in various ways, including afro, grocery, braids, and style of washing and leaving. It is a myth that natural hair presents a styling problem or is difficult to manage; This myth seems to be prevalent because mainstream culture has, for decades, sought to get African American women to conform to their beauty standards (ie, straight hair). To that end, some women prefer to straighten hair through heat applications or chemical processes. Although this can be a matter of personal preference, the choice is often influenced by straight hair being the standard of beauty in the West and the fact that this type of hair can affect the work. However, more and more women are wearing their hair in a natural state and receiving positive feedback. As an alternative, the most important and socially acceptable practice for men is to let a person's hair naturally.
Often, when a man ages and starts losing his hair, his hair is cut well, or his head is shaved completely free of hair. However, since the 1960s, natural hairstyles, such as afro, braids, and dreadlocks, have grown in popularity. Regardless of their association with radical political movements and their major differences from mainstream Western hairstyles, they have achieved sufficient social acceptance, but they are certainly limited.
Maintaining facial hair is more common among African-American men than in any other male population in the US. In fact, the soul patch is so named because African-American men, especially jazz musicians, popularize the style. The preference for facial hair among African-American men is partly due to personal taste, but also because they are more susceptible than other ethnic groups to develop a condition known as pseudofolliculitis barbae, commonly referred to as a knife bump shave , many choose not to shave.
Body image
European-Americans sometimes adopt different hairbraiding techniques and other African-American hair forms. There are also people and groups working to improve the aesthetic dignity of Africa among African Americans as well as internationally. This includes efforts to promote as a model that has a clear African feature; mainstreaming natural hairstyles; and, in women, a fuller, more exhilarating body type.
Religion
While African-Americans practice a number of religions, Protestant Christianity is the most common. In addition, 14 percent of Muslims in the United States and Canada are black.
Christianity
African-American Christian religious institutions are generally referred to collectively as black churches. During slavery, many slaves were stripped of their belief systems in Africa and typically rejected free religious practices, were forced to become Christians. However, slaves managed to defend some practices by integrating them into Christian worship in secret meetings. These practices, including dancing, shouting, African rhythms, and enthusiastic singing, remain a big part of worship in African-American churches.
African-American churches teach that everyone is equal in the eyes of God and views the doctrine of obedience to a teacher taught in white churches as a hypocritical internal hierarchy - but is accepted and reproduced and supports the physical punishment of children among things other. Instead the African-American church focuses on the message of equality and hope for a better future. Before and after emancipation, racial segregation in America fosters the development of organized African-American denominations. The first is the Church of AME founded by Richard Allen in 1787.
After the Civil War, the merger of three smaller Baptist groups formed the National Baptist Convention. This organization is the largest African-American Christian denomination and the second largest Baptist denomination in the United States. An African-American church does not have to be a separate denomination. Some African-American-dominated churches exist as white-dominated denominations. African-American churches have served to provide African-Americans with leadership positions and opportunities to organize the rejected in mainstream American society. Therefore, African-American pastors become the bridge between the African American and European American communities and thus play an important role in the Civil Rights Movement.
Like many Christians, African-American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas performance. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is retelling the classic birth story with gospel music. Production can be found in African-American theaters and churches across the country.
Islam
The generation before the advent of the Atlantic slave trade, Islam is a religion that developed in West Africa due to peaceful introduction through the lucrative Trans-Saharan trade between the prominent tribes in southern Saharan and Arab and Berber in North Africa. In proving this fact, the West African scholar Cheikh Anta Diop explains: "The main reason for the success of Islam in Black Africa [...] the result comes from the fact that it was propagated peacefully at first by Arabo-Berber travelers alone to kings and certain Black figures, who then pass it on to them under their jurisdiction ". Many first-generation slaves can often retain their Muslim identity, their offspring do not. Slaves are forcibly converted to Christianity as well as in Catholic lands or surrounded by great inconvenience to their religious practices as in the case of the American Protestant lands.
In the decades after slavery and especially during the depression era, Islam re-emerged in the form of a highly visible and sometimes controversial movement within the African-American community. The first of these records is the Moor of America Science Temple, founded by Noble Drew Ali. Ali had a major influence on Wallace Fard, who later founded the Nationis Islam Black nationalist in 1930. Elijah Muhammad became head of the organization in 1934. Similar to Malcolm X, who left the Nation of Islam in 1964, many African-American Muslims now follow Islam traditional.
