Dysfunctional Culture?

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::Bens: It's a known fact that people of many different backgrounds pass down key elements of their respected cultures to their younger generations। Scientists have even found evidence that chimps pass on customs and cultures just as humans do। It's also known that hardships can rapidly alter a community's unique culture, which can also be passed on. Jewish communities adopted closer knit families and a fear of disease and sickness after the holocaust, yet, they were generally able to rehabilitate and regain forward progress, but what about other cultures? The African American culture is viewed by many to be dysfunctional, but a closer look at the beginnings of slavery, activities practiced during slavery, and the effects that still remain, might prove to be beneficial in determining why this may be the case.

The beginnings of slavery played an extreme role in erasing the culture of would be African Americans। First, slaves were collected from different African tribes and were sold by Africans to different buyers from around the globe. Because these slaves came from different tribes, their different languages posed to be one of the first cultural barriers that would have to be broken. Secondly, millions of slaves were packed aboard ships to be delivered to various destinations. While in transit, many slaves became riddled with disease, and if they didn't die from the disease they were thrown overboard in order to prevent further loss of goods. The shipboard deaths erased even more culture from the slaves. Next, once the slaves made it to their destinations, they had to adopt a native tongue in order to communicate amongst themselves therefore, collectively they learned the language of their masters. Slaves that were defiant were quickly made examples of, which built fear in the majority of the slaves. Slavery's beginnings initially erased the African culture from the slaves, while the activities practiced during slavery helped to further the process.

Practices during slavery made it hard for African slaves to adopt and develop a cultural identity। For instance, slavery easily disrupted the idea of the black family because family members could be sold away at any given time. Mothers were often torn away from their infants and fathers would be sold without warning. Ultimately, the practice of slavery transformed people into work animals who were expected to work from dusk until dawn. Also like animals, African slaves were bred to make them bigger, stronger, and more capable of handling heavier workloads. Furthermore, slaves were also left vulnerable to brutal violence such as rape, murder, torture, lynching, and whipping. Another fault of slavery, was the psychological trauma it caused the slaves. Just by simply imagining the idea of being enslaved is enough to lead many to thoughts of self-hatred. The idea of self-hatred was also enforced by masters teaching their slaves that their skin and hair was a curse. Some masters even believed that dark skin was the mark of Cain imposed by God after he had killed his brother Able. Finally, during slavery, it was illegal to educate slaves for fear of the slaves organizing themselves and starting possible revolutions. These practices attributed to breaking the African slaves cultural links, and it is possible that some of the these cultural divides still affect African Americans today.

The beginnings of slavery and the practices during slavery may have effects that still remain . To begin, today 94% of black murder victims are killed by blacks. This black on black crime in some ways can be connected to the self-hatred suffered by enslaved ancestors, and although negative, could have easily been passed through generations as part of the only culture they had. Also, initially being sold by other Africans could have resulted in the resentment of others much like themselves. Secondly, African Americans today seem to have a very close knit kinship within their families. These kinship's were established during slavery to help slaves deal with the hardship of breakups caused by the selling of family members. The network of kin has survived to this day in age, but unfortunately, it may have caused within the African American community a lower emphasis on the husband and wife bond, which may explain the high percentage of single parent families. Next, in today's society African Americans play an extremely large role in professional sports. This large percentage of Athletes can easily be attributed to the animal-like breeding of the slaves in order to make them stronger. Even though slavery was abolished hundreds of years ago history has revealed that the road traveled by African Americans to fix a once broken culture still remains to be traveled today. In conclusion, a closer look into the beginnings of slavery, practices during slavery, and the effects that remain today, can help to explain why the African American culture is viewed by some to be dysfunctional. Also a closer look should encourage African Americans not to use these connections as excuses, but to use these connections as a blueprint to repair cultures stripped away by slavery. As for the few that view the African American culture as being dysfunctional, these connections should encourage deeper investigation into why and how this assumed dysfunction came about, while also encouraging deep investigation in how to help repair it. Finally, for others that might be intrigued by the connections made here, hopefully this will give some understanding and insight into a culture that's just as young as the nation it resides in.

::Dre: Whooaa...Now that was deep...By all means, leave a comment below. Thank you and as usual, have a blessed day, til next time...