Summary Of Black Culture And Black Consciousness
“Black Culture and Black Consciousness” a book by Lawrence Levine, discusses the idea that although the African people were enslaved by the British Colonies in North America, the Africans would lose their own heritage, when in fact “they did not carry with them a network of beliefs, customs, and institutions constituting what might be called with unified accuracy, a unified “African” culture.” (Pg.3)
Before Levine published this book, most historians and scholars such as “W.E.B. Du Bois and Melville Herskovits, until recently believed that because United States slavery eroded much of the linguistic and institutional sides of African life”, (Pg.4) that this must have taken away the fundamental aspects of the African Americans presumed monolithic …show more content…
As mentioned in the text, “to insist that only those elements of slave culture were African which remained largely unchanged from the African past is to misinterpret culture itself.”
(Pg.4) Culture, just like people evolves and grows as new ideas and ways of life are presented to us. In relation to the text, the Africans didn’t lose their heritage as they expanded their cultural, political, and religious systems in America, rather their ways of life were created into a set cultural entity that when combined with the American culture, was then known as Afro-American culture.
In transition, one of the major reasons why Levine’s work has been acknowledged and admired by so many, was a result of his ability to accurately observe not just the lives the African people created for themselves when they came to the United States, but how they successfully and positively strived to gain freedom from the colonies, as well as freedom of speech and speak up on racism and to abolish slavery for
Before Levine published this book, most historians and scholars such as “W.E.B. Du Bois and Melville Herskovits, until recently believed that because United States slavery eroded much of the linguistic and institutional sides of African life”, (Pg.4) that this must have taken away the fundamental aspects of the African Americans presumed monolithic …show more content…
As mentioned in the text, “to insist that only those elements of slave culture were African which remained largely unchanged from the African past is to misinterpret culture itself.”
(Pg.4) Culture, just like people evolves and grows as new ideas and ways of life are presented to us. In relation to the text, the Africans didn’t lose their heritage as they expanded their cultural, political, and religious systems in America, rather their ways of life were created into a set cultural entity that when combined with the American culture, was then known as Afro-American culture.
In transition, one of the major reasons why Levine’s work has been acknowledged and admired by so many, was a result of his ability to accurately observe not just the lives the African people created for themselves when they came to the United States, but how they successfully and positively strived to gain freedom from the colonies, as well as freedom of speech and speak up on racism and to abolish slavery for