Decline of African Heritage in America

Decline of African Heritage in America

When Africans were uprooted from their homes and their land and forcibly brought to the Americas

at first they retained many of their cultural traits and values; however, as time passed and they were assimilated into the Euro-American culture, those cultural traditions and values were lost. In hindsight, the ugly scar on the history of the founding of the United States

can't ever be healed, but the dignity of the history of the Africans who were brought here should be part of history, and be honored.

The first premise of this research is that languages and culturally identifying traits brought to the American shores by Africans stayed in play during slavery years -- but a great deal of that aspect of African culture is gone today. Secondly, historians have "lost" African heritage and culture through incomplete recounting of African and slave history.

Literature Review

In author Betty M. Kuyk's book she asserts that Africans brought with them "…their whole experience of living in their own African culture," and for many Africans arriving in America, the fact of "Americanization" did not totally "erase that experience" (Kuyk, 2003). At least not right away. While the African slaves cooperated (they had no choice) with their masters in a physical context, their "beliefs, values, customs and rituals that lay at the heart of each person's culture remained" -- for the period in which the Africans were in bondage and some period after that as well.

The given names of the Africans brought by force to America remained. And, Kuyk continues, as people from the Congo (spelled "Kongo" in the book) were moved inland from their landing spot on the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, they were "intermingled with people bearing values from many other African cultures." As this movement continued, cultural traits "began to blend" and sometimes similarities between cultures "reinforced traits" and other times the blending "modified" cultures. For example, a particularly appealing detail from one African culture might well be "adopted or adapted by a new amalgam of people" (Kuyk, 43).

Eliza Hasty, for example, a member of the Ozo clan, could adopt "Igbo features -- cap, red color, feathers -- as symbols appropriate for her own ritual" in Kershaw County, South Carolina (Kuyk, 43).

Names -- according to African custom -- were kept secret, Kuyk explains; for example, a baby was given a "basket name," not her real name, "so the evil one can't know the real name." A woman named Lavinia Fields was simply called "Pessy" because if her real name was known, someone could have more control over her. Another tradition that has been lost from African culture was the twin-headed figures placed on posts at the edge of one's property. One face looked "fiercely toward the road" ("threatening dangerous communication with that world")was painted "fiery red"; the other face looked "coolly toward the house" painted a benign tan with eyes "sleepily peeping out from under curls in the wood (Kuyk). That tradition is now gone.

Meanwhile on the islands that stretch along the coast of South Carolina Africans brought against their will lost their native values due to slaveowners molding them into "…a cohesive workforce" (Pollitzer, et al., 2005). Slave owners "…ignored ethnic distinctions" and "discouraged native customs"; hence, to survive, slaves needed to "submerge differences and create a common culture," Pollitzer explains. This aspect of slavery helps a reader understand why the traits and customs explained by Kuyk disappeared among the Africans during the slavery era.

Among the Africans from the Gullah culture, their speech, which was "hardly intelligible to the outsider," consisted of "short abrupt sentences strung together, words omitted, verbs that show no tense, pronouns that have no gender" Pollitzer, 8). Certainly the shortcuts and modified pronunciation led English-speaking Caucasians to consider these people as "childlike" and unable to talk properly. The religious rituals revolved around a "call-and-response fashion" of the preaching (which to some degree still is practices in black churches) with compelling musical rhythms that "often expressed a veiled cry for freedom" (Pollitzer, 8).

When a Gullah man crosses his arms "decisively over his chest," it signaled the end of an argument; body language like this is mostly lost as practice today in the African-American community (Pollitzer, 9). And names like "Cudjoe, Cubbenah, Quaco, Quao, Cuffee, Quamin, and Quashee" are no longer used, and those names -- "true to the ancestral naming pattern" -- were given to children based on the day of the week the child was born (Pollitzer, 55).

The National Park Service (NPS) published a scholarly research article pointing out that one of the things that certainly got lost regarding the African Heritage was the social history and cultural achievements of many of the different African cultures. The "need to reinforce notions of white supremacy, African inferiority and African enslavement resulted in a legacy of historical omissions" (NPS).

The European worldview was the justification for enslaving Africans, the NPS explains, and moreover, "…the knowledge of African social history and culture" was wiped away in large part (NPS). It's also important to note that most African cultures passed on historical knowledge through "oral traditions" and so the much was not written down about African culture. What was written down during the initial years of slave trade was written in Greek, Arabic, and Portuguese. Another reason for the way African heritage was lost was due to social scientists' incompetence or sloppy research.