VudulessAyisien: This is very very very fascinating. I'm of Benin descent and Cameroon. My moms DNA test had a small percentage, very small of Bantu. But I wish it was more! Maybe after testing my dad I will find out. Bantu cultures are probably the most fascinating and defining in all of Africa. The West focuses too much on Egypt, which to me, becomes VERY boring after so many invasions by Greek then Roman the Arab conquest. Those cultures are watered down, non-mysterious and cold/rigid. The older the Egyptian stuff is more cool than the most recent. Today it's hardly interesting at all. The life blood and soul of Africa is Bantu. The best music is Bantu. Zimbabwe has the best music. The shona have the best sculptures. The ndebele have the best dolls. Zulus have the best sounding language and beautiful traditional clothing. Kenya has by the far the most lovely cultures and people. Kongo has a rich history and strong people.
this is not to put down others because I uplift mostly West African cultures too. But the least boring are the Bantu groups. I'm "west African biased" haha. But at the end of the day, BANTU RULES FOREVER. All Africans should unite, mingle, trade amongst each other, and eliminate the need for outside interference. It's very embarrassing to be the neediest continent and diaspora on earth (according to mainstream knowledge, anyway. In my opinion, Indigenous Australia is worse off. So is Oceana in general even India and parts of Asia)
Respect from a Haitian. Proudly African by DNA!
I love all most African music genres. Including Shona mbira and Zulu maskandi. These are magical specimens of musical creativity. But if you have not listened to Owerri Bongo music, you cannot say you fully appreciate African music.
What you wrote is completely untrue. African Americans are deeply interested in their culture and they have been amongst the most active group of Africans anywhere in leading Africans everywhere out of this mess that we have found ourselves in. To begin with most African Americans trace their ancestry to Igbo, Akan, Mande and Yoruban people; but particularly to Igbo and Akan.
What a lot of Africans from the Continent don't know and seem happy to not know is that it was against the law for African Americans to speak any of their ethnic languages or to pass down anything about your culture. Against the law as in "being tortured and killed." So most African Americans never knew anything about Africa, because there was never anybody to teach them and the White man convinced African Americans that Africa was a jungle; the people where cannibals and they didn't have any history. Who was there to teach African Americans any different?
The good thing is that a lot of African Americans have roots in the Southern part of the United States and we learned a lot from our old relatives about family, customs and culture. We didn't realize that they were actually passing on African lineage to us. They may not have even been aware of it, but used words, phrases and music clearly connects African Americans back to the continent of Africa. However, we had no way of connecting to any particular group because that was not something within our ancestors knowledge.
Now if you want to discuss how the Cuban-Africans; Bahamian-Africans; Brazilian-Africans; Cuban-Africans; Jamaican-Africans, etc.; knew more about Africa than African-Americans, then here is your answer: those groups were kept on large plantations and they could keep speaking their languages and practicing their African religions like Santeria. The vast majority of African-Americans were not kept on large plantations; they were by and large kept on small farms and they lost all contact with their heritage. The few groups of African-Americans that were kept on large plantations in States like Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia ended up keeping a lot of their African customs and culture and you will see many Igbo, Yoruba and Gullah settlement in all of those places. But by and large African Americans were kept on smaller farms and it was common to have their mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings sold off to other farms in other States. So how was a little baby supposed to know anything about Africa or Africans if the people to teach them were gone?
As for your initial post, it is fully of conjecture that you know is not true if you know the history of African Americans. One most watched programs in US History was "Roots." Which was a program about a Mandika taken from Gambia to Virginia. The show follows his descendants as they take their American journey from Virginia to North Carolina and eventually into Tennessee. That is show is what typically happened to Africans taken in the slave trade. How was Kunta Kinte's relatives supposed to keep up with African culture once Kunta Kinte died? As it was they kept up with words and phrases, but as the television show showed; without other African people there how were the descendants of Kunta Kinte supposed to know much about Africa when all that that they had around them were Europeans?
