Grant Rodwell quoted Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a leader of the Pan-Africanism Movement in his book, he said “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” A tree needs its roots for essential functions such as tapping into the soil for nutrients to prevent it from dying, it also needs the roots as a support system the same way a building needs a foundation. My stands in this argumentative paper is that the African American society means to be educated about their history, origin and culture if we want to survive in modern day America.
The African American community for years have not been educated adequately on their cultures and origin. One could ask if this is a strategy by the authorities to prevent us from tapping into the knowledge needed for progression among the African American community. It could be. Growing up in Ghana, the history of our people was taught across board and it was very representative, we learnt little about each culture and how to accept and embrace cultures. This is a major reason Ghana has been labelled one of the most peaceful countries in Africa. The Global Peace Index of 2015 placed Ghana behind other most peaceful nations in Africa. In 2016, the country is 44th in the table. Ghana has also seen two peaceful transitions of power between political parties.
The United State of America is the most culturally diverse country on the face of the earth. The African American population stands at about 13.3% of the total population, according to the U.S Census Bureau. These numbers are insignificant as opposed to the White population, which is 76.
9%. There are many instances where the White American culture are imposed or infused into the educational curriculum. The minority cultures aren’t introduced to the students. And what’s even messed up to me is the way they label the ‘native’ Americans. If they are the real natives of America and most of them are alive, why don’t we just call them Americans? Back to the issue at hand, there are some schools in the United States of America that cut off or label the African American History class as not important. This is sad because, when a person’s culture is shunned, it leads to the building of an inferiority complex. The idea of the typical white American ruling class or superiority has over the last year increased. Following the first three months of President Donald Trumps’ election into power, there has been an astonishing 1,372 bias incidents reported.
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Slightly more than 25 percent of that total involved events motivated by anti-immigrant sentiments. One could only guess that the message of hate and the rhetoric carried out by President Donald Trump’s campaign is to be blamed for. Every fall, San Francisco State celebrates the anniversary of the longest campus strike in the country’s history lasting for months. “…the 1968 student-led strike, the longest campus strike in United States history. The five-month event defined the University’s core values of equity and social justice, laid the groundwork for establishment of the College…” Thus, the College of Ethnic Studies was founded in 1969 and several other advanced education foundations the nation over took after SF State’s lead. As indicated by a 1981 report issued by the Education Resource Information Center, 439 universities in the nation offered an aggregate of 8,805 ethnic investigations courses by 1978. Numerous SF State strike graduated class rose to noticeable quality in the fields of human right justice, law, welfare and public administration.
Most notable was a famous on-screen character and activist Danny Glover, who was an active member of the Black Student Union, and Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay, who participated in the strike of 1968 as a fellow of the Philippine American College Endeavor (PACE) and was also a representative. Willie Brown, a Graduate and statement then at that point a youthful legal counselor and legislator, attempted to free striking students who were imprisoned, as did, previous U.S.
Congressman, Oakland Mayor and former student Ron Dellums. Some student leaders of this strikers who picked education as a profession, a few came back to SF State and are presently on the personnel including Associate Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies and Professor of Asian American Studies Laureen Chew, Professor of Asian American Studies Danilo Begonia, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies Dan Gonzales, Professor of Raza Studies Roberto Rivera. Apart from the learning for one’s history and culture, cultural sensitivity is very essential component of cultural education.
Cultural sensitivity is basically understanding other cultures that might be different from yours, learning to accept it and not thinking your culture is better than someone else’s. A typical example of how incompetent and insensitive some of the teachers at schools are was a case the happened in the state of Georgia involving an elementary school teacher. This elementary school teacher was playing this dice game about Underground Railroad with her students. This game was basically to determine if the slave would be able to escape and gain his liberty or sent back to the slave master.
Delores Bunch-Keemer was the grandmother of the little girl who returned home from school upset after playing that game. This was a very insensitive way for the teacher to tap into a group of peoples past in that way. African Americans should invest in books or library memberships, according to the famous black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates “But I would open the books and read, while filing my composition books with notes on my reading, new vocabulary words, and sentences of my own inventions.” This helps improve one’s ability to analyze a situation or understand one’s roots and origin. Most teachers according to Kelley L. Costner find it difficult teaching African American students, she stated “…teaching African American students as an undesirable task and the reality is that African American students at every educational level from elementary to postsecondary are forced to matriculate in a system where the faculty members have low expectations of them.
” The society stigma associated with the black community does not only exist on the streets but even in the educational institutions. This stigma leads to the teachers underestimating the minds of young African Americans and teaching them below what they ought to be taught.The federal government, state, and institutional solutions for the issues of minorities not being taught their culture or history have been based toward the treatment of students instead of the preparation of the educators and professors. The viability of these strategies and the degree to which they have been successful is still open for deliberation.
