African American Colonialism: An Analysis

Our world is full of different cultures and languages. For many years America has challenged other forms of language besides English. With America becoming more diverse the country can no longer ignore the different languages within our society. The African-American culture has gone through a transition of what it means to be “black” in America and language is no acceptance. Africans brought to America did not understand English but over time many blacks learned the socially acceptable or proper form of language. Even though blacks willing learned English, the African-American community language has always been distinctive, and only for blacks to embrace and understand. The Black American English known as Ebonics became a topic of

Looking beyond this particular case and the criminal justice system, speaking AAVE in the United States often exacerbates biases rooted in race and class in cross-dialect domains like schools, job/housing searches, doctors’ visits, and so on. Looking even further afield, and recalling cases summarized in the beginning of this article, we observe that the mishearings experienced by AAVE speakers are shared by vernacular speakers from other ethnic groups, languages, and regions across the United States and around the world. They are much more vulnerable than speakers of standard or mainstream varieties to being misheard and misjudged by police, judges, juries, teachers, landlords, doctors, and employers in everyday

Arway is a seven-year-old student who has just immigrated to the United States from Monrovia, Liberia with her family. She comes from one of the most populated cities in Liberia. In the 1800s, freed African American slaves settled in Liberia via the American Colonization Society. Friction occurred between the African Americans and the indigenous Liberians which turned into two brutal civil wars that not only resulted in numerous deaths, but also severely devastated the Liberian economy. Even though Arway was born after the second civil war ended, her family has experienced the war and its devastating effects that may have affected their choice to emigrate.

Imperialism was the start of decolonization, it is the rapid expansion of territory. Decolonization affected different countries in different ways. Some were forced to become independent and some independence came peacefully. Economics, political, and ideological are three major components of imperialism. After world war two the European powers attempted to restart their empire across Asia and Africa. Despite the Pan Africanist that are located outside of the united states they draw in many of their ideas from African Americans. Pan-Africanism is a movement that can change between the focus of politics, ideology, organizations, or culture. Pan-Africanism mainly

In the late 1800s to the early 1900s, the Government of European countries quests to acquire colonies resulted in the brutal treatment of nonwhite native people. Many Europeans of the time believe that they were superior humans and this played a major role in the rationale for Imperialism. There were a few Critics that stood out among the rest and ultimately became a thorn in the side of Imperialism. Imperialism was bad for most of the humans on the African continent.

Imperialism is a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through either diplomacy or military force. Africa and India were both victims of imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Europeans (mostly the British) conquered most of Africa and India which effected both countries in many different ways. Some of the things that happened during this time like the industrialization of the countries and some new more modern ways of life had a positive effect on the people. While this did happen, not all that happened was positive.

The Webster Dictionary defines the word “language” as “the system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other as well as any one of the systems of human language that are used and understood by a particular group of people” (Webster Dictionary). If language is a tool dedicated as a communication source to understand one another, why is the way certain people talk being neglected and marked as not an actual language? Language has evolved into more than just words being expressed through our voices, but has converted into a weapon used to ridicule and attack other dialects due to how different and unorthodox a particular language may be. James Baldwin in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell me, What is?” argues that “Black English” was a form of the African American community’s own dialect of the English language, and neglecting the language as its own contradicts the definition of the word “language” itself. Bell hooks explores and points out the class differences within our society and not just within our colleges major universities, pointing out how in which assimilation is not inevitable and not required wherever an individual enters. Our own stories and the way we present ourselves through our words should not be limited to a certain form; in “F for Book Report,” R. Zamora Linmark endorses the linguistic power to represent ourselves anyway we like and our own language shouldn’t be

“Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently.” The way we learn English will change completely when technology takes over. Accepting change in the American language will help people from different backgrounds communicate more efficiently.

The second colonialism's legacy is its economic influence on the life of the African people. Every colonial system interrupted the existing economic policies and the disruptions have varied from state to state. The most well known example is that their production was charged for food-crop to cash-crop. The colonialism also acts as a bridge which connect economically between Africa and the European colonial powers. It is obvious that the European countries were more beneficial than African colonies. Robinson (2013) explained, “This history of economic exploitation has played an important role in shaping the way independent African governments have attempted to develop their own economies.” According to the World Factbook, because of the colonial rule, a

Unfortunately, Africa and American both experienced colonialism a long time ago. Colonialism, after all, is a political system in which an external nation takes complete control of a territory in another area of the world. Moreover, the colonized people do not invite the colonial power, nor do they have any say in how they are governed. Colonialism is by definition and practiced un-democratic! The displeasure experience brings them a lot of similarities, and the same time, it brings them some differences as well.

Ethnicity is one factor that influences how one speaks a certain language. People may perceive the language of Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, or people of Latin or Hispanic descent to be different in various ways. Different ethnic groups may have a form of communication that only members of that ethnic group may comprehend. For instance, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as Black English or Ebonics, is different from Standard English. In class, a group discussed how AAVE is criticized for being a hindrance in comparison to “normal English.” AAVE differentiates from Standard English through vocabulary, grammar, and sounds. For example, the word “be” is often used in Standard English, but can be used differently in AAVE (Sidnell, n.d.). Thus, a person that speaks Standard English could say “I told him to be quiet because he doesn’t know what he’s

During the times of slavery and post- slavery many blacks experienced self-hatred and were sexually repressed due to colonization. In the Kincaid story “Girl” the mother has self-hatred due to colonialism and she wants to past the sexual repression of those who are colonized down to her daughter. Colonialism is a main reason for sexual repression and self-hatred, the sexual repression of the colonized is being passed down through generations, and also the humiliation from others that is experienced leads to self-hatred of those not yet colonized; which eventually leads to them becoming colonized.

There is one goal in mind in colonialism, and it is to utilize the natives and established colonies to create capital for the parent country. To do this, the individuals who are being conquered will be used slaves and their land will be turned into plantations. It is the process of one group people controlling another group of individuals. The reading describes it as a cultural, political, economic, and social domination of a group of people by an unknown or foreign power. This superiority will exist for an extensive period. Then minority group or the people that have been subjugated suffer a few critical consequences such as extermination, expulsion, secession, segregation, cultural fusion, or assimilation(McNamara & Burns, 2009). For how long?

Throughout history, minority groups have faced many hardships as a result of the different pigmentation of their skin complexion, socioeconomic status, and language varieties. Each factor affecting the other in a cyclical pattern. Language varieties associated with these stigmatized minority groups are often devalued because they fall short of what is known as Standard English. Minority group speakers typically use non-standard English such as Spanglish and African American Vernacular English. These non-standard English practices are misconceived as “broken English”, “ungrammatical”, and “defective”, which are incorrect and demeaning. These language varieties negatively impact the images of these minority groups reflecting

Colonialism is like a long film of events discoveries, tragedies, and controversy. It is through it that the components reflect the historical remnants; it is a criterion that forms the political, social, cultural constructs. It is a metaphor for an archive that harbour the passage through time and frozen moments. I reconstruct images from the past and the present; which the button is a tool that re enforce the hybridism and therefore history is a social and cultural dictionary in which I articulate ideological and visual ideas in the contemporary scene, focusing on experiences and