A framework for worldwide information, communication, and collaboration on African affairs.

INTRODUCTION

 

The United States of America achieved its independence on July 4th, 1776 after conquering its hegemonist, the United Kingdom, in revolutionary war. The country’s land mass stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean with absolutely stunning beauty of natural environment. The country’s infrastructure has been a trend setter and enabled the nation to become one of the most influential and the most powerful country in the across modern world.

Inventing America

 

It all began in the 15th century when Europeans first came to the continent now called America. The original indigenes, or Indians, as the Europeans came to call them, first encountered European around 1450 AD. The country’s land mass is filled with absolutely stunning beauty of natural environments that stretch from the Pacific Ocean through to the Atlantic Ocean. The earliest documentation of the name America for this particular landmass dates from April 25, 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France. The name may have been derived from the Latinized version of the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name. Note that there are other claims as to how the name was derived.

RACIAL IDENTITY

 

What is American?

Its motto: El Pluribus, Unim: Out of many, One – describes the nature of its inhabitants. All immigrants exist here in due consequence: “Ubi panis ibi patria”, which translates in sense to ‘home is there where the bread is’. For the indigenes, John Hector De Crevecor wrote that they are descendants of strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other single country. He went on to conclude that an American is any, who left behind all ancient prejudices and manners, embraces the new mode of life or that is borne with birthright, obeys the rule of law established by government and upholds the responsibility of maintaining a peaceful, thrift and open society. These principles seemed good, but the people remained divided along cultural, ethnic and racial lines for a very long time.

 

It was clear from the onset that the new found land would be one of the richest lands with natural resources. Explorers from many countries across Europe found enormous lucrative interests in the new land and came in droves looking for fortune and venture in America. The promises of hope and opportunity encouraged a lasting trend of European settlements, especially merchants and those fleeing religious or political prosecution, and social or economic adversity at home. More Europeans began to settle and brought with them their ways of life -- some of which were fundamental, cultural, and ideological mores. As merchants competed against themselves in America and the Caribbean, they became more desperate about their pursuits and were constantly creating new approaches to achieve set goals.

 

 

ETHNICITY

 

The United States is made of all ethnicities and cultures you can find in the old and the modern world and remains one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. Other than the natives, people arrived through various reasons. Europeans arrived in waves as settlers, merchants and immigrants, while the Africans arrived as indentured labor, hired hands and later through slavery. The Asians and the Hispanics came later in droves searching for work and opportunities. The multicultural atmosphere sparked tribal, clannish, ethnic, and racial conflict.

The political disagreement about ethics on humanity and appropriate interpretation of the constitution led to a civil war between the regions in 1860. The outcome of the war emancipated the enslaved, marked the end to slave institution and sort to create a “more perfect union” between the states and people. This struggle for peace and liberation has since become an indelible impression on the fabric of the American culture and principle for justice.

 

ATMOSPHERE

Because of its size, atmosphere in America depends on location. Certain areas, especially those along the prairie and middle America, are as if time stood still. The coastal regions are driven by very dynamic economic, and political news which can easily be observed as determinant in the daily social interest of most entities. This puts a lot of power in the media sector, which has a good grip on the overall social behavior and habits. Freedom of expression can be observed across the country and Press freedom is highly prioritized. Majority of the people are living in the coastal regions. New York City is perhaps the most culturally diverse and dynamic megalopolis in the world. Many cities model after this trend but each is unique by tradition, cultural heritage or the dynamism of its inhabitant. The system work because of ease of market access and highly competitive capabilities.

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

 

An enormous amount of literary materials has been produced in regards to the history of Africans in America. However, not enough emphasis has been laid on how influential African has been to the development of America, and how this particular development has influenced several cultures across the world especially in all African countries. Further obscurity or the failure to emphasize this significant influence clouds the development and cooperation due in the all African development process. African Views attempts to provide a mosaic analysis of the history of Africans in America and the influence of this history in our world today.

 

Background

The history of Africans in America is inextricably tied together with the history of America. The United States of America is the oldest democracy since it became an independent country in 1776, yet the US remains one of the youngest cultures in the world. This is because American culture is a hybrid of cultures and values from many parts of the world assimilated on the axiom of Anglo Saxon views and civilizations. A system, which has proven to be the surest way to expounds innovations and improve civility in partial doses. However, the US remains a great cultural attraction in the world today, an incubator for varying ideologies and place with enormous amount of social challenges.

