Posted by Breyona Colley at Sunday, September 18, 2011 5:09:40 PM EDT
Dr.Beatty's lecture was actually kind of eye opening. When I say eye opening I mean that it made you think in ways that you didn't think before and made you realize things that never seemed like they could have existed without someone bringing it to your knowledge and luckily he brought them to mine. The three things that he really opened my mind to was explaining the dismemberment, cultural meaning-making, and social structure.
When explaining the dismemberment I never thought about certain things he pointed out such as, "when you are conceptualized as empty you fill yourself up with whatever is around you, whatever you think will make you whole." or "it is imperative to re-write the history of the Americas emphasizing the African presence." These two statements made me really think. The thing that people never realize is that they are both very true statements that are still in existence today and are relevant to everything we continue to do. When the African slaves were first brought over to America they were broken into the form that the white slave master wanted them to be in. They took their spirit, their overall mindset and changed it to fit their likings, wants and needs, and they changed the way we looked at one another. As the white slave owners continued to do this they took the African mindset to which was beautiful, full, and still consuming knowledge and drained it dry. To this they made the slaves in a way "empty", they had no knowledge of anything that was the past all they knew was what was the past can no longer be the future because it only leads to upsetting the white man which in return means upsetting my neutral state. This makes that statement "when you are conceptualized as empty you fill yourself up with whatever is around you, whatever you think will make you whole," become very real. They were conceptualized as empty which means all they could fill themselves with was what was around them whether it was knowledge, hatred for one another, the new culture to which they were being introduced to, or just the shear fact that they were inferior to that of the white man, this mindset was to take place. And as a young African-American you never really think about the mindset change that occurred during that time period because we never had to experience that change. We have always known what we have been told by our grandparents and parents and through history class and documentaries and all these other things but we never truly experienced that change in a mindset so we never fully understood that concept, or at least I know I did not and still do not. But the one thing that I do understand is that the mindset that is always shared with my generation about the suffering and the change and everything else that was said could not have been fully correct otherwise the next statement which Dr. Beatty made would not be put into perspective or otherwise a factor in the lecture he gave us. The statement, "it is imperative to re-write the history of the Americas emphasizing the African presence," has a whole new meaning when it is broken down. Lets start from the beginning. "it is imperative that we re-write history" now if the mindset was changed from the proud African to the broken African slave like every textbook makes it out to be then why is re-writing the history a necessity? The next part, "of the Americans emphasizing the African presence," now I am no genius or world wide known scholar or anything but I am sure that when they are talking about the African presence they are not talking about the fact that Africans were here and made a change for the better because the white man could not do it on their own and that is why they went looking for someone else that could do the job. I could be completely ignorant to the fact and that could be what they are speaking of but I highly doubt it. So if this mindset that we are always told of that was so broken and destroyed then how is it that we are supposed to re-write the history of their presence being here? How could this broken mindset have changed what we have already been taught? So in other words, basically the mindset we were told they had was not the true mindset. It wasn't as broken and forgotten as they made it out to be but it was strong, intelligent and determined. It was strong enough that it knew it could not be broken, it was intelligent enough to know that it needed to hide what it was and pretend it was just what the white man wanted and it was determined enough to never forget where it came from and to know that it was never going to forget it. So why isn't this side of the African mindset ever talked about or even speculated about within the history books we are forced to learn from? The reason being the African mindset is still in place we are strong, intelligent, and determined enough to let the white man think he has won and broken the mind but in all actuality it's their mindset that has been broken and formed to fit the way we see things.
With the Cultural meaning-making aspect of the lecture it ties in everything that was previously mentioned. The presence of the African mind has never been forgotten it was only reborn into the ways of the country. Such as with Language, there are distinctive African speech communities such as the pre-verbal aspect markers, no copula verb to link subject noun and adjective, non-inversion of subject and auxiliary in questions that was specified by Dr. Beatty's powerpoint. Or with the dancing and even within music and how it has features of antiphony, group nature, pervasive functionality, improvisational character, strong relationship in performance to dance and bodily movements and expression, that is reflected in every aspect of "American" dance and music and yet its roots are actually of african descent. This was also specified by Dr.Beatty's powerpoint. The African presence was never forgotten here it was transformed into a new body to take and morph the America's into what it has become.
Even continuing with the Social Structure aspect of his lecture there is even evidence of the African presence in the creation and modeling of family patterns and political and social structures.The roles, traditions and rituals, that are experienced such as a baptism has an African influence with the water baptisms, or speaking in tongues, possession, or even the funerary rites all have an African influence. The prominent role of mother, is one of a king, chief, minister, sage, and where the elders, ancestors, priests, diviners, blacksmiths and many others have a hidden background of African decent. All this was pointed out by Dr.Beatty's powerpoint. And even when it comes to being a soldier or a laborer or a personal servant or anything along those lines it once again goes back to the African influence that it has had on this country. It goes all the way back to the slave times when they were forced into these positions and now they are no longer jobs of the low class or jobs that people should be ashamed of having but now they stand with honor and have meaning and little do they know that it came with the influence that Africans made when holding these jobs, they made them jobs worth having. Going back to what I said about the African mindset being strong enough to transform or even let the white man believe he broke the African mind, the African mindset was strong enough to trick the white man and now the world that he believed he has created and now lives in is the world that he once tried to destroy.
