Hervey 1
Fruquione Hervey
Mr. elliott
Octo. 8, 2009
English 100
African American Views
on
African Culture

The year is 2009, October 7th and it's the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It's my freshman year of college, and the day of days are closely approaching, my first English paper is due. Although I should now better by now I still have no idea what my I-Search paper is about let alone the title of the paper. I began thinking back to my better years of high school. My connection with students of other cultures were strong if not stronger than students of my own culture. I met friends that offered encouragement, hope, and inspiration. I met friends of many nations and from the lands or Africa. This is not to say that you couldn't find friends with these same qualities anywhere else in the the world, but lets just say we had a sort of bond of sorts. my fascination with my inner African got me pondering and remanesting on African culture in general. Thust the beginning of my I-Search paper.
In recent discussions of African culture, an interesting issue has been whether African and African Americans really have as much in common as one would think. On one hand, some argue that Africans are completely different when it comes to the everything struggle that African Americans are faced with in the inner cities of America. From this perspective, one might even say that Africans are nothing like African Americans other than the complication of the skin. On the other hand, however some argue that African and African Americans have a list of things that could be compare if looked at beyond a certain point. According to this view, Africans have much in common with there American counter parts, ethically. In sum, then, the issue is whether Africans have more of a separate culture or does the difference between Africans and African Americans culture stop at the appearance of these two people.
My own view is that Africans and African Americans have a lot in common. Though I concede that Africans have different views in certain areas of life, I still maintain that Africans and African Americans have more in common than conventional wisdom says. For Example, the belief of strong family runs deep in both cultures. Although some might object that African Americans have strong family ordinations, I can reply that beyond the world media and black-on-black violence, African Americans are raised with a since of respect and honor towards there families. This issue is important to discuss because the link between African and African American culture is just as likely to be answered through history or family trees.
I began my search like any other typical search: Google. After realizing that African was the magic word for slave trade, I tried yet another search engine, and another and yet another. Hours slipped by, turning into days and then a week. Somewhere between me typing with my eyes closed and ending up on the floor of my dorm, I realized that I needed to take a different approach to this whole topic. I did something that I would rarely do. I used my own personal experiences with my African friends and compared them to the comments of my new found college classmates about there thoughts on Africans and there life styles. This approach left me with some very different and colorful answers and assumptions. I learned that must African Americans think that African with in there culture are traditional and see themselves above most Americans, including African Americans. You could say it was like a cultural hierarchy. At the same time the Africans do not fall short of these same assumptions when it comes to African Americans.
When it comes to the topic of African culture, most of us will readily agree that Africans are different when it comes to life styles and customs of the regions of Africa. When this agreement usually end, however, is on the question of bother and sister hood. Whereas spme are convinced that being different or coming from a different place pushes people away from one another, others such as myself maintain that people whether black or white, or African or African American, are still people and should be expected as such. I discovered why yes Africans are different in some aspects, but never the less, we are truely connected, more than well could ever imagine.