Moreover, “Classroom direction is once in a while examined as a contributing component in the disproportionately high rate of school negligence found among some ethnic minority and low-wage students”The search to find one’s roots and heritage lead John Henrik Clarke to a better understanding of his culture. He always preached about how a society without knowledge of its whereabouts or origin becomes disorganized and lacks direction. John Henrik Clarke spoke about how one could not be disorganized and lack direction, and it was to go back to the incubator. This incubator is a metaphor for African, the motherland. A person in search of his or her origin do not necessarily have to travel all the way to Africa to be connected, one could do this mentally or psychologically.
At the point when students are not taught to respect and appreciate the way that African American community have constantly made great and significant contribution to society in the United States. It is most likely to result in insensitivity, distrust and an abhor for treating other individuals, especially African Americans and the other minority races found in this diverse country. African American culture and history should have equal emphasis on the curriculum as much as Mathematics, American history. Not only does it talk about the struggles this race has been through but it should also focus on the inventions and the scientific breakthroughs the black community has been robbed off and not given credits for. According to Sheila R. Black, Susie A Spence and Safiya R. Omari’s Journal of Black studies titled Contributions of African Americans to the Field of Psychology “In 1920, Cecil Sumner (Sawyer, 2000) received his Ph.
D. and became the first African American to be awarded a doctoral degree in psychology from an American university. Although Sumner is an important figure in psychology and in African American history, he is rarely mentioned in introductory psychology textbooks” this only one of the numerous African American leading the way, but if the black community isn’t taught about these leaders, we grow up thinking the white community leads the way and all we do is follow. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have constant access to cultural education, I wouldn’t have known the fact that the oldest book isn’t the Bible has the western world has made majority of the African community believe or how the medical field has found a way to discredit and not regard Imhotep as the father of medicine. Another aspect of the black culture is Dance, Art and music. Music and Dance has always been an integral part of African American culture.
Knowledge of this culture do not only empower the black community but can serve as a getaway or a break from all the insanity and oppression the African American community faces almost on a daily. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “But I would watch how black people moved, how in the clubs they danced as though their bodies could do anything…on the outside, black people controlled nothing…” culture. This means if we do not educate ourselves on our culture, and it’s taken away from us or not taught in the schools, the upcoming generation is most likely to lose it all and end up being totally controlled. Culture Education helps the individuals know the past, value and belief system of his/she people. Jerome H. Schiele stated that, “Cultural estrangement is synonymous with cultural amnesia” Cultural estrangement is another form of cultural amnesia that may be the lack of knowledge or the loss of memory concerning the content and character of a race’s history and origin. Cultural amnesia brings about the favorable characteristics of a race’s history are subdue and gradually excluded not solely from the memory of the individual.” This doesn’t mean they don’t have a reference point or traits of their cultures in them.
It is just a clear visible difference between a culturally educated African American and an individual who is not culturally educated. A deep study of the African American culture can make the individual feel empowered and help boost their confidence in a society where the black community is looked down upon. As stated by Kelley L. Costner, Kevin Daniels and Marco T. Clark, “Academia does not express positive attitudes toward teaching African American students; furthermore, many of the assumptions, values, and practices of people and institutions hinder the learning of students of color”.
This is because the white American society have a phobia, which is the fact that they are scared of a successful African American. All their lives, the view the black body as not capable to achieve nothing, either than or they just don’t want to be viewed as on the same thinking ability as a black person. And the only way a person is going to be successful is if him or her has sufficient knowledge of his culture. The Government should increase funding to the historically black colleges and universities.
These Universities and Colleges were founded during the times where the black communities weren’t allowed to attend or further their education at universities due to the color of their skin. These colleges were built to help the African Americans learn about their history and culture. But the current administration lead by President Donald Trump decided to cut funding.
The labor market also tends to discriminate against students of HBCUs. In Terrell L. Strayhorn’s article Influences on Labor Market Outcomes of African American College Graduates: A National Study, he states, “However, a segment of this body of research provides evidence of differences in the labor market outcomes of African American college graduates…” this is however only because the labor market discriminates and does not always go for the most qualified candidate but would rather be bias towards the African Americans.The United States of America should take a lesson from Ghana about employment based on bias rather than qualification. The fact that Ghana is divided by tribes and ethnic groups, employers base selection or promotion of positions mostly on if they like that tribe or not. This is a problem which is causing that country a lot in terms of a huge decrease in productivity. Regardless of the school attended by the individual, selection for positions should not go against a qualified graduate student from a history black colleges and universities.
In Conclusion, cultural education for African Americans should be as stressed upon and taking into high regard as the other subject. The method in which the topic is taught should be effective too. The African American communities have been deprived from acquiring knowledge or the real history behind how great their people are, the discoveries, ideas and inventions that have been credited to other races. This could be a psychological way the Americans want to use or let me say, have been using on us the African American for Decades and it’s even more clear now that in order to break the chain of oppression, one needs to know his or her cultural background and history.This can be related to how the enslaved Africans were prevented from learning how to read and write.
The more ignorant you are the easier it is to believe what majority of the average Americans tell us. Also, the white American wanted the black community to forget their history and culture from the moment they stepped foot in America. The enslaved Africans were forced to forget their traditional or native names and rather forced to respond to the names they were given by their masters and owners.