Breyona Colley
When explaining the dismemberment I never thought about certain things he pointed out such as, "when you are conceptualized as empty you fill yourself up with whatever is around you, whatever you think will make you whole." or "it is imperative to re-write the history of the Americas emphasizing the African presence." These two statements made me really think. The thing that people never realize is that they are both very true statements that are still in existence today and are relevant to everything we continue to do. When the African slaves were first brought over to America they were broken into the form that the white slave master wanted them to be in. They took their spirit, their overall mindset and changed it to fit their likings, wants and needs, and they changed the way we looked at one another. As the white slave owners continued to do this they took the African mindset to which was beautiful, full, and still consuming knowledge and drained it dry. To this they made the slaves in a way "empty", they had no knowledge of anything that was the past all they knew was what was the past can no longer be the future because it only leads to upsetting the white man which in return means upsetting my neutral state. This makes that statement "when you are conceptualized as empty you fill yourself up with whatever is around you, whatever you think will make you whole," become very real. They were conceptualized as empty which means all they could fill themselves with was what was around them whether it was knowledge, hatred for one another, the new culture to which they were being introduced to, or just the shear fact that they were inferior to that of the white man, this mindset was to take place. And as a young African-American you never really think about the mindset change that occurred during that time period because we never had to experience that change. We have always known what we have been told by our grandparents and parents and through history class and documentaries and all these other things but we never truly experienced that change in a mindset so we never fully understood that concept, or at least I know I did not and still do not. But the one thing that I do understand is that the mindset that is always shared with my generation about the suffering and the change and everything else that was said could not have been fully correct otherwise the next statement which Dr. Beatty made would not be put into perspective or otherwise a factor in the lecture he gave us. The statement, "it is imperative to re-write the history of the Americas emphasizing the African presence," has a whole new meaning when it is broken down. Lets start from the beginning. "it is imperative that we re-write history" now if the mindset was changed from the proud African to the broken African slave like every textbook makes it out to be then why is re-writing the history a necessity? The next part, "of the Americans emphasizing the African presence," now I am no genius or world wide known scholar or anything but I am sure that when they are talking about the African presence they are not talking about the fact that Africans were here and made a change for the better because the white man could not do it on their own and that is why they went looking for someone else that could do the job. I could be completely ignorant to the fact and that could be what they are speaking of but I highly doubt it. So if this mindset that we are always told of that was so broken and destroyed then how is it that we are supposed to re-write the history of their presence being here? How could this broken mindset have changed what we have already been taught? So in other words, basically the mindset we were told they had was not the true mindset. It wasn't as broken and forgotten as they made it out to be but it was strong, intelligent and determined. It was strong enough that it knew it could not be broken, it was intelligent enough to know that it needed to hide what it was and pretend it was just what the white man wanted and it was determined enough to never forget where it came from and to know that it was never going to forget it. So why isn't this side of the African mindset ever talked about or even speculated about within the history books we are forced to learn from? The reason being the African mindset is still in place we are strong, intelligent, and determined enough to let the white man think he has won and broken the mind but in all actuality it's their mindset that has been broken and formed to fit the way we see things.
With the Cultural meaning-making aspect of the lecture it ties in everything that was previously mentioned. The presence of the African mind has never been forgotten it was only reborn into the ways of the country. Such as with Language, there are distinctive African speech communities such as the pre-verbal aspect markers, no copula verb to link subject noun and adjective, non-inversion of subject and auxiliary in questions that was specified by Dr. Beatty's powerpoint. Or with the dancing and even within music and how it has features of antiphony, group nature, pervasive functionality, improvisational character, strong relationship in performance to dance and bodily movements and expression, that is reflected in every aspect of "American" dance and music and yet its roots are actually of african descent. This was also specified by Dr.Beatty's powerpoint. The African presence was never forgotten here it was transformed into a new body to take and morph the America's into what it has become.
Even continuing with the Social Structure aspect of his lecture there is even evidence of the African presence in the creation and modeling of family patterns and political and social structures.The roles, traditions and rituals, that are experienced such as a baptism has an African influence with the water baptisms, or speaking in tongues, possession, or even the funerary rites all have an African influence. The prominent role of mother, is one of a king, chief, minister, sage, and where the elders, ancestors, priests, diviners, blacksmiths and many others have a hidden background of African decent. All this was pointed out by Dr.Beatty's powerpoint. And even when it comes to being a soldier or a laborer or a personal servant or anything along those lines it once again goes back to the African influence that it has had on this country. It goes all the way back to the slave times when they were forced into these positions and now they are no longer jobs of the low class or jobs that people should be ashamed of having but now they stand with honor and have meaning and little do they know that it came with the influence that Africans made when holding these jobs, they made them jobs worth having. Going back to what I said about the African mindset being strong enough to transform or even let the white man believe he broke the African mind, the African mindset was strong enough to trick the white man and now the world that he believed he has created and now lives in is the world that he once tried to destroy.
Breyona Colley
No comments:
Post a Comment