Race Conflicts, Ritual Dissent, and Blackness in America -converted (original) (raw)

2020, For the Sake of Peace

I argue in this chapter that African American culture is unique as a result of an experience-based evolution that responds to the needs of its time. It argues that this culture that cuts across protests, music, and religion to mention a few is not a hybrid form of African culture neither is it related to the ‘white’ culture. It is different and independent because colonialism (pre and post) and the experience of slaves and their descendants are different. Also, white culture and African American culture has no point of intersection as the latter’s culture was a metamorphosis that took ages to become what it is by responding to whites-imposed supremacy over it. Therefore, the culture that African Americans have produced is tied to the lived experiences of black people in their country. It is a distinct, independent culture that neither white Americans nor Africans can lay claim to. Also, it is about the symbolic implications of actions and inactions of parties in America’s race conflict, not wholly about the narratives of slaves or the narratives of slavery. Thus, it explores conflict in America as one hinged on race, posits the culture of dissent as ritual, and problematizes the concept of blackness in ways that establish the binaries between Africans and African America as a function of experience.