Imani All Mine Analysis

Many things that can define culture and each one is holistically unique. The culture that defines and includes me is the African American community. My culture is defined by the history of my people. For you cannot know who you are or where you are going if don’t even know where and what you come from. Art plays a major role in African-American community as well. Since the beginning of our time, blacks have been craftsmen or born with an artistic ability. Lastly, the food. Food is a very important aspect of African-American culture. In fact, the preparation of food is important to the black community.

Many of our life lessons were often given by our elders in the form of stories, jokes, and the spirituals which serve often song in the fields, as well as, on Sunday mornings. Yet, as a people, we thought it necessary to hold on these priceless teachings because it has served as the only link to our African ancestry. African American culture is both part of and distinct from American culture. African Americans have contributed literature, agricultural skills, foods, clothing, dance, and language to American culture.

If the family still does not practice the culture, then they are not African. They take part in the culture which they grow up in: which is American.

Africans have, since the early settlement of America, has had a great influence in the nation’s growth. These contributions to the United States from enslaved Africans have been greatly portrayed in American culture. Varying from cuisine, to song and dance are not only portrayed today but it has a deep-rooted impact throughout the United States. During the middle passage, enslaved Africans were forced to abandon their everyday lives, their families and their homes and forced to adapt to a new lifestyle they knew nothing of. However, upon arrival into the New World, due to their prior knowledge and wisdom from back home, they were able to quickly adapt and custom themselves to this new lifestyle in order to survive with the hope of potentially one day returning back to Africa. Unfortunately, African contributions to the culture of the United States has received little to no recognition and it has been taken credit for by Europeans and Whites since the early establishment of the United States.

In this paper I discuss the African-American culture in regards to values, norms and beliefs.

African-American history are those events that started with the first slave ships from Africa to the Caribbean Islands and carry through their journey as a people both individually and collectively to today's societies across the Americas.

African-Americans have created a unique cultural tradition from African and European influences in Louisiana. However, religion to medical care also language. African-rooted traditions were transformed in Louisiana to form a vibrant ethnic culture. With them, African slaves brought their cultural identities languages, religions, oral traditions, and became evident in Louisiana. Perhaps the most flamboyant of these, continuities are seen in religion, particularly Voodoo.

My culture identity, as I know it as is African American. My culture can be seen in food, literature, religion, language, the community, family structure, the individual, music, dance, art, and could be summed up as the symbolic level. Symbolic, because faith plays a major role in our daily lives through song, prayer, praise and worship. When I’m happy I rely on my faith, same as when I’m sad, for I know things will get better as they have before.

African Americans were brought to the United States in the 1700s and have adapted tremendously since then. After their emancipation from slavery, African-American traditions continued to flourish, such as linguistic style, radical innovations in music, art, and literature, religion, and cultural cuisine. The greatest influence of African cultural practices on European culture is found below the Mason-Dixon line within the American South.

The “Americanization” process of slaves brought to America is one that has been debated. Some say the slaves brought to America quickly abandoned most of their African ways and adopted the dominant culture against those who stress the continuing African cultural legacy among black Americans. The Africans that were brought to America involuntarily essentially remained Africans at heart. The descendants of Africans that were brought to America were not like the original Africans or white Americans. They were heavily influenced by the behavior of their masters but maintained some of their African culture. They formed a new culture known as African-American.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines “African American,” as an American who has African and especially black African ancestry. Being born in the United States and being American I have always been classified as African American, because my skin was dark, my hair was tightly coiled and because my parents were black. As a black child growing up here believed I was African American because my parent were African. I knew Africa from the Lion King and National Geography. I knew of the music because it played on a loop in our Georgia home, when I was trying to watch Disney or Nickelodeon. I knew of the food, because I was made to eat it instead of McDonalds. So to me, Africa and Africans where distant, it belonged in the world of fairytales.

Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings of a society together. African American are people who come from America from Africa for example Charlize Theron speaking on my behalf I have never been to Africa so I would consider myself as an black American women. So if we are not originally from Africa why do we keep coming up with all these different scenarios we are colored, negroes or African American why can’t we just be addressed as black American. Many philosophers and archeologist believe that we are related to the chimpanzee and monkey family, because of our facial expression but truth is it was not just because of our facial expression I believe this knowledge from man is use to manipulate

From the 1500s to the 1700s, African blacks, mainly from the area of West Africa (today's Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon) were shipped as slaves to North America, Brazil, and the West Indies. For them, local and tribal differences, and even varying cultural backgrounds, soon melded into one common concern for the suffering they all endured. Music, songs, and dances as well as remembered traditional food, helped not only to uplift them but also quite unintentionally added immeasurably to the culture around them. In the approximately 300 years that blacks have made their homes in North America, the West Indies, and Brazil, their highly honed art

The concept of the African Diaspora goes back several millennia, at the time when people in Antiquity either traveled to other sides of the world because they wanted to expand their influence or were simply forced to leave their homes in order to be slaves. In order to understand more regarding the African Diaspora in the Americas, one needs to focus on earlier periods "before the rise of American slavery and the transatlantic slave trade" (Gomez 7). Although individuals in the U.S. mainly focus on trying to comprehend African culture through focusing on people who were brought on the American continent during the slave trade, the center of attention should actually be represented by African tradition that was devised over several centuries and before African people interacted with white individuals.

With such parallel beginnings and changes with ownership of lands and humans and the language adaptations the afro-Bahamian and afro- American still held on to many of our African roots. With the abolishment of