Many former members of the Nation of Islam entered Sunni Islam when Warith Deen Mohammed took over the organization after the death of his father in 1975 and taught its members the traditional form of Islam based on the Qur'an. A survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows that 30% of Sunni mosque visitors are African American. In fact, most African-American Muslims are orthodox Muslims, because only 2% of the Nation of Islam.
Judaism
There are 150,000 African Americans in the United States who practice Judaism. Some of them are members of mainstream Jewish groups such as the Reformation, Conservative, or Orthodox branch of Judaism; others belong to non-mainstream Jewish groups such as the Hebrew Black Israel. The Hebrew Israelite Hebrew is a collection of African-American religious organizations whose practices and beliefs are revealed to some extent from Judaism. Their diverse teachings often include, that African-Americans come from biblical Israelites.
Research has shown in the last 10 to 15 years there has been a huge increase in African-Americans identified as Jews. Rabbi Capers Funnye, first cousin of Michelle Obama, said in response to skepticism by some African-American and Jewish people at the same time, "I am a Jew, and it breaks through all the colors and ethnic barriers."
Other religions
In addition to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, there are also African-Americans who follow Buddhism and a number of other religions. There are a small number of African Americans who participate in African traditional religions, such as Vodun West Africa, Santeria, Ifa and diaspora traditions such as the Rastafari movement. Many of them are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean and South America, where they are practiced. Because religious practices, such as animal sacrifices, which are no longer common among larger American religions, these groups can be viewed negatively and are sometimes victims of abuse. It must be stated, however, that since the Supreme Court ruling passed to Lukumi Babaluaye Florida in 1993, there has been no major legal challenge to their right to function as they wish.
Unreligious belief
In a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 12% of African-Americans described themselves as nothing special (11%), agnostic (1%), or atheist (& lt; 0.5%).
Life events
For most African-Americans, obedience to life events follows the mainstream American culture. While African Americans and whites often live for themselves for much of American history, the two groups generally have the same perspective on American culture. There are some unique traditions for African-Americans.
Some African Americans have created new rites associated with African tradition. Some teenage boys and pre-teen and teenage girls take classes to prepare them for adulthood. These classes tend to focus on spirituality, responsibility, and leadership. Many of these programs are modeled after traditional African ceremonies, with a focus largely on embracing African culture.
To this day, some African-American couples choose to "broom jump" as part of their wedding ceremony. Although the practice, which can be traced back to Ghana, disliked in the African-American community after the end of slavery, has experienced little resurgence in recent years as some couples attempt to reassert their African heritage.
Funeral customs tend to vary based on a number of factors, including religion and location, but there are some similarities. Perhaps the most important part of death and death in African-American culture is the gathering of family and friends. Whether in the last days before death or immediately after death, usually every friend and family member who can be contacted will be notified. This meeting helps provide spiritual and emotional support, as well as help in making decisions and completing daily tasks.
The spirituality of death is very important in African-American culture. A member of the clergy or members of the religious community, or both, usually present with the family through the whole process. Death is often seen as temporary rather than final. Many services called homegoing or homecoming, not funerals, are based on the belief that the person will return to the hereafter; "Returning to God" or Earth (also see Euphemism and Connotation). The whole process of life is generally treated as a celebration of one's life, deeds, and accomplishments - "good things" rather than mourning over loss. This is most clearly shown in the tradition of New Orleans jazz cemetery where lively music, dance, and food encourage those who gather to be happy and celebrate homegoing loved ones.
Cuisine
In studying African American culture, food can not be left as one of the medians to understand their community's traditions, religions, interactions, and social and cultural structures. Observing the way they prepare food and eat their food since the enslaved period, revealing the nature and identity of African American culture in the United States. Derek Hicks examines the origin of "gumbo", which is considered a soul food for African-Americans, in reference to the intertwinement of food and culture in the African American community. There is no historical written evidence of gumbo or its recipe, so through the African American character that orally spread their stories and recipes, gumbo came to represent their real communal dishes. Gumbo is said to be "the invention of enslaved Africans and African Americans". By mixing and cooking the remaining ingredients from their White owners (often less desirable pieces of meat and vegetables) together into dishes that have a consistency between stew and soup, African Americans take disgust and make it the desired dish. Through sharing these foods in churches with their people, they share not only food, but also experiences, feelings, attachments, and a sense of unity that unites the community.