Beginning of migration

Soon Europeans started travelling to Africa to recruit cheaper labor. Now, America has begun to realize that it is embarking on an unprecedented development of human relationships. This development laid the foundation for recognized principles that held a place in European pedagogy of multicultural relations in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur was the first writer to describe how life is on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream, portraying American society as characterized by the principles of equal opportunity and self-determination. His work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped to create an American identity in the minds of Europeans, which will continue to endure till this day.

 

The early years

During the early years of American history, the society was divided by class rather than skin color. In fact, the first Africans in North America were not slaves, but indentured servants (servants contracted to work for a set amount of time) like many of their European counterparts. At the dawn of colonial time, ‘black and white laborers” (Africans and Europeans) worked together, side by side, for a set amount of time before earning their freedom. As competition became fierce among merchants, the rumors that Africans are better workhorses than European indenture servants and the natives was becoming a major trend.

 

British colonization

In the early 1600s, most territories in America were divided into colonies which held allegiance to diverse European kingdoms. At the same time European settlers in America were clashing with the Original indigenes, and further more amongst themselves on who should control the wealth in America from Europe. These colonies were constantly encroaching upon each other and finally, the United Kingdom had the upper hand and was able to amalgamate 13 colonies under the crown of England and Scotland. The British conquest brought with it certain degree of accountability because Great Britain had proclaimed itself as the upholder of civilization. This was good in part, because it actually delayed the trend of slavery in the colonies, as it has already became common practice in the Caribbean and South America where the Spanish and Portuguese ruled.

Nonetheless, the British conquest caused a great deal of rivalry and cultivated a growing ideology of defiance and eventually was the seed of the American revolutionary war.

 

INTRODUCTION TO SLAVERY IN AMERICA

 

The transformation from indentured servitude (servants contracted to work for a set amount of time) to racial slavery didn't happen overnight. The history of African in America began when the first ship carrying Africans sailed into the harbor at Jamestown, Virginia in August of 1619. At this time, there are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. The story of slavery began when three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were European; one was African. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes -- a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th-century Virginia. The two European men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude -- one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the African man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere." John Punch no longer had hope for freedom. So, by 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one African servant to slavery. Source: PBS, 'The Terrible Transformation'

 

The transformation process

It wasn't until 1661 that a reference to slavery entered into Virginia law, and this law was directed at servants with European heritage -- at those who ran away with a servant of African heritage. The following year, the colony went one step further by stating that children born would be bonded or free according to the status of the mother. The transformation had begun, but it wouldn't be until the Slave Codes of 1705 that the status of African Americans would be sealed. Now, the colonies had begun to separate the people’s privileges by veneer: White, Red and Black. Europeans became known as white reflecting pure and privileged. The native-Americans became known as the red Indians, reflecting caution. Africans became known as blacks reflecting all that’s unworthy. Theories to support the premise became quickly wide-spread belief by many academia and pseudo scientists of that era across Europe that “White” is the superior race. To my surprise, I found contemporary scholars of all races believing that is it really true, that ‘Blacks’ are either incapable of feeling the spurs of emulation, imbibing ideas that would greatly alleviate the weight of their miseries, or collaborate at will, or appreciate the subtle sounds of encouragement.

 

Justification for slavery

It was not until the late 18th century that pseudo-scientific racism provided the basic justification for slavery. Some of the arguments are that slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans--as did a slave trade that exported a small number of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf.

 

Herewith an excerpt from the Letters from an American Farmer:

“A clergyman settled a few years ago at George-Town, and feeling as I do now, warmly recommended to the planters, from the pulpit, a relaxation of severity; he introduced the benignity of Christianity, and pathetically made use of the admirable precepts of that system to melt the hearts of his congregation into a greater degree of compassion toward their slaves than had been hitherto customary; " Sir ," (said one of his hearers), "we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy, and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the church directs; but we do not want you to teach us what we are to do with our blacks." The clergyman found it prudent to with-hold any farther admonition. Whence this astonishing right, or rather this barbarous custom, for most certainly we have no kind of right beyond that of force? We are told, it is true, that slavery cannot be so repugnant to human nature as we at first imagine, because it has been practiced in all ages, and in all nations: the Lacedemonians themselves, those great assertors of liberty, conquered the Helotes with the design of making them their slaves; the Romans, whom we consider as our masters in civil and military policy, lived in the exercise of the most horrid oppression; they conquered to plunder and to enslave.

