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Yukio
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Votes: 0 | | Posted on Saturday, April 05, 2003 - 08:58 pm: | |
KOLA, my post is in response to what you stated to me in the other post, should the government continue to fund...
What you say may be true, concerning the societal racist policies in the these countries, but the point that i'm making about these people from these Spanish Caribbean countries is that SOME of them do HONOR Africa (Also, SOME whose parents migrated to the US and lived with black Americans and those from the British Caribbean often have a different consciousness/the process of consciousness of Africanity is so complex). The other point that i was not explicit about is that COlOR does not determine one's consciousness, so that many Black Americans, in my opinion, are African, because of their Blood, but do not HONOR AFRICA.
Culturally we have a New World African Culture--the larger continental African American culture, which can be broken down into the islands within Caribbean and coast and within the US known as the Afri-US(what most people call African Americans). Others in these same islands and this country, as in the Continent, are almost fully assimilate to white culture. They don't even recognize their own culture(african american), nor their mother culture (African).
This means that there are a whole lot of Africans of all shades facilitating this breeding out process, which places in question and further complicates the question of "racial mixing," for many of the black Africans as well as the darker Africans are as complicit in this mixing as the lighter ones. This means that one can not single out those light skinned folk or the paler folk from the Spanish Caribbean.
I think that one should honor their culture (African American) and their mother culture (African), both interdependent. It is amazing to speak to Africans who know more about african american intellectuals, artists, etc... than many black americans do. Similarly, i know african americans that can tell africans not only about their country, but the continent. As i've said KOLA, we need to learn about eachother, because although all may be African, our histories of Colonialism and Imperialism also have made us who we are and need to regroup, think, and learn about the ties that bind.
Everyone,
I do and have unfortunately (unfortunate because even when the intensions are benign it often becomes an "authenticity" battle which I loathe. Still, i think these categories are useful, since it enables us not to place all blacks of the Americas in one box or place a continent into a box, as some us often do)labeled some people black Americans and others African Americans. This not an attempt to follow an authenticity authoritive position, but to theorize this blacks in the Americas. There are many gradations, of course, but i label those who are phenotypically black as Black Americans. For whatever reasons, they neither affirm their indigenous culture or their mother culture; This is often from rearing or by choice. Those who consciously and are reared to respect their indigenous culture and their mother culture i call African Americans. Like i said, there are many gradations, since some people solely embrace their indigeous culture and not their mother culture, while others reject their indigeous culture (because its not "authentic,") and solely embrace their mother culture. |
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