The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as sweet potato, peanut, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, indigo nuts, and cotton, can be traced to African influences. African-American food reflects a creative response to oppression and racial and economic poverty. Under slavery, African Americans are not allowed to eat better meat cuts, and after emancipation many are often too poor to buy them.
Food Soul, warm cooking is commonly associated with African Americans in the South (but also common to African Americans nationwide), making creative use of cheap products obtained through agriculture and hunting and subsistence fishing. The pork intestine is boiled and sometimes battered and fried to make chitterlings, also known as "chitlins". Ham hocks and neck bones give spices to soups, boiled peanuts and vegetables (turnip greens, green collard, and mustard greens).
Other common foods, such as fried chicken and fish, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, and hoppin 'john (black eyed peas and rice) are prepared simply. When African-American populations are much rural than today, rabbits, opossums, squirrels, and waterfowl are important additions to diet. Many of these food traditions are predominantly dominant in many parts of the Southern countryside.
Traditionally prepared traditional foods are often high in fat, sodium, and starch. Suitable for the life of physically demanding workers, farm laborers and rural lifestyle generally, it is now a contributing factor to obesity, heart disease and diabetes in a population that has become increasingly urban and settled. As a result, more health-conscious African-Americans use alternative methods of preparation, avoiding trans fats for natural vegetable oils and replacing smoked turkey for fat and other preserved pork products; limiting the amount of refined sugar in dessert; and emphasized the consumption of more fruits and vegetables than animal protein. There are, however, some resistance to such changes, as they involve deviations from long culinary traditions.
Holidays and celebrations
Like other racial and ethnic groups, African Americans observe ethnic holidays with traditional American holidays. Observed holidays in African-American culture are not only observed by African Americans but are widely regarded as American holidays. The birthday of America's leading civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. has been observed nationally since 1983. This is one of three federal holidays named for an individual.
The Black History Month is another example of African-American adherence that has been adopted nationally and its teaching is even required by law in some states. The Black History Month is an attempt to focus on previously neglected aspects of American history, especially the life and stories of African-Americans. This was observed during February to coincide with the establishment of the NAACP and the anniversary of Frederick Douglass, a leading African-American abolisionist, and Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
On June 7, 1979 President Jimmy Carter decided that June would be the month of black music. Over the past 28 years, the president has announced to the Americans that Black Music Month (also called African-American Music Month) should be recognized as an important part of American heritage. Black Music Month is highlighted with various events that encourage citizens to have fun in various forms of music from gospel to hip-hop. African-American musicians, singers, and composers are also highlighted for their contribution to the nation's history and culture.
Less widely observed outside the African-American community is the Emancipation Day known as Juneteenth or Freedom Day, in recognition of the official reading of the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865, in Texas. Juneteenth is the day when African Americans reflect on their unique history and heritage. This is one of the African-American holidays with celebrations in the United States. Another less-than-observed holiday outside the African-American community is MalcolmÃ, X's birthday. The day was observed on May 19 in American cities with significant African-American populations, including Washington, D.C.
Another recorded African-American holiday is Kwanzaa. Like the Emancipation Day, it is not widely observed outside the African-American community, despite its increasing popularity with African-American and African communities. African-American scholar and activist "Maulana" Ron Karenga created the Kwanzaa festival in 1966, as an alternative to the rising commercialization of Christmas. Coming from an African harvest ritual, Kwanzaa is observed every year from December 26 to January 1. Participants in the Kwanzaa celebrations affirmed their African heritage and the importance of family and society by drinking from a cup of unity; light a red, black, and green candle; exchanging symbols of inheritance, such as African art; and tell the lives of people who are fighting for African and African-American freedom.
Negro Election Day is also another festival that comes from African cultural rituals especially West Africa and revolves around the voting of a black official in New England colony during the 18th century.
Name
Although many African-American names are common among the larger US population, different naming trends have emerged in African-American cultures. Before the 1950s and 1960s, most African-American names were very similar to those used in European American culture. The dramatic changes in the naming tradition began to form in the 1960s and 1970s in America. With the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in medieval times, there was a dramatic increase in various origins. The practice of adopting neo-African or Islamic names gained popularity during that era. Efforts to restore African heritage inspire the election of names with deeper cultural significance. Prior to this, using African names was uncommon because African Americans of several generations were removed from the last ancestor to have African names, since slaves were often named Europeans and most of the family names were from Anglo.