But these systems of slavery differed from the plantation slavery that developed in the New World.” To further justify the act of slavery of another race and societies, certain common stereotypes were imposed on slaves - that they were licentious, childlike, lazy, irresponsible, dim-witted, and incapable of freedom.

 

Slavery

The 1926 Slavery Convention, Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised. The slave trade includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves.

 

Therefore, slaves were peoples' property and could be bought and sold, traded, leased, or mortgaged like a form of livestock. Because they are under the personal dominion of an owner, slaves were always vulnerable to any form of exploitation and cruelty.

 

 

Component and stages of slavery

Slavery involves several components and stages. The components are traders, market makers, brokers, buyers and sellers, field workers, law makers, arms dealers, accouterment makers, banking and finance, import and export, transportation, slave drivers, and militias … in short it is a whole self sustaining industrial system, a big business that is openly practiced and encouraged. The stages involved are corruptions and destabilization of a fragile society, invasion, captivation, human trafficking, human trading, and human slavery, slave managers, legalization… protected by the government laws.

 

Privatization of human trafficking and enslavement

By 1660, the labor system of the American South began to transform out of indentured servitude into racial slavery. From the 1660s to the end of the 17th century, as the British became more heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade, human trafficking industry finally opened up to anyone. The Slave industry was the business boom of that era and by the end of the 17th century, England led the world in human trafficking, human trading and in human slavery.

 

Establishment of White privilege and dehumanization of Africans as Blacks

 

With “White privilege” clearly established, the justice for slavery became unquestionable by the belief that Africans (now Blacks) are not God serving and should indeed serve the will of men, the Europeans. This unprecedented declaration and unanimous agreement thereof played a very significant role in mitigating ethnic, beliefs and cultural differences between the diverse European ethnic groups in America. Energized by the virtue of birth right, it was clear that people can now work towards common goals in America: the poor can find work and the thrifty can become rich and be just as privileged and protected by the law. The opportunity to participate in a new economy and building of a new society attracted many Europeans immigrants to come to America, and may have inspired the famous poem from Emma Lazarus, (1849-1887): "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

 

 

"All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened."

 

This was an enormous amount of power and freedom delegated to individuals with European heritage regardless of status. For the 17th century slave in Virginia, disputes with a master could be brought before a court for judgment. With the slave codes of 1705, this no longer was the case. A slave owner who sought to break the most rebellious of slaves could now do so, knowing any punishment he inflicted, including death, would not result in even the slightest reprimand. At the same time, an immeasurable amount of deprivation of life, hope and humanity has been forced upon the African Americans.

 

Slave Codes

To help regulate the relationship between slave and owner, including legal support for keeping the slave as property, slave codes were established. While each state would have their own, most of the ideas were shared throughout the slave states. In the codes for the District of Columbia, a slave is defined as “a human being, who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life, and is the property of another.”

 

A paragraph from the Black Code of South Carolina, still valid in 1863, declared death as the penalty for him who dared “to aid any slave in running away or departing from his master's or employer's service."Codes from other states placed limits on relations allowed between black and white people. Louisiana's Code Noir did not allow interracial marriage, and if children were a result a fine of three hundred livres would have to be paid. This code also stated children of a slave "shall share the condition of their mother” if the child’s parents had different masters they would stay with the mother, and if the father was free and the mother a slave the children would also be slaves.

 

The code, which would also serve as a model for other colonies, went even further. The law imposed harsh physical punishments, since enslaved persons who did not own property could not be required to pay fines. It stated that slaves needed written permission to leave their plantation, that slaves found guilty of murder or rape would be hanged, that for robbing or any other major offence, the slave would receive sixty lashes and be placed in stocks, where his or her ears would be cut off, and that for minor offences, such as associating with whites, slaves would be whipped, branded, or maimed. This shift from indentured servitude to lifelong slavery to heredity slavery, where not only a devastating blow to the development of Africans, it also would come to determine the fate of Africans as a people reduced to color without personality or need for aspiration everywhere in the world.

 

 

Subsequent laws created to legitimize White privilege and dehumanization

The shift from indentured servitude to racial slavery in the British colonies is evident in the development of the colonies' laws:

 

• Virginia, 1639: The first law to exclude "Negroes" from normal protections by the government was enacted.

 

• Maryland, 1664: The first colonial "anti-amalgamation" law is enacted (amalgamation referred to "race-mixing"). Other colonies soon followed Maryland's example. A 1691 Virginia law declared that any white man or woman who married a "Negro, mulatto, or Indian" would be banished from the colony forever.

