The Conflict Of African Diaspora

The story that surrounds the transatlantic slave trade is notoriously known, by both young and old, across the nation. This story has not only survived, but thrived as “truth” through generations for several centuries; Although, it is much closer to a mystical tale than reality. In Reversing Sail, Michael Gomez lays the myths affiliated with African Diaspora to rest. Gomez shows the path of the amalgamation of the African people along with their resources into Europe. A path that leads to the New World, that would potentially become the Americas, would ultimately result in more than just the exploitation of Africans as slaves. Compacted into an eight-chapter undergrad textbook, Gomez uses Reversing Sail to unground the history, complexity, and instrumentality of the African Diaspora. He does such in a

One implication as a result of the biggest known migration of human beings in history is that there is little documentation of individuals from the African Slave Trade. As such a familiar occurrence in history, there is little to be known about the individual experiences of captives during this horrific time. Randy Sparks, author of The Two Princes of Calabar, ends the silence as he provides the reader with a glimpse into an eighteenth century odyssey, and first hand account to the trading communities along the coast of West Africa. This trade not only transported people, but the exchange of ideas is also present across and around the Atlantic. The novel tells the story of two young men from Nigeria who are from an elite slave trading family. These men were captured by Europeans and sold into slavery until they were ultimately released back to their homeland. The Two Princes of Calabar offers insight into the complexities that existed in the transracial Atlantic world of the eighteenth century through the themes of privilege, gender bias, and the mistreatment of the enslaved.

The Kenyan feminist and environmental activist, Wangari Maathai, explores the legacy of colonialism and oppression in her native country through her moving 2006 memoir, Unbowed. Maathai explains that over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Africa experienced a massive influx of white settlers. In an effort to solidify control over recently acquired colonies, many European powers had encouraged large numbers of their ethnically white citizens to make a new home on the African continent. As a result, thousands of native Africans were displaced. Maathai’s ancestors, the Kikuyu and Maasai peoples were among them. The majority of these forced dislocations took

Phillips' book is an attempt to provide an overview of the practice and institutions of slavery in the Americas from its beginnings to the 19th century. Writing in 1918, Phillips hoped to provide an account of slavery based upon historical evidence and modern methods of research, rather than ideological motivations. He drew his evidence from the plantation records and letters of slave owners; contemporary travel accounts; court records and legal documents; newspaper articles; and in some instances, the recordings of slaves themselves, rather than what he viewed as more biased sources such as abolitionist writings. While this approach was not systematic and led him to base many

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.

“The Slave Ship: A Human History” written by Marcus Rediker describes the horrifying experiences of Africans, and captains, and ship crewmen on their journey through the Middle Passage, the water way in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Americas. The use of slaves to cultivate crops in the Caribbean and America offered a great economy for the European countries by providing “free” labor and provided immense wealth for the Europeans. Rediker describes the slave migration by saying, “There exists no account of the mechanism for history’s greatest forced migration, which was in many ways the key to an entire phase of globalization” (10). African enslavement to the Americas is the most prominent reason for a complete shift in the

The great migration is a term used to define a period of flight for many African Americans of the 20th century who initially lived in the south, but due to the harsh conditions they faced, over 6 million relocated to large urban cities in the North, West, and Midwest. This migration compared to any other one in our past history is extremely different to note, because it was not caused by famine or genocide, it was a voluntary act made by African Americans in the south ranging from 1916 to 1970. It is very critical to discuss because it was one of the largest migrations in documented human history, other than the involuntary movement of slavery. The great migration not only spiked a time of change for African Americans of the south, but for

To understand the importance of Kara Walker’s controversial works, one must understand the significance of American slavery. Slavery is to America (not just the United States, but the Caribbean and South America, too) as the Holocaust is to Germany. Somewhere between ten and fifteen million Africans were forcibly transported from Africa to America as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, nearly two million Africans died during the voyage to America. Fifteen to thirty percent reportedly died during the voyages along the coastlines upon arrival. Altogether, anywhere from two to five million Africans may have died as a result of American