African-American names have origins in many languages ​​including French, Latin, English, Arabic, and African. One of the most important influences on African-American names is Muslim religion. The names of Islam entered a popular culture with the advent of The Nation of Islam among Black Americans with a focus on civil rights. The popular name "Aisha" comes from the Qur'an. Regardless of the origin of these names in Islam and the place of the Nation of Islam in the civil rights movement, many Muslim names such as Jamal and Malik enter popular use among black Americans simply because they are fashionable, and many Islamic names are now commonly used by African Americans regardless of their religion. African names began to appear as well. Names like Ashanti, Tanisha, Aaliyah, Malaika have origins in the African continent.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it has become common in cultures to find new names, although many names are found taking elements from popular names that exist. Prefixes like La/Le -, Da/De -, Ra/Re -, or Ja/Je - and suffixes like -ique/iqua, -isha, and -aun/-awn are common, as well as inventive spellings for common names.
Even with the emergence of creative names, it is still common for African-Americans to use biblical, historical, or European names.
Family
When slavery is practiced in the United States, it is common for families to be separated through sales. Even during slavery, many African-American families managed to maintain strong family ties. Free African men and women who managed to buy their own freedom by hire, freed, or who had fled from their employers, often worked hard and long to buy members of their families who remained bound and sent for them.
Others, apart from relatives, form close ties based on fictional brothers; play a relation, play aunt, cousin, and the like. This practice, a legacy of African oral traditions such as sanankouya , survived Emancipation, with non-blood family friends is usually given status and blood relations degree. The broader and broader concept of Africa about what constitutes families and communities, and the deep respect for parents who are part of African traditional societies, may be the origin of common usage of terms such as "cousin" (or "cuz") , "Aunt", "uncle", "brother", "sister", "Mother", and "Mama" when talking to other African-Americans, some of whom may be strangers.
African-American family structure
Immediately after slavery, African-American families struggled to reunite and rebuild what had been taken. Until 1960, when most African-Americans lived under some sort of sorting, 78 percent of African-American families were headed by married couples. This number continued to decline during the second half of the 20th century. For the first time since slavery, the majority of African-American children live in households with only one parent, usually a mother.
This clear weakness is offset by a reciprocal assistance system set up by members of extended families to provide emotional and economic support. Older family members pass on social and cultural traditions such as religion and courtesy to younger family members. In turn, older family members are cared for by younger family members when they can not take care of themselves. This relationship exists at all economic levels in the African-American community, providing strength and support to both African-American families and communities.
Since the passing of the Right of Choice Act, African Americans voted and were elected public officials in increasing numbers. In 2008, there were about 10,000 African-American elected officials in America. Afro-Americans are very Democrats. Only 11 percent of African Americans voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.
Social issues such as racial profiles, racial differences in punishment, higher poverty rates, lower access to health care and institutional racism are generally important to African-American communities. While differences in racial and fiscal issues have remained consistently broad for decades, which seem to indicate a broad social gap, African Americans tend to have the same optimism and concern for Americans as whites.
These political and social sentiments have been expressed through the hip-hop culture, including graffiti, break-dancing, rap, and more. This cultural movement makes statements about history, as well as contemporary topics such as street culture and custody, and often expresses calls for change. Hip Hop artists play an important role in activism and combat social injustice, and have a cultural role in defining and reflecting on political and social issues.
An area where African-Americans are generally higher than whites are in their condemnation of homosexuality. Leading leaders in the Black Church have shown opposing issues of gay rights such as gay marriage. This is in stark contrast to the low-and-low phenomenon of covert men's sexual acts. There were people in the community who took different positions, notably the late Coretta Scott King and Rev. Al Sharpton, the latter, when asked in 2003 whether he was in favor of gay marriage, replied that he might have also been asked whether he was in favor of a black marriage or white marriage.
African-American population center
The African-American environment is a type of ethnic enclave found in many cities in the United States. The establishment of an African-American environment is closely related to the history of segregation in the United States, either through formal law, or as the product of social norms. Nonetheless, the African-American environment has played an important role in the development of almost every aspect of African-American culture and the wider American culture.
