During the lecture Dr. Beatty discussed cultural repercussions of displacing Africans from Africa. Some key points he explored were Dismemberment, changes to both American culture, and culture of African diasporas.
When Dr. Beatty talked about dismemberment he addressed not just the physical displacement of Africans from their homeland and social communities, but more-so from their ideologies. European thought was introduced to Africans during slavery in an attempt to not only create the economical, and political domination of Europeans in the New World, but also to culturally dominate and separate Africans from their history and culture. Because of this, American history is more reflective of European culture than African culture. Dr. Beatty acknowledged this unfortunate point but also continued to discuss the perseverance of African culture and ideology. Africans were being taught to give primacy to European culture, however, certain aspects in our culture always remained. Speaking patterns, importance of music and dance, and social structures of African peoples generally follow the same pattern. Scholars like Gomez have transformed academic knowledge by identifying the flaws in current American history and addressing the need to rewrite history to be more inclusive of African culture to more accurately depict African impact in America.
When considering this, I realized how much we have been mis-educated throughout the learning process. I think about our forms of religion and education and how they reveal more European patterns than Africans. We have a white depiction of Christ in our religion and education favors Greco-Roman culture yet when the New World was just beginning Blacks represented about 80% of the population. This lecture really has opened my eyes to the importance of making American culture acknowledge African presence. African culture has not been abandoned nor have we been dismembered as a unit. We just need to force our mark in history and be recognized more deservingly.
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