Dr. Mario Beatty had an interesting lecture, which made me think about hidden things and what is being covered up. The three main points in his lecture was that there is an underlying African presence in all things, we as a people need to avert our eyes from “the gaze of the colonizer to view the African side of things and the methodologies” and finally that the historical narratives on African culture and people are wrong.
Dr. Beatty stated that there is an underlying African presence in the Americas and all over the world. Many things in the Americas have an African background that is not known by everyone. However, from 1492 to 1776 millions of people were moved to the Americas, and Caribbean, and in most cases five out of every six people were African, so it should not be surprising to people that there is an overwhelming African presence in the Americas. Nor should it be a surprise that many things in the Americas have African roots or background. For instance, the cross for Christianity resembles the Kongo Cosmogram. This shows underlying Africanism in religion, and that many things originated in Africa or are based off of African ideologies.
The similarities of the two are very noticeable. This is just one of the many things that shows an African presence within. There is also a presence in science and technology. That is demonstrated through musical instruments that resemble ancient African instruments. However, even with this overwhelming evidence, there are attempts to hide the underlying Africanism in science, technology, and religion. Dr. Beatty also pointed out how it is necessary to stop things in the eyes of “the colonizer” or white people, so we can see the African influence and African history in the world.
Dr. Beatty mentioned the historical narratives of African history and how academic scholars use them to discuss the history of Africans. Most of the narratives are those of loss and emptiness. They do not celebrate the culture but rather say there is no culture because they count history as beginning for Africans once they got over to the Americas and were slaves. An example of a historical narrative is that “African’s lost their culture, voice, names etc.” ( Dr. Beatty power point ) This characterizes the emptiness within, which leads to the African people being filled with everything they encountered. This is called “acculturation”. Due to acculturation, or the adherence to societies rules and social behaviors by Africans, it led to a discontinuation of certain traditions and culture practices, which in turn led scholars to believe culture was lost. However, that is far from being the case. African culture is present in music, language/speech, arts, food, and religion. Also known as the five culture areas. For instance, in music, uses of antiphony, and pervasive funcuality show African roots/culture. The speech of Africans are distinctive and are shown in everyday speech patterns of African Americans. We take out the copula verb that links the subject noun and adjective. An example Dr. Beatty gave was instead of saying “she is bad or she is fine”, we say “she bad or she fine”. It is not proper English but it gets the point across and is clear speech.
Dr. Beatty’s lecture made me think about the underlying African presence in all things that I previously thought to be white or have Caucasian origins.
kongo cosmogram pic from (http://landofkam.wordpress.com/)
cross pic from (http://karenswhimsy.com/cross-symbols.shtm)
No comments:
Post a Comment