Rich African-American community
Many prosperous African-American communities exist today, including the following: Woodmore, Maryland; Hillcrest, Rockland County, New York; Redan and Cascade Heights, Georgia; Mitchellville, Maryland; Desoto, Texas; Quinby, South Carolina; Forest Park, Oklahoma; Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Ghetto
Due to the fragmentary conditions and widespread poverty, several African-American environments in the United States have been called "ghettos". The use of the term is controversial and, depending on its context, is potentially offensive. Although Americans use the term "ghetto" to signify the poor urban areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, those living in the area often use it to show something positive. African-American ghettos do not always contain dilapidated houses and worsening projects, nor are they all poverty stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto is the "home", the place that represents the original "darkness" and the feelings, passions, or emotions that come from the resurrection above the struggle and suffering of African descent in America.
Langston Hughes relays in "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945): "The buildings in Harlem are bricks and stones/And the streets are long and wide,/But Harlem is much more than this alone, Harlem is what is in it. "Playwright August Wilson used the term" ghetto "in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both using the author's grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, an African-American ghetto.
Although the African-American environment may suffer from public disinvestment, with low quality schools, less effective fire-fighting policing and protection, there are institutions such as churches and museums and political organizations that help improve African-American environmental and social capital.. In African-American neighborhoods churches can be an important source of social cohesion. For some African Americans, the spirituality learned through these churches serves as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of racism. Museums devoted to African-American history are also found in many African-American environments.
Many African-American environments are located in inner cities, and these are the most residential neighborhoods located closest to the central business district. The built environment is often of tenements or brown stones, mixed with older single family homes that can be converted into multi-family homes. In some areas there are larger apartment buildings. The gun houses are an important part of the built environment of some southern African-American environments. The houses consist of three to five rooms in a row without a hallway. This African-American design house is found in rural and urban areas south, especially in the African-American community and the environment.
In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell suggests that the modern urban black ghetto culture is rooted in the white Cracker culture of Northern England and Scotland-Ireland that migrated from the generally lawless border region of England to South America, where they formed a common redneck culture for blacks and whites in the pre-war South. According to Sowell, these cultural characteristics include live music and dance, violence, uncontrollable emotions, flamboyant images, illegitimate, religious orations characterized by high-pitched rhetoric, and a lack of emphasis on education and intellectual interest. Because the rednecal culture proved counterproductive, "the culture has long been dead... among whites and blacks, while still living today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghetto", which Sowell describes as being characterized by "fighting, braggadocio, self-indulgence, [and] neglecting the future, "and where" majesty is regarded as male and rough is considered cool, while civilized ones are regarded as 'white acting'. "Sowell asserts that white American liberals have perpetuated" counterproductive lifestyles and self-destructive "among black Americans living in the urban ghettos through the" welfare state, and police-see-by-the-way, and smiling at 'rap gangsta' ".
See also
- The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865-95)
- The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)
- The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-68) in popular culture
- Cool (aesthetic) Ã,§ African Americans
- South American Culture
- Colleges and universities are historically black
- Imaging Blackness
References
Bibliography
- Hamilton, Marybeth: Looking for Blues .
- William Ferris; Give My Heart Bad Ease: Sound from the Mississippi Blues - University of North Carolina Press; (2009) ISBNÃ, 978-0-8078-3325-4 (with CDs and DVDs)
- William Ferris; Glenn Hinson The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 14: Folklife , University of North Carolina Press (2009) ISBN 978-0-8078-3346-9 (Cover: photos of James Son Thomas)
- William Ferris; Blues From the Delta - Capo Press; revised edition (1988) ISBN 978-0-306-80327-7
- Ted Gioia; Delta Blues: Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Revolutionizing American Music - W. W. Norton & amp; Company (2009) ISBN 978-0-393-33750-1
- Sheldon Harris; Blues Who's Who Da Capo Press, 1979
- Robert Nicholson; Mississippi Blues Today! Da Capo Press (1999) ISBN: 978-0-306-80883-8
- Robert Palmer; Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of Mississippi Delta <-> Penguin Reprint edition (1982) ISBN: 978-0-14-006223-6
- Frederic Ramsey Jr.; Here and Lost - first edition (1960) Rutgers Press University - London Cassell (England) and New Brunswick, New Jersey; Second printing (1969) Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey; (2000) University of Georgia Press
- Wiggins, David K. and Ryan A. Swanson, eds. Separate Game: African American Sports Behind the Segregation Wall . University of Arkansas Press, 2016. xvi, 272 pp.
- Charles Reagan Wilson, William Ferris, Ann J. Adadie; Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1656 pp.) University of North Carolina Press; Second edition (1989) - ISBN 978-0-8078-1823-7
External links
- "Smithsonian Encyclopedia: African American History and Culture". Archived from the original on 2008-06-21.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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