African Americans Have the Right to Reclaim African Culture
By: Allison Gaines
Tags: Race, African American, Cultural Appropriation, BlackLivesMatter, Culture

African Americans Have the Right to Reclaim African Culture

We are not culturally appropriating

You can’t appropriate a culture that is, in fact, your own. Black or African-American culture, heritage and history are directly tied to Africa (Lockett, 2016).

When a bird wants to make a nest, it gathers twigs, straw, and grass from a vast area. Like all animals, it values its home and wants to protect its young. Nevertheless, if that nest is disturbed by humans, the bird may abandon its young. Despite the love it feels, a mother bird will reject its baby bird, asserting it is now tainted.

For Black people, Africa is the motherland, a carefully made nest, and a home. Starting in the 1500s, European colonists disturbed the nest. The Transatlantic slave trade ripped Black people away from the continent, against their will, bringing many to the Caribbean and the Americas. White colonists tampered with our nest, and as a result, some Africans disown African Americans.

Africans always remind us that Africa is a continent, not a country. Every single Black person knows that. We understand that Africans are not homogenous. The land is abundant, and many countries dot the landscape. Still, many do not acknowledge that for American Black people, unity is all we have. So, while Africans value diversity, African Americans find our strength in recognizing our shared values.

Through the Transatlantic slave trade, Europeans stole Africans, taking us away from our nest. We could no longer cling to the nations that once divided us. Instead, we had to believe in the dream of one Africa. This theme resonates in Bob Marley’s Pan African song, Africa Unite.

Imagine being packed onto boats in conditions unfit for animals. Many died due to the inhumane treatment along the way. Those who survived became slaves in the Caribbean and the Americas. At that point, no one cared what nation someone was from; we lost that privilege. Our ancestors all endured the same dehumanizing experience. Through abuse, Europeans made Africans cast aside nationality.

Once Africans arrived in the Americas, European colonists forbid Africans from using their original dialects, forcing them to assimilate using English, Spanish, and French instead. Black people, before anyone could consider them Americans, were beaten into submitting to Eurocentric culture. That is where we left our tribes — at the whipping post.

They took away our names and our ancestral rights and replaced them with European surnames and no civil rights. They made Black people take the names of their slave masters as if they fathered them. After African Americans crossed the Atlantic, they lost their beautiful songs, unique clothing, and traditions.

They could not write letters to their African nations because no one would deliver them. Nor could they plead to colonists because they already decided to treat them like cattle.

The majority of Africans fought valiantly against colonization and the slave trade. Queen Nzinga of Ndongo is a prime example. She fought against the Portuguese and provided a safe harbor for slaves. However, this is only part of the story. While the majority of Africans opposed this brutal conquest, some profited from the institution. Though it is a hard pill to swallow, some Africans sold Black people into slavery. Specifically, in the area that is now called Nigeria, many profited from selling fellow Africans.

When Africans accuse African Americans of cultural appropriation, it is as if they forgot that we are also Africans. Black people did not leave en masse because they hated their homeland; colonists kidnapped them. This dynamic makes it especially disparaging when people lecture African Americans about cultural appropriation. Because colonists tampered with us, it is as if they are willing to cut their losses like the mother bird.

Black people have made efforts to reclaim and assert pride in their roots for centuries, which is completely different from any incidence of cultural appropriation (Lockett, 2016).

It took the Civil War and the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation to free African Americans from the cold grip of slavery. Civil Rights activists still fight for equal treatment. While we are no longer in physical bondage, nothing can replace our unique African cultures. It should shock no one that we want to embrace our African culture. In doing so, we liberate ourselves from Eurocentric dominance. African Americans want to know the truth about their heritage but wanting and having are oceans apart.

Thus, African Americans differ from Black people who live in Africa today. We live in the diaspora and, as a result, made an independent culture. While most Africans know which country their family comes from, African Americans do not have this privilege. While some get offended by those who refer to the entire continent rather than specific countries, this type of generalization makes perfect sense for African Americans. After all, we lost our heritage. Our continental homeland is all that unifies us.

The majority of African Americans have ancestors from Western and West-Central Africa; some came from Senegambia, including the modern-day nations of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali. Others came from the areas now called Angola, Congo, and Gabon.

On plantations, no one cared if someone was from Mali, and others were from Senegal. Africans mixed on plantations with one another and Indigenous people. We tragically mixed with Europeans through systemic abuse. It made no sense for us to separate who was from which nation. The institution of slavery laid waste to our understanding of African history. Therefore, when we say “Africa,” we refer to our unique relationship with the continent. It is our homeland, but society denies our claim to it.

The clothes we wear and the Ebonics we speak derive from a forced commingling of cultures. African Americans are not guilty of culturally appropriating Africa; we are Africans. We reflect the diaspora and do not lay claim to any particular country. Colonists took that from us.

Many African Americans attempt to nurture their own culture in the modern era, influenced by our homeland. Accusing African Americans of cultural appropriation is like kicking us out for being colonized even though it was no fault of our own. Africans should not treat African Americans like an abandoned baby bird, left to perish. Instead, they should encourage us to reclaim our culture.

In the absence of this warm embrace, critics then try to force European culture down our throats. We do not have to limit ourselves to wearing jeans and flannel shirts because some from our homeland say we lay no claim to traditional African culture. Rejecting African Americans fits into white supremacist ideology in asserting we do not belong anywhere, that we have no culture but the ones colonists gave us.

If I have ancestors from Nigeria and the Congo, which culture should I adhere to, which items are taboo for me to wear? It makes no sense for African Americans to limit themselves to African representations of attire. We are baby birds that feel lucky to have survived the ordeal. African Americans are winging it.

The only thing that makes African culture more sanctified than African American culture is time and distance. We are still Africans, and we create African culture even if we do not have an official tribal name or affiliation. Our shared experiences make us a tribe. African Americans are a group of Black people in need of acceptance.

If you’re not from an African tribe, please leave off wearing the tribal marks,” she says, ignoring the fact that the ancestors of American Blacks did belong to African tribes. Thanks to the peculiar institution of slavery, which incredibly Gene never mentions, the average African American can’t trace her roots to a particular tribe without the help of a DNA test. Yet, it’s well documented that the forefathers of American Blacks mostly hailed from West Africa, where the slave trade flourished (Nittle, 2015).

African American people are descendants of West African tribes, and we have every right to express ourselves. When we wear African clothes and jewelry, we engage in self-love and cultural-discovery. African Americans are not doing this to hurt Africans. They, of all people, should understand our intent.

Too many tell African Americans, “you are doing it wrong.” This rhetoric is condescending and abusive. It implies we lay no claim to our ancestral lands. Our brown skin and kinky hair reveal our roots even if people refuse to acknowledge them. African Americans are products of the Transatlantic slave trade. Our diverse nations had various styles of cooking, dressing, speaking, and worshiping. In America, all these cultural remnants got put into a blender; the result is African American culture.