African Cultural Retention

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More Than the Plantation: African Cultural Retention in the American South Today, cultural retention can take all types of shapes and forms, from the mundane like recognizing the hat of a fellow Yankees fan, to the important like the Native American craft festivals in the Midwest where native designs and techniques are taught and put on display. Drawing on the bits and pieces of much larger cultures that people bring with them when they arrive in a new country is what makes America diverse, and is what makes it great; at least when cultural retention is a desire rather than a necessity. The deep significance of cultural retention among American born slaves was that it provided a connection not only to Africa, but to a history and a culture…show more content…
When Africans were enslaved and viewed and treated as property, they were no longer under their own control but under the control of their masters. Retaining the parts of the culture that they were able to, like music and language and tales, gave them a small sense of autonomy that slavery had taken away, but when it was passed down to the next generations it gave those American-born Africans a connection to a land that they had never known, where their people were free. Although those American-born slaves had no personal connection with Africa, being taught things that derived from that African culture and heritage allowed them to forge a new connection to the motherland through that culture—through the rhythm of the drums they fashioned, the movements of their feet as they performed the dances they were taught, or the words in African language that made itself at home in their English speaking mouths. Even though no “certain line of origin could be traced” for them like with Saidiya Hartman in Lose Your Mother, an emotional connection was formed that was more important than being able to pinpoint where their ancestors came from on a map…show more content…
In fact, having knowledge of and ties to both places “enabled the slave to link European and African forms to create a distinctive culture, and to contribute to his master’s culture” (Blassingame 48). African things were Americanized while American things were Africanized to create the best of both worlds as much as their situations would allow, resulting in a new hybrid culture unique to Southern American slaves. But while the European culture was important, it certainly did not dominate; “the interpenetration of white culture…did not…prevent the evolution of a distinctive culture in the slave community” (Blassingame 104). From this new culture came various tales, instruments, dances and more, but also countless generations of people who could claim both African and European culture as their own. That is made clear in The Language You Cry In with the song that connected generations of African born people to generations of American born people; the meeting of Bendu Jabati and Mary Moran was a sort of representation of the hopes that the enslaved Africans had when teaching their children of their culture, that they might one day be able to use the knowledge to reconnect with their

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