African-americans Are Majorively Of Igbo Descent.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

  our son has no king: who-do Igbo

peace

I'm going to veer off direct hoodoo talk for a second to build a bit on what's inside the "beautiful, bubblin' pot" (thanks script priest) known as African-American culture.
I haven't invited too many Yoruba/Lukumi/Candomble heads into this space yet basically because I felt I needed to get this post out of the way first. It's a bit of a polemic, but it's been developed after many years of observation and informal research.

Many different peoples from many different parts of the Motherland came together in the United States to form the people we now call African-Americans. In the ongoing process of establishing and examinig our roots for purposes of self-determination and re-intergration the cultural and religious practices of certain extended family groups (aka tribes) have been forefronted and established themselves as the "norm" of "African" cultural practice in the States
In the area of religion the ATR's (African Traditional Religions) of the Yoruba, Fon, Kongo and Akan peoples have established themselves as the standard, with the Yoruba based religions being the "gold standard".
One thing all these peoples have in common is a hierarcheal political system based around a king (though it is my understanding that the Kongo system was much looser than the others). This co-incidentally (or not) coincided with the Western view of what an "evolved" political system should look like.
That these ATRs largely failed to esablish themselves in this country (with exception of Louisiana, where imports from Haiti brought Voodoo) has made it seem that African-Americans have somehow "lost" a part of their culture.
In the case of the "gold standard " Yoruba culture it's just not the case that the culture was "lost". The major forced exodus of the Yoruba populations out of Africa into the "New World" happened AFTER legal slave importation into the US. was banned so a widespread Yoruba diaspora was unable to estabish itself in the US.(note- I have been told a Yoruba community existed in Mobile, Ala.)
I contend that Bantu/Kongos (who were numerically the largest African group exported to America) did what they did elsewhere, which was align their practices with those of the culturally dominant groups (though I accept that it could be argued that alot of Bantu knowlegde DID dissappear- but the fact that Dr. Buzzard's bones have never been found tells me ALL the secrets weren't lost- they just stayed secret).
It should be mentioned that the ancestors themselves re-established Akan practices in the US.

So who is this seemingly invisible dominant African cultural group?, I've always been struck by the fact that jazz developed and evolved in the US and nowhere else in the African diaspora. My inital intuition was that it had to do with with a particular set of people that were sent to and flourished in the US and not elsewhere.
After reading some anarchist theory I realized that jazz reflected a very similar thought process to what the anarchists aspired to. Which got me to thinking there must have cultural precedent, probably going back to Africa, for the egalitarian structure of dixieland, bebop, free jazz, etc.
Which led to research on which set of people actually came to the US. I used to tell my friends that it seemed everyone who didnt want to be ruled in Africa got sent to the States.
I started to feel I was on the right track when I found info on the warlords in Senegambia (who were Muslim) who would capture and sell the people who wouldn't accept their rulership and those who wouldnt convert to Islam to the British.
The people who the Wolof warlords conquered lived in what the anthropologists called stateless societies.
They didnt have kings or large-scale overarching external political structures.
Everything was decieded locally and everyone who was considered free had a say.
While researching my Sea Island roots I found the same political structure existed among the Mende, Temne, etc. Now we're getting somewhere.
Then I found the book "The Igbo Of Southeast Nigeria". It sat on my shelf for awhile before i deceided to read it. All I can say is every A-A interested in the culture of the US needs to read that book.
If you don't see the thought processes of yourself or someone you know well (for better or worse) reflected in that book I'll be shocked.
I'D go so far as to say in my opinion the Igbo culture holds the place in the US that the Yoruba culture holds in Brazil, Trinidad, and Cuba.
The Bight of Biafra was the largest exporter of slaves in the late 1700's early 1800's.
Legal inportation of slaves ended in the US in 1807.
(As an aside I recently read a book about Denmark Vesey and his aborted rebellion in Charleston.He had 5000 soldiers (I believe) broken up into thre sections Gullah (led by Gullah Jack) mainland and Igbo.)

Anyway, there is a saying "the Igbo have no kings."

What does this have to do with hoodoo (or roots as my Granma would say)?
With no king your personal relationship to God and his fractal manifestation in you,
your Chi as the Igbo say,
becomes the most important one for the community as well as yourself.
The power of God, in his mercy and his judgement falls directly on your's and the community's heads. The lack of a king means each individual is his own king, with the powers and responsibilities inherent in that role.
What the ancestors and world gives you is yours to use and innovate with as you see fit if you can get ancestral and community sanction.
God himself will judge you (as Tupac knew). It also means imo that it's each individual's responsiblity to create and maintain the community with the power God gave them and each individual's responsibilty to police, adjust and when necessary heal themselves and the community with the assistance of the ancestors, their Chi, and God.
Each person is their own fractal diety to the extent that they can manifest that power within themselves.
From this perspective there is no one to bow to but the Highest.

one

Many Igbos were sold into slavery because of tribal wars and love of money/business. The Ijaws bought them ( like King JaJa) and sold them to white people. Most of them are found in the caribbean today. Most Jamaicans and southern Black Americans are descendants of Igbo slaves

Many Igbos were sold into slavery because of tribal wars and love of money/business. The Ijaws bought them ( like King JaJa) and sold them to white people. Most of them are found in the caribbean today. Most Jamaicans and southern Black Americans are descendants of Igbo slaves

Look,  I'm very studies on this topic. The information you've posted up is rather accurate, though please take not at what the statistics are focusing on. Those figure are giving a breakdown on the number of Africans in which were brought to the AMERICA(S) as a whole, and not America aka THE UNITED STATES. The issue here is not whether or not the Igbo were 60% of all Africans taken for slaves and brought to the Americas as a whole,  in which the answer too such issue is HELL NO!! No, the issue in this thread is addressing the fact of that the majority of the Africans brought to the UNITED STATES and its preseeding Colonies were Igbo. ((Less)) than 6% of the Slaves brought to the AMERICAS were taken to the United States and out of that less than 6%,  about 60% of those were Igbo are the facts that are being addressed here. Your Wiki information is irrelevant here.

Lazy:

Actually it is within the entire Chesapeake region that the Igbo were dominant by a nearly 75% majority, and not just within Virginia. Outside of that region all up and down the Eastern coastal states,  they were a majority by about a 60% majority. It's only with the Gulf states that they were not the majority. In the Gulf states the Central African tribes make up the majority of the imported into that region, and most of them were slaves taken from current day Angola by way of Caribbean holding grounds in Santo Domingo, current day nations of Haiti and Dominican Republic, Cuba and Guiana.

The Igbo's lowest percentages along the eastern seaboard were found within South Carolina,  in where heavy amounts of Senegambians were brought do to their specialized rice growing abilities in which were need in mass to develop the states rice growing industry. In South Carolina, the Igbo percentage of the population was only about 45%. 

Lazy:

Actually it is within the entire Chesapeake region that the Igbo were dominant by a nearly 75% majority, and not just within Virginia. Outside of that region all up and down the Eastern coastal states,  they were a majority by about a 60% majority. It's only with the Gulf states that they were not the majority. In the Gulf states the Central African tribes make up the majority of the imported into that region, and most of them were slaves taken from current day Angola by way of Caribbean holding grounds in Santo Domingo, current day nations of Haiti and Dominican Republic, Cuba and Guiana.

The Igbo's lowest percentages along the eastern seaboard were found within South Carolina,  in where heavy amounts of Senegambians were brought do to their specialized rice growing abilities in which were need in mass to develop the states rice growing industry. In South Carolina, the Igbo percentage of the population was only about 45%. 

I agree with you that the statement ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS by Hero is totally incorrect,