African Identity Essay

611 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How does family affect your identity essay

In many cultures there is a question not only of tradition but of identity as a whole, therefore we can’t help but ask… Do we have an Africa identity? I believe that our African identity is the way which individuals use the idea of Africanism in conjunction with its cultures, and allow this to have an influence on their own lives, affecting their personal identity. In essence, an individual’s identity is made up of their own character combined with their family, up-bringing and social roots. South Africans respect the values of the nation’s people and their cultures, and so they incorporate these aspects along with their own personality to create their unique identity. The representation of identity as a communication skill can be seen in selected examples from local designers. In this essay I will discuss how the African “voice” can still be located in current design examples and how designers are able to portray this identity through their work.
African identity is a theme which animates the progress and growth of design in the country as well as recognising circumstances which ar...

Show More
Related

  • Comparsion Of Kincaid's Girl And Walker's Everyday Use

    1594 Words  | 4 Pages

    Everyone is raised within a culture with a set of customs and morals handed down by those generations before them. Most individual’s view and experience identity in different ways. During history, different ethnic groups have struggled with finding their place within society. In the mid-nineteen hundreds, African Americans faced a great deal of political and social discrimination based on the tone of their skin. After the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans no longer wanted to be identified by their African American lifestyle, so they began to practice African culture by taking on African hairdos, African-influenced clothing, and adopting African names. By turning away from their roots, many African Americans embraced a culture that was not inherited, thus putting behind the unique and significant characteristics of their own inherited culture. Therefore, in an African American society, a search for self identity is a pervasive theme.

    Read More

  • Racial Autobiography Essay

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    Queens is one of the most diverse boroughs in New York. There is just about every ethnicity living in it. Growing up in Queens I adapted to the diverse environment at a very young age. Living in a diverse environment impacted my way of thinking and the way I act towards others.

    Read More

  • African Art: A Cycle Of Life

    1411 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many African cultures see life as a cycle we are born, we grow and mature, enter adulthood, and one day we will eventually die but the cycle continues long after death. In Africa art is used as a way to express many things in their society, in this paper I will focus on different ways traditional African art are used to describe the cycle of one’s life. Since Africa is such a large continent it is important to keep in mind that every country and tribe has different rituals and views when it comes to the cycle of life. It is estimated to be well over a thousand different ethnic groups and cultures in Africa today. Thousands of cultures in Africa see the stages of life bound together in a continuous cycle; a cycle of birth, growth, maturity,

    Read More

  • The Art of Benin

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    Western attitudes to African people and culture have always affected how their art was appreciated and this has also coloured the response to the art from Benin.

    Read More

  • Racial Formation Essay

    1303 Words  | 3 Pages

    Race, as a general understanding is classifying someone based on how they look rather than who they are. It is based on a number of things but more than anything else it’s based on skin's melanin content. A “race” is a social construction which alters over the course of time due to historical and social pressures. Racial formation is defined as how race shapes and is shaped by social structure, and how racial categories are represented and given meaning in media, language and everyday life. Racial formation is something that we see changing overtime because it is rooted in our history. Racial formation also comes with other factors below it like racial projects. Racial projects seek

    Read More

  • When Feminism Goes Wrong

    2380 Words  | 5 Pages

    Hudson-Weems emphasizes the importance of a theory that examines the plight of Africana women that is created for and by Africana women. This is the only way to ensure that their particular needs would be addressed. This Afrocentric ideology is better equipped to empower the Africana woman and place her fight in her own hands. Even the approach’s name is rooted in African culture. It adheres to the concept of nommo, the proper naming of a thing which calls it into existence. “The terminology Africana womanism…more appropriately fits the Africana woman, who is both self-namer and self-definer. It is true that if you do not define yourself, someone else surely will” (Hudson-Weems, 2007). Naming has played a large role in empowering and uniting Africana people, particularly in the United States, as shown by the evolution of naming ...

    Read More

  • Immigration Issue Essay

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    Immigrants have always been an important part of United States’ population. Each year, there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants, from all around the world, including legal and illegal, come into the United States for job opportunities, new life, or the American Dream. “Immigrants have contributed significantly to the development of the United States. During the Lincoln administration, immigrants were actually encouraged to come to America, as they were considered valuable to the development of the country.” (Soylu & Buchanan, 2013). They believe that the US will give them more freedom, protection, and opportunities, which sometimes it becomes the major issues for immigrants. That’s why “the U.S. population is becoming more racially and

    Read More

  • The Afrocentric Education Provided by Historically Black Colleges and Universities

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    Afrocentricity, as defined by Asante, is a “consciousness, quality of thought, mode of analysis, and actionable perspective where Africans seek, from agency, to assert subject place within the context of African history” (Asante 16). In essence, all roads converge and diverge with the African continent, with its rich history of pioneering triumphs and profound tribulations; Africa and all of her descendants are the end all, be all of one’s focus. There are five criteria to Afrocentricity: “(1) An interest in psychological location; (2) a commitment to finding the African subject place; (3) the defense of African cultural elements; (4) a commitment to lexical refinement; (5) a commitment to correct the dislocations in the ...

    Read More

  • Multiracial Identity Essay

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    “When Race Becomes Even More Complex: Toward Understanding the Landscape of Multiracial Identity and Experiences”

    Read More

  • The Cultural Art of Body Art

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    For a long time now body art and decoration has been a custom in many cultural groups. Through research we have learned about the different types of body art and ornamentation such as permanent and nonpermanent tattooing, scarification, and piercings. These forms of body art and ornamentation are done for a variety of reasons, ranging from identification purposes to religious rituals. “Skin, as a visible way of defining individual identity and cultural difference, is not only a highly elaborated preoccupation in many cultures; it is also the subject of wide-ranging and evolving scholarly discourse in the humanities and social sciences” (Schildkrout, 2004). The process of ornamentation and body art is usually a painful experience, but it is a way to signify a person’s self-discovery and their place in society. In this paper, I will explore the different aspects of body art and ornamentation in two different cultures; the Maori people of New Zealand and the Yoruba’s of West Africa and explain the cultural importance of their art.

    Read More

  • Jamilla Okubo's African American Gothic

    246 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Jamilla Okubo’s, African-American Gothic, African culture is woven into an interpretation of Grant Wood’s famous painting, American Gothic (http://www.americangothichouse.net/about/the-painting/). Through this painting, I believe that African American artists today do identify with their ancestral past in Africa. Okubo is a Kenyan-American artist who works primarily with textiles (Afful). In this painting, one can see that Okubo has added her own cultural spin to American Gothic. She portrays the farmer couple from the original with African skin tones. Also, she has added kente and kanga fabric scraps, fabric native to African countries such as Ghana (“The History of Kanga”, “Kente Cloth Origins”), to give the couple traditional African

    Read More

  • Culture, Cultures, And Symbolism In Sub-Saharan Africa

    1235 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is no art, music, and literature like here in sub-Saharan Africa. What is important to Westerners, such as the artist, label, and static-like wall hanging, means nothing to us. African art is living, spiritual, and meant to go back to the Earth once the soul of the item has run out. As the Bamana of Mali say, the art are “things that can be looked at without limit”. Our artwork has changed, emerged, and survived eras of turmoil and inversely, hope. I have found passing through the global gateway into Africa has made me appreciate this culture more, and appealed to me on a level that made me choose being a part of it.

    Read More

  • Race And Ethnicity Essay

    1082 Words  | 3 Pages

    In today’s society, it is acknowledgeable to assert that the concepts of race and ethnicity have changed enormously across different countries, cultures, eras, and customs. Even more, they have become less connected and tied with ancestral and familial ties but rather more concerned with superficial physical characteristics. Moreover, a great deal can be discussed the relationship between ethnicity and race. Both race and ethnicity are useful and counterproductive in their ways. To begin, the concept of race is, and its ideas are vital to society because it allows those contemporary nationalist movements which include, racist actions; to become more familiar to members of society. Secondly, it has helped to shape and redefine the meaning of

    Read More

  • Race And Ethnicity Essay

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    Race and ethnicity are two terms that are constantly used in today’s society. Understanding these terms can help people to recognize that color of skin or color of hair does not define a person. These terms connect with history, social interaction, and the overall make up of a person. However America is constantly obsessed with labeling people by the way that they look or the way that they act. America seems to encourage the terms race and ethnicity and continue to divide people into categories. It is interesting to comprehend these terms because they are not going to disappear any time soon. Race and ethnicity are apart of America’s history and will be a part of the future.

    Read More

  • African Literature Opinions by Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o

    1526 Words  | 4 Pages

    Despite all this deliberations, the consultation undertaken has not generated any agreement. In the contrary they have emphasized the continental perceived notion of the superiority of the creative writing only exploring the African so called metaphysical landscape in one way or the other focusing on an African realization. The Africa-metaphysical-landscape conditi...

    Read More

More about African Identity Essay

Open Document