African American Cultural Background
African American Cultural Background
Culture refers to the ideologies, beliefs, behaviors and material things that shape up a persons way of life. It is the knowledge shared by members of a social organization. It is what is learnt and understood by people who are members of a society (Ethnicity, Giordano Garcia-Preto, 2005).
Culture is how people within a society live, think, act and feel. Peoples culture provides them with social heritage and teaches them on what behaviors are appropriate and those that are not. It is the culture that interprets the meaning of peoples environment and makes them learn how to express themselves within those environments. Cultural identity determines how people value their life and also their mental and physical well-being. Every persons cultural background determines how he or she handles crisis and responds to psychological difficulties. Cultural background refers to a persons ethnicity, but there are other factors that that influence it. These factors include social class, religious beliefs, relocation, gender oppression, racial oppression geographical location and family dynamisms. All these factors affect the well-being of people the way they access resources, their sense of belonging and also how they relate with other cultures. They also influence how families are able to adapt to new cultures while at the same time preserving their own cultural beliefs. The present day society is mostly multicultural, with intermarriages and relationships between people of different cultural backgrounds. However, because of other factors that come into play in shaping up the society, American communities are still segregated on the bases of race, culture and social class. This has brought up a problem in people trying to shape up their cultural identity. People are social beings who exist in societies that keep close as a way of handling social problems and predicaments for survival. A society is identified by having social relationships and some common social characteristics (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
African Americans originate from a variety of cultures around Africa. Some of the African Americans later originated from the Caribbean, the Central and South America. These societies are characterized by a history of slavery, acculturation and racial oppression. Due to their common predicaments, these groups formed a bond of African heritage. This therefore established an African American culture in the United States, a culture that is rich and distinctive. My cultural background is African American. Since their interactions in America, the African Americans have contributed to literature, art, cultivation skills, dressing styles, arts, language and dancing. They have also introduced various crops like peanuts, yams, watermelons, okra, sorghum and grits among others. There is a rich cultural heritage brought about by the African Americans (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
My mother was born in 1964, in Gary, Indiana. She was the first born in a family of six, three brothers and two sisters. Due to the problems that were prevalent in her family, her father had turned to drinking. She and her family had to suffer a lot of humiliation and a life of deprivation. She remembers the way most of the time she had to do menial jobs to help her mother to feed her siblings. As a result of the problems at her home and discrimination at school, she was not able to go far with her education. She tells of how discrimination and prejudice were common in her school. In her poor neighborhood, there were all sorts of criminal activities. She recalls experiencing many crimes being committed in that neighborhood. Dead bodies found on the street were not a surprise in their neighborhood. Basic facilities were scarce in the family. Their housing was poor with mostly shared facilities. Mother remembers how they would go without power for weeks after it was disconnected for failure to pay bills.
After leaving school, mother started working for families as a baby sitter to earn some money and assist her mother to buy food and clothes for her siblings. Many a times, her father would come in from his drinking spree and demand for money from her. Mother got involved with a white man at the age of sixteen. Due to her ethnic background, this man could not marry her. He left her pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter, and her life became more difficult. Her family, like many other black families in the United States was not capable of accessing proper medical care. As a result, mother experienced difficulties during her child-birth that almost left her dead. She delivered her daughter in very harsh conditions. There was one extra mouth in the family to feed. The problem was also made worse by the fact that her daughter was bi-racial. My grandfather hated me, forcing mother to consider marriage to save me from her dad. Mother got married at the age of eighteen to a man who shared her cultural identity. She gave birth to two children with her husband who was a loving and caring husband and father. He loved all the children equally. However, things were not easy for me as I was not appreciated by the two cultures. I did not feel a sense of belonging to any of the two. My siblings would also discriminate against me for my color, as I did not look like them.
Due to poor health facilities, mother lost her sister who was asthmatic. She died at the age of ten after a long fight with the disease without proper medical care and living conditions. She was not the only person who died in the neighborhood for poor health care. Mother remembers how most people especially the young and elderly died from various health problems.
Mother opened a stall in town where she is still working today. Unfortunately, my step-father was killed in a road accident. He was hit by a white man and died on the spot. The court case terminated without warning with mother receiving nothing as compensation for her husbands death. The court case of supposedly terminated for lack of evidence, while the real reason was because it was a white man who had killed a black man. According to mother, this was injustice of the highest degree and she did not understand why it was allowed to persist. Her children were left without a father. She was able to provide very little for her children and was afraid that history was repeating itself. Due to the fact that she was raised up in abusive household, she tried so hard to give her children a better life. She had taken all of the three to school but only two advanced to tertiary level. Her last daughter left school and joined her in the stall. Her mother was reluctant but the girl was unable to continue with school under the circumstances she was in. I never got to know my white father and mother tried as much as possible not to discuss him with me.
