The Importance Of Black Culture

Today, Black culture is a buzzword. Online, many member of the millennial generation contest the appropriation and appreciation of Black culture on a daily basis. Yet, there exists numerous interpretations of the term “Black culture” itself. Though Black culture can mirror Pan-African sentiments and seek to represent the cultures of all Black people throughout the diaspora, the term sometimes refers to specific experiences of Blackness. These include those of: African Americans, an American who has African ancestry; Africans, a person born, raised, or living in Africa; and Blacks, relating to a group of people who have dark skin and come originally from Africa. Though the African American lens is typically used when discussing material examples

In his 1941 book, “Myth of the Negro Past”, Herskovits argues that there is something African that persists in African American, or Black, culture. As he writes, “Slavery did not totally destroy the African culture and that in fact African culture has survived in various forms in the Caribbean to the point where certain cultural phenomenon must be seen in the light of African cultural retention” (Herskovits). This retentionist theory was created by Herskovits in order to discourage assertions that Africans had no other past than that of “primitive savagery” (Herskovits). Herskovits presented that there are three forms in which continental African culture was retained by enslaved African: Survivals, cultural forms that nearly mirrored the original African forms; Syncretisms, the practice of identifying aspects of the old culture when comparing to that of the new culture; and Reinterpretations, seen when African culture is reinterpreted to suit a new environment. All these forms can be seen in African worship practices

Frazier argues that African retentionist theories are negligible because enslaved Africans were completely stripped of their culture by the process of the African Slave Trade and subsequent enslavement. Therefore, a new, completely different and unique culture was created via slavery, middle passage, and seasoning -- conditioning enslaved people to inhumane treatment. Some of the new cultural traditions included: shifting religious practices; the African family being broken and dispersed across the Americas; and, creating new languages while adapting to life during enslavement. As Frazier notes, "Those traditions were a measure, in a sense, of the extent to which the Negro ha[d] assimilated the American cultural heritage" (Frazier 388) . Frazier also pulled from one of the three forms that uphold Herskovits theory of retention in order to valid his annihilation theory. Frazier believes that Syncretism served as proof of the destruction of natural African, or Black, culture. The processes of capture, abuse, and surveillance created a climate inhospitable to clinging onto the older forms of