The Africans captured during the Middle Passage encompassed a variety of ethnic groups that did not identify as a singular unit, but slavery in the Americas forced them to see themselves as such, and further isolated them from their individual identities and brought them closer to the institution of slavery. This is exemplified in the attempt to repatriate African-American slaves in 1787 in the United States. It was unsuccessful because of the fact that these African-Americans no longer belonged to simply one ethnic group/tribe/nation. Rather, they were a multifaceted composition of a wide array of various groups in Africa. The attempt at repatriation was disastrous because of the extensive cultural differences between the ‘returnees’ and the

America is built on the foundation of immigration and people from different countries coming here to build a nation. People migrating and coming to America dates back to the 1000’s when the Vikings came to Canada or when people crossed the Bering Strait from Asia to America. All people wanting to come to America was voluntary except the Africans. When the Africans first started coming to America, it was involuntary because they had migrated here through the Atlantic Slave Trade.

In some approaches enslaved African American families very a great deal resembled other households who lived in other instances and places and under vastly unique instances. Some husbands and better halves cherished each different; some did now not get alongside. Children on occasion abided by determine’s policies; different instances they followed their own minds. Most mother and father cherished their children and desired to shield them. In some critical approaches, even though, the slavery that marked everything about their lives made these families very specific. Belonging to every other individual delivered unique constrictions, disruptions, frustrations, and ache.

Ira Berlin’s “The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations” reminded me of an article that I read by Kevin Boyle in The New York Times titled ‘Promise Land’. In Promised Land Boyle shows how race overpowered his parent’s sense of place (land, family, history) when an African-American couple moved into their neighborhood in Detroit. After some time, they joined the rest of the white people who began selling their property to move into the suburbs. Berlin redefined the understanding of American slavery when he looked at the African-American experience as a story of people who are uprooted and searching for home, and moving slowly towards equality.

It is essential to note that the term African Diaspora does not describe any single event, group of people or set of customs. It represents a current state of being for many citizens of the world and provides context for understanding the social structures and intercultural relationships of the world we live in today. Collin Palmer provides great insight into the context of diaspora. He writes that there have been several movements, massive migrations of people, throughout history. There is no single “diasporic movement or monolithic diasporic community” to be studied, but rather a confluence of people, events and ideologies that span thousands of years, across every continent. Each period of movement, each diasporic stream, happened for different reasons. Palmer’s approach to the African Diaspora begins with a look nearly 100,000 years into the past. He identifies five major streams, with the first African diaspora that occurred as a

According to (Harris 2001), "the importance of the historical Diaspora was that Africans like other people have traveled abroad as free people, settled down and made important contributions to many Europeans and Asian countries. " The Historical Diaspora was mainly the dispersion of Africans in the world and their settlements. They maintained a consciousness of Africa and their Identity while adapting and making positive contributions to their adopted homelands. This made them create an identity of who they want to be because in the historical Diaspora there was "free fluidity" and that enabled them to do whatever they wanted for that reason there was no constraints. Prior to when the Europeans conducted slave trade, Arabs conducted a slave trade across the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea taking Africans to Arabia, India and the Far East.

Every year, thousands of Sub Saharan Africans trek through the dangerous journey north to attempt to get into Europe. These people emigrate from some of the poorest nations in the entire world seeking a longer, higher quality life. These migrants are escaping a life expectancy of only 47 years and a population growth almost four times that of Europe and HIV rates almost nineteen times that of Europe. They seek a better life not only them, but their families as well, looking for higher education rates like Europe 's 99% versus their 66% education rate. Overall the living conditions of sub-saharan africa are extremely poor along with a GDP almost six and a half times lower than Europe’s. These migrants pay what they have saved for years just to buy their way to Europe, costs ranging from approximately one to three thousand Euros. All these problems are the origins of sub-saharan migration to europe, where thousands are losing their lives every year, but what should Europe do about it? Although there are EU policies to help migrants who get into EU soil, these policies are only of good use when they are used correctly by uncorrupted systems. This makes it hard for migrants to try to get residence in the EU, on top of the fact that these policies do not apply to the bordering nations. These problems along with discrimination and the fact that the journey to get there in the first place is extremely dangerous, all of these problems should be addressed by the EU and