Mother was a hardworking woman and provided basic needs for her three children. She inherited her work ethics from grandmother. Although her father was a drunkard, her mother had worked so hard for her family. Just like her mother, mother is a caring mother who is always ready to help her children in any way possible. Despite all the odds experienced in the family my brother and I are in the university pursuing our degree.
Mothers family had a distinct culture that enabled them to live on despite of the problems that they were experiencing. People understood very well that they could not be able to experience happiness coming from the whites. This is why they established their own forms of leisure. Mother recounts how they used to gather together for cultural activities. After all they had distinct cultural patterns. They could speak very well they were good at music and dancing and art.
Mother was not so well versed with her African origin. She was born and brought up in the United States and the little she knew of her African roots was the little that she was told by her parents, who were also born in America. Just like mother, most African Americans are both unacquainted and misinformed about their forefathers and their roots in the African continent. Mother does not know much about her African origin. Among the little that she knows about her ancestral origin is that her great grand parents came from somewhere in an African country known as Cameroon. She was told that they were brought into the country as slaves during the period of slave trade. During that time, most people were captured and traded by tribal chiefs. They were shipped for long distances until they found themselves as slaves in strange lands. The slaves were mostly brought to America and other nations that carried out slave trade. They were then traded as property to the highest bidder. They were used as free labor in fields and plantations and other as house servants. This is the much that she can remember from the stories of her mother and grandmother (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
Grandfather was killed in a drinking spree in a racial disagreement. Her family has never understood what really went on that day her father perished. Even when he was alive, he never established a relationship with her daughter. Mother thinks that her father had not forgiven her for bearing a child with a white man. Grandfather was clearly a racist, who hated the whites so much. He also did not establish a relationship with his first granddaughter. Any efforts to establish a relationship with my grandfather were fruitless. In fact since I was born, he has never called me by name. We rarely spoke. I think I really understand his feeling towards whites now that mother has narrated the whole story about their suffering in the white dominated world. The degree of discrimination that my mothers family and other families in our community went through cannot be described in words (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
African American culture is a combination of African and America European culture. The contributing factor of this combination in culture is their interaction during the slavery period. Due to this reason, African Americans do not possess a purely African culture but have cultures borrowed from two worlds. There are some elements of African American culture that African Americans have integrated into their culture. However, there are some distinct cultural practices that set the African Americans apart. Their cultural and social heritage has impacted on the lifestyles, institutions and systems that have been established by African Americans. During the slavery period, people came in from different communities with different experiences, languages, cultural practices, and religious beliefs among other aspects of life. However, their common experiences as slaves in the United States played a role as the basis for the creation of the cultural value system. This system was the one that was handed down to their American-born children who are the African Americans. The cultural structure of the African American community was founded from a combination of African heritage as well as their experiences with the American community. As a result of victimization of more than one African American generation, there were specific values that were transferred from one generation to the next. These values established core values of the African Americans. From the combination of the experiences in the United States, there was an evolution of a distinct African American culture that was unique from the American and the African. They also developed their own unique practices and institutions that served their particular requirements (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
African Americans have existed in the American system longer than any other minority group. They have also struggled so much to earn acceptance as a part of the American citizens. They have also received a large share of discrimination and racism. They have accepted that they are western in their culture and value. Racism is the most prominent characteristic of the African Americans. In the history of African Americans, they have suffered so much in the hands of racists. This is the reason why it is common for African Americans to think of them as people with a distinct identify from those of the Americans (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
After the civil war and efforts to end racism, African Americans have improved their economic and social standing. They are currently accessing better medical facilities, proper employment and education. Nevertheless, poverty still persists in this community. For a long time, Africa n Americans have lived in abject poverty without the ability to access the most basic requirements. African Americans tend to be concentrated in a particular geographic region. African American families living in a particular region share cultural and religious beliefs. They hold cultural festivals that are characteristic to their culture. These and many more are the characteristics shared by African Americans. My family stayed in a neighborhood that was predominantly blacks. My mothers family lived in poverty for very many years without any hope for improvement as this seemed to have been passed from generation to the other. Just like other African Americans my family suffered from racism and discrimination. Healthcare and other public facilities were scarce in the neighborhood with facilities like water and electricity so hard to come by. Education for my people was so hard to acquire and those that were lucky enough to enroll persevered a lot of prejudice and discrimination. Children could go to school without adequate leering resources. Things however began to improve after the civil wars and other efforts to end racism (Ethnicity, Giordano and Garcia-Preto, 2005).
From my research I have gotten to know a lot about my community that I was not aware of. For example, I did not that we originated from a country in Africa called Cameroon. Checking from the map, I realize that this country is very far away from where I currently live. This leads me to picturing the kind of journey that our forefathers took to come to America. It must have been tough. I really do not know whether I would have been born if this had not happened, but I from all the things I have learnt, I now appreciate whom I am.
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