 

• Virginia, 1667: Christian baptisms would no longer affect the bondage of blacks or Indians, preventing enslaved workers from improving their legal status by changing their religion.

 

• In August of 1670, several months after Anthony Johnson's death, a jury in a Virginia court decided that, because "he was a Negro and by consequence an alien," ownership of the 250 acres Johnson once owned should be escheated, or reverted, to England.

• Virginia, 1682: A law establishing the racial distinction between servants and slaves was enacted.

 

Not only were the plantation owners' perspective became more aligned with that of the plantation owners of the Caribbean Islands, but also sealed with statutes. Source: Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America Penguin Books, 1983

 

The wealth effect of enslavement of Africans in America

J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in his memoirs, Letters from an American Farmer, described life in America during the 18th century in the following paragraphs:

 

“The nature of our laws, and the spirit of freedom, which often tends to make us litigious, must necessarily throw the greatest part of the property of the colonies into the hands of these gentlemen. In another century, the law will possess in the north, what now the church possesses in Peru and Mexico.”

 

“The three principal classes of inhabitants are: lawyers, planters, and merchants; this is the province which has afforded to the first the richest spoils, for nothing can exceed their wealth, their power, and their influence. They have reached the ne plus ultra of worldly felicity; no plantation is secured, no title is good, no will is valid, but what they dictate, regulate, and approve. The whole mass of provincial property is become tributary to this society; which, far above priests and bishops, disdain to be satisfied with the poor Mosaical portion of the tenth. While all is joy, festivity, and happiness in Charles-Town, would you imagine that scenes of misery overspread in the country? Their ears by habit are become deaf, their hearts are hardened; they neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of the poor Africans, from whose painful labors all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no one thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they till.

 

The chosen race eat, drink, and live happy, while the unfortunate one grubs up the ground, raises indigo, or husks the rice; exposed to a sun full as scorching as their native one; without the support of good food, without the cordials of any shearing liquor. This great contrast has often afforded me subjects of the most afflicting meditation. On the one side, behold a people enjoying all that life affords most bewitching and pleasurable, without labor, without fatigue, hardly subjected to the trouble of wishing. With gold, dug from Peruvian mountains, they order vessels to the coasts of Guinea; by virtue of that gold, wars, murders, and devastations are committed in some harmless, peaceable African neighborhood, where dwelt innocent people, who even knew not but that all men were black. The daughter torn from her weeping mother, the child from the wretched parents, the wife from the loving husband; whole families swept away and brought through storms and tempests to this rich metropolis!

 

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CULTURAL RELATIONS WITH AFRICANS

 

Initially, African Americans have a combined heritage of more than a dozen African nations, including Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Upper Volta, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia, and Senegal. Today, that number of those heritages has multiplied exponentially, including the effect of influx from the west-indies and south America. Africans in American have reinvented themselves culturally and spiritually, the basis of their core cultural and human foundation can largely be traced through their family trees, religion, folklore, and music, as well as more direct forms of pilgrimage and other dignified experiences. In addition, African Americans have used their African heritage to create new form of artistic expression which in turn has been widely embraced in Africa, for example, Jazz music, blues, soul music, hip-hop etc. .

The African American language is filled with Africanism, considering such words as bogus, bug, phony, yam, tote, gumbo, jamboree, jazz, and funky all have African roots. The cuisine, too, is heavily influenced by African practices. Deep-fat frying, gumbos, and fricassees stem from West and Central Africa. The frame construction of houses; the "call and response" pattern in sermons; the stress on the Holy Spirit and an emotional conversion experience--these too appear to derive at least partly from African customs. They also maintained a connection to their ancestors through folklore, and conveyed valuable lessons to their children.

The Pan-Africanism movement also plays a very important role in bringing about the consciousness of connectedness or need to connect between African Americans and Africa. The Pan African Movement as well as the Civil right movement both play imperative roles in the many African nations states independence from colonial powers.

This consciousness has translated to the development of disciplinary and interdisciplinary faculties such as Africana studies, African Studies, "black" studies etc.

African Americans participated largely in the FESTAC (World Festival of African Culture in 1967, 1977 and in 2010. Today, there is an increasing number of interest and collaboration developing between African Americans and Africa.

 

SOCIAL ISSUES

 

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HUMAN RIGHTS

 

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LIST OF DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN ORGANIZATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_professional_associations

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