Here is the thing; African Americans set up their own universities even when they were not allowed to attend White universities. Scholars like WEB DuBuois, Malcolm X and numerous other Americans knew the history of Africa and African Americans; so in later times we became knowledgeable about Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Songhan, Oyo, Nri and Akan people . So African Americans have always studied African history, but without anyway to connect it to your experiences then it is hard to understand the people and languages. And it didn't and still doesn't help when Africans come to school in America and act all arrogant as Hell and act as if African Americans are beneath them because we don't understand the history, language and people of Africa. Here is a newsflash; African Americans don't understand the history of Africa, because the ancestors of the Africans that come to America for school sold the ancestors of African Americans into slavery. So if someone is going to look down on something or someone; then African students should be looking down on their own ancestors because they were the heartless ones that caused all of us to be lost and the ancestors actions eventually allowed the Europeans to colonize Africa, because the Ancestors virtually depopulated Africa by selling slaves. That is the reason that all Africans are in the position that they are in right now. And it wasn't just the people of Dahomey or the Bini people; it was the also the Aro-Confederacy, an Igbo people that sold out of Calabar and the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
That is a long rambling answer, but African Americans are taking DNA test at all time, to locate where their ancestors are from. African Americans also visit Africa a lot, especially Ghana, because the Ghanain government has apologized for there role in the slave trade and Ghana's first president and all the rest of the that Country's President has come to America and made appeal after appeal to African Americans to come as tourist to visit the slave forts and castles and to invest in the Country. Is there any mystery as to why so many African Americans know so much about Ghana and why people from Ghana know so much about African Americans or why Ghana is doing so well economically? There are African Americans that live in and retire to Ghana and now they are looking to do the same thing in the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cameroon is another place that African Americans are visiting more. Look for more investments to go there.
The question I have is why hasn't Nigeria made a plea to African Americans to come as tourists? Why hasn't Nigerian cultural officials come to American Historically Black Universities, grammar and high schools to talk to kids about the slave trade and explain how most African Americans ancestors originated in Igboland, Yorubaland or in what is now Cameroon. Why aren't the slave ports in Calabar, Biafra become a tourist attraction; because African Americans want to know? What haven't Nigeria's government over the years made it a point not to align with African Americans the way the Ghana has? Long rambling answer but there is a lot of crap floating around about African Americans that is not true and a country like Nigeria is not doing all it can to repair relations with African Americans. Fwiw, my DNA test results are 48% Igbo and 36% Akan.
hello I apologize 100%. My comment was very ignorant. Since I posted that I've done a lot of research and have realized that AAs are the most innovatively African group of all of them. While other groups stayed stagnant in our cultures, AAs have actually a more diverse multi-ethnic culture that pulls from more African lineages all at once, and have catapulted these ancient inheritances into the future like no other group has done (besides Jamaicans and maybe Brazilians).
I was completely wrong back then. It was part of the arrogance many Caribbeans are raised to have just because we are exposed to the ghetto, which isn't the core of AA culture but a recent phenomenon caused by racist housing policies, KKK destruction of affluent Black towns and gentrification.
so please accept my apology sis/bro. These days I praise AAs
the Blues thus Rock N Roll and its offshoots have direct links to Mali, Senegal, etc. It was AAs that revolutionized African musical styles and changed the sound of the world. Not even racists can deny this. I believe racist should stop listening to rock music which is rooted in the tribal rhythms of our ancestors and stick to square dance and Mozart. Jazz, ragtime, the banjo, modern dance, the hair styles cornrows etc, even Li huistic patterns and accents, the turning of the "th" into "d" is almost universal for west African people.
The great thing about time and passion is that knowledge finds us all if we look hard enough and are patient. So I admit my ignorance at the time. Peace!
I never understood why Igbos and Yorubas hate each other so much, does it have something to do with the Biafra war or their large composition in the Nigerian diaspora. Then why do some people claim (most of the cameroonians that i've met) that Igbos are bantus? Please educate a bantu from Kenya
Thurgood Marshall was born July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland and died January 24, 1993. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court where he served from October 1967 to October 1991. The 96th justice, Marshall was the first U.S. Supreme Court justice of African descent in the United States.
Marshall was the great-grandson of a man born in the region now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo but brought to the United States as a slave, according Stewart A. Kallen in his autobiography "Thurgood Marshall: A Dream of Justice for All". Marshall's grandfather was also born into slavery in the United States. His father, William Canfield Marshall, was the first freeman of his family and became a Pullman railroad porter. His mother, Norma Arica, was a teacher.
"Before his appointment to serve on the Supreme Court, he represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American," according to The New World Encyclopedia. Before moving into the judiciary, Marshall was an active civil rights trial attorney, trained in law by the civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, who was his law professor and professional mentor.
Marshall's law practice included appointment as in-house legal counsel to the NAACP. As a trial attorney, Marshall may be best known for his victory in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which successfully challenged the racialist separate but equal doctrine in American society, a doctrine that was then enforced by the laws of the land.
1930
1933 A Brief Thurgood Marshall Timeline
Mr. Marshall graduates with honors from Lincoln University, cum laude
Receives law degree from Howard U. (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore 1934 Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP
