Introduction
The African American culture is complex and multifaceted. It was derived from numerous cultures in Africa and, later, from the Caribbean Islands. The African-American blackness is a product of at least five interconnected dimensions (Hooks 109). The first dimension is racial. A person’s race is a genetic characteristic that relates to their continent of origin. The African-American label was derived from the fact that the blacks originally came from Africa. The second dimension is ethnic. It’s based on a presupposition of a common culture and a similar biological descent. In this regard, African Americans were expected to safeguard their culture and remain committed to preserving the culture without contaminating it. The third dimension is the national identity that places an emphasis on territorial origins of the blacks. The people's homeland was regarded and is still regarded as their source of shared pride. The origin is often a country in the Sub-Saharan Africa or black diaspora (Scott 12). The fourth dimension is cultural. Culture is a product of an individual or group’s attitude as shaped by a community’s structure that give meaning to their lives. The final dimension is political. The dimension is associated with how the involved community is in political values such as political empowerment, civil rights and public protests.
African Americans were drawn from varied countries with different cultures, different languages and different sets of beliefs. However, they were forced into sharing a common history of acculturation, racial oppression and enslavement which heralded a bond amongst themselves: The African American/ Black/ Negro bond. As this newly created group fought to survive, they developed a set of social and psychological functions; they crafted their artifacts and, in the course of their forced labour, came up with creative expressions in terms of songs and narratives (Macionis 12).They had to have their way of dressing, initially dictated by lack and they also had to contend with racial discrimination and racial profiling. In essence, they came up with a whole new culture; the culture of black lives.
The culture of black lives was largely moulded by the treatment they received at the hands of their white masters. In the era of enslavement, several generations were victimized, and the black community was highly excluded from the political and other white institutions. Consequently, the blacks had to come up with their institutions to serve their needs. For over four hundred years, blacks in America have had to put up struggles to be recognized and treated as first class citizens and not have their history treated as a mere appendage to the American history. This struggle has had dire and far reaching consequences to the black community right from the way they think, with the way they relate to fellow blacks and even members of the white community (Blackwell 11).
The African-American blackness is a product of five interconnected dimensions. People with varied heritage and nationalities were buddle together and forced to create and ascribe to a new and totally different culture: the black culture. In this regard, people were forced to conform to sets of values that were foreign to them (Blackwell 9). Those that had been sons of kings in their native homes were now forced to become servants. Consequently, the black community was confronted with a sense of disillusionment, an incoherent social identity that, in turn, led to personal identity inconsistencies. With the myriad obstacles the black community is always contending with; low income, lack of access to quality health care and education, unemployment and disparities in income, having an incoherent social identity is perhaps the direst (Harrison 10).
The black youth is constantly confronting himself with the ‘Who am I?’ question. Some may have never stepped foot in Africa, but they are not still fully accepted as Americans. The struggle for identity is real. People want to stay around people who accept them and treat them as equals not as appendages and for the sake of being politically correct. Black youth will be treated to racial jokes and be expected to laugh the loudest, but they do not stop to think that maybe, just maybe, this black youth has a deductive mind and that he has an esteem to protect. It would be difficult for such a youth to forge even a meaningful relationship because; the content of black identity is a balance between feelings of depression against those of well being, inefficacy versus competence. A person with a well-established racial identity will exhibit feelings of wellbeing and connectedness with others and will, in turn, forge meaningful relationships with others (Harrison 6). This is in contrast with one battling issues of racial identity.
The black family has not been left unscathed by the black culture. It is virtually impossible for the black family to ignore the lack of a concrete social identity, usually because most black families due to poverty and unemployment finds themselves clustered in the same low-cost neighbourhood (Harrison 6). The result is that the reality of being forced into a state of a cultural abyss, by the ills they suffered in the hands of the whites is exacerbated. Additionally, such neighbourhoods are characterised by crime and other social strain indicators and the family must, to survive these ills, carve their niche. They must help their children make sense of why they are disadvantaged over their white counterparts and how they can bridge this gap. The black culture is not bad, in fact, it is richer than the American culture. However, the ills that occasioned its birth have managed to cast a shadow on it that is still dark, over 400 years later.
Works Cited
Blackwell, Wiley. "Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African America." Philosophy and Black Affairs (2010): 171-192.
Harrison, Kathy. "African American Identity in Adolescence." 2015.
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: race and representation. 1992. 18 March 2016. <https://aboutabicycle.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/bell-hooks-black-looks-race-and-representation.pdf>.
Macionis, J. Sociology. NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013.
Scott, Hugh J. "The African American Culture." The African American Leadership Forum. New York: Pace University, 2011. 1-9.
Smith, Michelle Renee. "Alain Locke: Culture and the Plurality of Black Life." 2011.
